What an odd opinion to have about software, but not about labor or content. Perhaps reddit should have to pay every moderator for the work that they do. Perhaps they should pay ever user who upvotes or downvotes since they're sorting content for reddit and not getting paid. Maybe reddit should pay for everyone who posts or leaves comments since the only reason reddit is worth anything at all is the content provided by those "cheap users" you think are freeloading.

If reddit wants to have a hobby where they run a website collecting the labor of others they should pay for it right?

The internet is a better place when everyone who uses a website isn't required for fork over hard cash. Not every means of displaying web content or interacting with websites should require someone to fork over money to those websites either. Worst of all though is how dumb reddit is being to cut off these third party tools and interfaces which have features that are in high demand. Reddit will lose users if those users are forced to use their shitty interface, but worse reddit will lose a ton of data on what sorts of features their users desire but which reddit has never considered offering.

One of the great things about having a bunch of third parties writing software (mostly for free) that interacts with reddit is that reddit can (as they have in the past) poach ideas from those apps and improve their service which will only make them more successful.

The people who work for reddit (by which I mean the people who are currently paid to work for reddit since most of the people doing work for reddit are entirely unpaid) are not impoverished. No one is suggesting that they deserve nothing at all. It's perfectly fine for them to make money, it's not fine for them to try to make money by screwing over others (including themselves). This is shortsighted greed on reddit's part that will ultimately result in reddit being worse. It's no wonder so many people are against it.

not sure I agree with this angle. If anything it's the opposite. just like how software dev is a job, so is community management. Reddit already has what amounts to free custodial labor, growing and fostering the site for them. They should be paying people to moderate that if they don't want their admins/internal Community Managers to bother with anything more than legally threatening content.

    Mods use tools to moderate. Ok. You want to have a little hobby of moderating a community. Fair enough, pay for your hobby. If not. Let Reddit fix the spam problem when it becomes a problem, because it will become a problem and Reddit will be forced to fix it because the users will hate it and it'll harm growth. If not, pay for the software to do your little hobby.