The article makes the case, that reddit's main problem is its leader's disconnect from reality, i.e.:

Look, one of the reasons Reddit said it would start charging for access to its API was that its content is a valuable source of data for OpenAI's ChatGPT. It's already been one of the most valuable sources of information for Google Search for years. Obviously, if you see someone else capitalizing on your thing, it's only natural that you are going to want a piece of it.

To be clear, it isn't Reddit's data that is so useful to Google or OpenAI. It's Reddit's users' data. You know, the content they contribute for free. That's an important distinction because the value of Reddit without those users is exactly zero.