There is some theory circulating that this is related to LLMs scraping reddit data. They say the absurd API pricing is B2B pricing targeting companies like Microsoft to use reddit as training data (not just threads but voting, voting habits, etc.)

Makes sense why so much stupidity and inability to get to a reasonable agreement with 3rd parties. Basically the logic is that if they left a lower pricing for 3rd parties, the big players would be much less eager to accept paying more.