The outrage has a few different angles, but one key theme is that Reddit weren't exactly forthcoming with specifics around pricing information until very recently, leaving 3rd party Devs little time to negotiate a better price or actually develop the changes required to play along.

Yes, Reddit should be able to charge for their API, as a commercial business. But it's the approach taken, the short self imposed timelines and artificial pressures applied that have angered the Devs, taking the apps offline and upsetting the users

For sure. Shouldn't be too hard just need to sit down and spend a good block of time on it.

I'll probably use a bit of either pulumi or terraform, if that's ok!

I'm actually considering doing an instance on gcp cloud run, just because my main work is in gcp and it's a pretty decent way to run containers.

I'm thinking I might do a build of the image per the doco via GitHub actions and push the image into artifact registry (GCP service)..

Yeah I agree. The strategy is definitely to shut down apps, or make a killing on the ones that do stay.

What this should also signal to Reddit in general is that their app needs a lot to get to the usability and loyalty gained from 3rd party.

Definitely try Ubuntu as a easy starter. Supports a lot of hardware, is a good first step.