The whole API issue was really a changing point in how Reddit publicly treated its mods and power users.

Reddit was trying to pull power away from mods through passive decisions, but nothing had ever been done to outright harm the moderation experience until then. You could tell Spez didn’t understand that the decision would have such a major impact on the user experience, but didn’t seem to care.

After that, you could tell that the relationship of the admins to the users became a lot more contentious.