I can understand the need to be profitable especially as capital has been more and more restricted. I think the decision to price the APIs such that the third party apps have to call it quits is going to end up hurting them though. This reddit migration is a self imposed wound and has driven people to federated alternatives.
At least speaking for myself, I'm going to try to avoid any Reddit clone that doesn't federate with other platforms. The idea of centralizing everything strikes me as defeating the purpose of moving away from reddit.
It seems unrealistic that a team of 4 people are going to be able to screen the potential flood of new users.