Find the most likely strategy to piss off the user base, and then somehow say the dumbest things I can to make it worse when asked about it.

I mean, that's the job right?

Let's say that I actually cared about that shithole. And that my goals were the same as the current shareholders': I want to cash in.

1. Delay the IPO in two or three years. As it is now, nobody will cash in.
2. Undo trust damage caused by the previous CEO. I probably won't be able to do everything, but I need to show to the users that Reddit has "magically" became a user-friendly platform - it's bullshit though. I need those suckers to make and moderate content for free for me, better if they're happy.
3. Pause the API price changes and resume talks with third party app developers. Ultimately the goal is still to get them off my platform; however I need a convincing bullshit to do so, not exorbitant prices.
4. Actually develop the official app, until it reaches a reasonable feature parity with the third party clients. That includes text-to-speech built-in ability and decent moderation tools, as that is what the protesters are complaining the most about.
5. Slowly use the opportunity to seize control from the powermods, in a way that the community will take my side, not theirs. Context is king here; for example the community would love to vote its own moderators, as well as sub limits per mod, if this wasn't blatantly associated with the current changes. Perhaps restructure how mod hierarchy works, in a way that people loyal to the brand organically reach the top.
6. Address bot usage; both through API and scrappers. I want a chunk of the LLM money, so I can't give this for free.

All of those things should be done in a way that reasonable users cannot connect the dots, through a wide amount of time.

In the meantime, I'd officially communicate "Hi, I'm the new CEO. We screwed up. We're fixing issues now." Nothing more, nothing less. No "I'm sorry" because this screams "corporate apology"; the idea is to sound the complete opposite of spez, and let him become the piranha cow.

Open source everything then sell my stocks and retire

Make serving the same ads part of the API TOS, and let 3rd party apps go about their business

Monetize the data.

Reddit is sitting on a huge pile of gold, the user aren't happy, fine, but they still have their data

Delete the entirety of new reddit, reinstate old reddit as the one and only UI, federate with ActivityPub, open source everything, make the API free, and cancel the IPO.

Nice try u/spez