Sure. Let’s pretend it is less than 1%. (I’m supremely doubtful of the 1B user number; given how many sock puppets and inactive accounts there are I’d figure closer to the ballpark of 100-200M personally. There’s just no way that 1/8 of all the people on the planet use Reddit. This is obvious looking at Reddit’s interaction numbers vs other platforms that claim similar userbase figures)

Based on the traction posts about the subject have received, it should be easy to see that the “1%” of users who rely on API access represent the most engaged and active part of Reddit’s userbase. From moderators who rely on third-party tools to do their volunteer work, to the most prolific users on the site; it’s clear that third-party apps are popular among the power users that generate the majority of the website’s content.

Reddit’s entire business model is based on getting a few hyper-active users to do lots of free labour and drive traffic for the site. Community content moderation and curation are the things that make Reddit successful. Attacking the users who are best at those two key things just seems unwise from a business perspective.