What do API and 3rd party apps have to do with social media platforms?
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The API or application programming interface is the gateway from outside into the service. If that API wasn’t open, or available to 3rd party developers the only way you’d be able to interact with a service like Reddit is through THEIR official interfaces: the website, the official apps.
3rd party apps are just alternate apps for a particular service that do different things, or prioritize different features in their development. For example, maybe the official app hasn’t got a “Dark Mode”, but a 3rd party app does.
The API is also how you collect data (for research, marketing etc.).
The reason this is all a big deal for Reddit right now is that Reddit has decided to dramatically increase the fees they charge 3rd party app developers and API users for access. To levels that will, in effect, be unaffordable to 3rd party developers and API users – most of them anyway. Which means users of those APPs will have to switch to the official ones. Users of the API for research will have to pay $$$$.
Twitter did the same thing. All social media sites do this in the end phase. [As Cory Doctorow says, this is the “enshittification” of any service on the internet.](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/)
1. make it awesome for users; they and their friends join. Lock in the users.
2. make it awesome for advertisers; seller tools, ad tools etc. Lock them in.
3. make it awesome for the venture capital dudebros and stockholders; this usually means raising prices and lots of ads or both. This also means making it shitty for users. Usually.
4. having pissed of users, they leave. Advertisers leave. The service dies.
Happened to Facebook, happened to Twitter, Tiktok, Insta, now Reddit.
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