the real question is what do the higher ups want, and why can’t they achieve it?

They want money, and they've tried nothing and are all out of ideas.

Are we sure Libreddit will stop working? The latest post from Reddit states that less than 100 api calls per second will remain free if you're logged in. I'm not exactly sure how Libreddit works (I use a self-hosted Troddit instance) but it's my understanding that API calls tied to your own user should be fine as long as you stick under than 100/sec limit.

Yup!