Reddit could have avoided protests if they had said something like: "We're going to roll out a plan to start charging third party app developers to cover the cost of API access and/or lost ad revenue, as it is unsustainable for us to keep foregoing these funds. We're going to be super transparent about the process. We're going to apply a small mark-up (say, 10%) but we will allow devs ample time (=1 year) to plan for this. And we will provide public support to help these developers work through this with us."

Of course, they would have to actually back up that talk with actions. A big part of the reason for the protests is how many blatant lies Reddit has made around this situation, including baseless accusations against the Apollo app, clearly false statements about their pricing plans and their plans to charge for API access during 2023, etc. So tbh at this point I don't trust anything Reddit says anyway. Show, don't tell.