Article seems to be behind a paywall.

My wife and I are saving up to do something similar in about 5 years. Any recommendations/things you’ve learnt you’d like to share?

You gave them a license to do so:

"You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:

When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content. "

Absolute rubbish. They’re copyrighted like anything else you write.

From the reddit GTCs:

You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:

When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.

When it comes to the decrease in quality, I guess some of the dropped activity will have been bot activity as well.

Not sure if that will be a smaller or bigger part. I guess the app users/power users they’re pushing away will be more valuable than random lurkers.

I suggest giving wefwef a try. It’s a web app and it seems really solid. I came here from Apollo, but used rif prior to that and this app seems really nice.