Earlier quoted context omitted.
what puzzles me the most is that reddit's reasoning for charging money for their API is that "it's bad that other people are profiting from our work and it's too expensive to maintain without someone paying it". hey, guess what? reddit "profits" a LOT from unpaid work from their moderators. if you wanna charge for API access, you should also pay your moderators since you are profiting from their work.
Reddit isn’t profitable therefore technically it doesn’t profit from anything.
This is a common issue with discussion of companies, people say "look they're not making any money" just because the company accounts are not recording profits.
But if you pay out all your money as C-suite wages (for example) then you have "no profits" as a company but people are certainly profiting.
Another angle is political steer; you can make profit outside the company, or make social change, and so forego intrinsic profit.