Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, has decided to just keep on talking. After his disastrous AMA helped inspire more subreddits to join a 48 hour blackout, and his dismissal of the protesting subred…
It’s possible that this is not about collecting money for third party app use, but instead about forcing people to use Reddit’s apps (both mobile and web), which are designed for data extraction and tracking.
Absolutely, if they wanted money from 3rd party apps, they’d have sane prices. The ridiculous API cost was done to effectively kill all other apps without saying they are killing all other apps.
Ads already exist in Reddit’s system as a different subtype of the same entity that a post or a comment is. They could just… Present adds in the API call returns. And they could have someone doing regular checks to ensure that the app developers aren’t filtering out ads. This is so fucking stupid lol
Gotta put on a public spectacle of being ruthlessly profit focused when you’re trying to personally grift the public IPOing a platform you were unable to make profitable.
I don’t get it, if 3PA is only 1% of the traffic, why even bother murdering them?
It’s possible that this is not about collecting money for third party app use, but instead about forcing people to use Reddit’s apps (both mobile and web), which are designed for data extraction and tracking.
Absolutely, if they wanted money from 3rd party apps, they’d have sane prices. The ridiculous API cost was done to effectively kill all other apps without saying they are killing all other apps.
That’s one hundred percent what I think this is all about
My best guess is they want to fight against adblockers next and can’t have people easily switch to a 3PA and avoid ads this way.
Ads already exist in Reddit’s system as a different subtype of the same entity that a post or a comment is. They could just… Present adds in the API call returns. And they could have someone doing regular checks to ensure that the app developers aren’t filtering out ads. This is so fucking stupid lol
That wouldn’t give Reddit access to your phone’s APIs.
Android permissions required by Reddit 2023.23.0:
tbf, there isn’t anything super nefarious there. I don’t even see location.
I guess the money maker is the Google add id.
Probably. But throwing out 3PAs is easier, well except for the backlash.
I switched to Lemmy to avoid Reddit a̶d̶s̶.
All that suggests is that 90% of the traffic is bots.
from Umberto Eco’s list of 14 common features of fascism:
It’s no surprise spez worships elon musk
Gotta put on a public spectacle of being ruthlessly profit focused when you’re trying to personally grift the public IPOing a platform you were unable to make profitable.
You can always get richer
From what I heard it’s actually closer to 25% traffic.
Really? That’s huge.