First of all, I post this as someone who is only modestly informed about the whole situation. I’m a casual user who moved here from Reddit mostly because of the blackout and I don’t have a super strong opinion about any of it.
I’m curious to learn though! Part of my curiosity is in the title - what’s the single worst thing the API changes have done (or will do)? Is it that they priced out Apollo? Is there another big third party app that’s getting killed?
It highlights how little control the majority value providers actually have. Forums are mediums where information exchanges happen. When the mediums owner starts dictating what type, how much and who exchanges information then the most easily replicable, lowest value member is dictating the terms to everyone because of their centralized control.
Unfortunately while replacing them is rather trivial, due to the nature of collective action problems, it is nevertheless quite painful to orchestrate the wide ranging coordination necessary to migrate so many users in any truly succinct manner to another medium. Usually this process is messy and happens over time and requires a significant catalyst to push people over some threshold and a sustained effort to inform and educate casual users.