The Reddit one, at least, isn’t really about AI. Reddit didn’t even initially claim it was. Yes, they did eventually mention that AI developers were using their API to scrape data. But they initially just said the problem was that some companies were very much abusing the API limits, costing them money, and that they wanted to charge back what the money they were losing.
They also, however, said that they would work with the bot developers and third party app developers to minimize the effects of this on them, since they are not the ones who were abusing the service.
To put it simply, they lied. They offer the same rates to the app developers, and pick and choose which bots to care for. Thing is, the moderators use third party apps and bots to be able to moderate their subs.
Not only that, but the actual first party app for Reddit has a lot of shortcomings. It is often buggy, has little to no accessibility, and is just much slower than the alternatives. It lacks features beyond moderation that the other apps have.
That accessibility problem is a big one. For example, Reddit’s blind users rely on a third party app to be able to use Reddit at all, because the official app doesn’t work with screen readers.
The issue thus isn’t AI. It’s a poor quality mobile app and lack of first party tools for mods and disabled users. Third party apps fill in the gaps.
Plus, frankly, the AI in question already uses web scrapers, and so would still be able to read all the data on Reddit’s website anyways. It’s third party apps that need the API more, because they need data beyond just what a human has typed. They need to be able to post, to see votes, rankings, etc. in order to function.