Guarantee that the line of reasoning here is

We can stop the inevitable fact that people aren't going to buy our shares by pushing them on the most chronically addicted users of our platform and disguising it as a premium exclusive offer

I mean, who else is susceptible enough to the sunken cost fallacy that they would pour actual money into reddit? The answer is the demographic that's already put in a substantial amount of investment in the form of time spent on content creation.

To those people, they might very well bite because it means their useless, time consuming hobby finally might become a source of income.

It's honestly an intelligent business move by reddit, even if it's scummy as fuck and ultimately setting up their own best content creators to spectacularly fail and lose a ton of money when the shares tank.

Reddit still goes public. Reddit still pays their CEOs obscenely before they jump ship. Only the creators lose.