Lots of subreddits are being forced / threatened to open back up so that Spez can fix his IPO valuation and stop these mean mean moderators from hurting his feelings
Some subreddits are opening up and changing their rules so that only specific exact content is being allowed. For example the r/steam subreddit for the steam gaming platform is now discussing literal steam, the idea being that the subreddit is open but it's either a joke or crap content
It's a good enough solution, opening these things in name only and forcefully moderating thing to ensure the conversation and engagement is boring, there's not much else mods can do when admins are being a bunch of dicks.
The protest was less about them wanting to charge a price, it’s that in a time frame of 6 months reportedly went from “the API won’t have changes anytime soon” to “we’re going to pivot to a paid API soon” to “we’re charging you advertiser rates per x million API requests, starting in a month, and you cannot supplement with your own ads”.
There was no time for these apps to adjust their pricing models. Most were on yearly subscription models or ad-driven. Having that large a pivot in the rules with no time to adapt the business model is just shitty partnership on Reddit’s part.