They don’t even want you to use the website I don’t think. They’ve even done experiments where they blocked people from using the mobile website. The more they want me to use their app, the more I want to avoid Reddit all together.
Just from using reddit, I can only really see a few ways for them to make money.
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Subscriptions/awards. Not many people do this, certainly not enough to keep the doors open.
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Advertisements
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Selling user data
Let’s start with 2. The reason they re-designed the UI in both the app and the desktop version is because they need to create as much space as possible for them to put ads into- and still have it not be so annoying for the user that they stop using the site. Now, on the website they can still put adds on old.reddit, just not as many- so they haven’t come for that yet, because it isn’t draining nearly as much income as the mobile market. Their new mobile app does the same as the frontend redesign- it maximizes ad space, and also allows them to collect other user data such as location to sell to marketing agencies.
ALL of the alternative Reddit clients (or at least, all I have used) have adblocker built into them. For some of them, you pay the app for that- a payment which is often less than Reddit Gold is, and is usually a one-time payment. And these apps hold the user data that can actually be sold, like location. So third-party apps disrupt all three of Reddit’s possible revenue streams by having people not pay for premium to hide ads, by blocking advertisements anyway and denying Reddit the ad revenue for them, and by keeping the user’s data away from Reddit.
That’s why I think they made the API price so ridiculously high- it isn’t just meant to scare them away, it’s meant to be a reflection of what they feel they are losing in revenue from users using third party apps. If it was just about any one of the 3 points above, the rate would be much more reasonable- but it’s all 3.
Thanks for the thorough and understandable response! You wouldn’t believe how many responses aren’t even a full sentence much less an explanation.
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Money. It’s always just money.
Ads and data mining
Because they want control over their platform. They want full access to the user data so they can use it and sell it. And they want to be able show targeted adds because they are a business and the main purpose why they do what they do is because they need to make money.
Profit. Simple as that.
Money. Not only can they better monetize it, it makes their numbers look better for the potential IPO.
Reddit wants to show ads and to collect user data.
Removed by mod
It wants to keep control of how people get access to its data. The recent massive surge of interest in A.I.s means that there’s a lot of people looking for good quality datasets to train new models. Reddit is sitting on a goldmine, and it currently handing out gold nuggets for free.
It wants to charge these desperate users of its data through the nose for that access, and $12,000 per 50M API calls is the market rate it has determined (and it is clearly comfortable that existing commercial users of its data such as marketers will also pay those rates).
The fact that this will kill third party clients is just the icing on the cake. If reddit wanted to kill such clients it would just turn off voting and comments in the API.
AI datasets can be built by scrubbing web content and doesn’t require API access.
This is about making sure Reddit controls the user experience and users can’t, say, block their ads or hide Reddit awards. It’s also a cold (and short-sighted) calculation: some people are making money from our product without sharing our costs, better kill them.
Ads.
Not only ads, but their app is the only one that supported their NFT system. And their Twitter Spaces clone. And their upcoming shorts feature. And so on. They desperately want to be every other social network, and that means copying features that are mobile-centric.
I really don’t get why all these social platforms try so hard to just be copies of each other. I like having diverse and different platforms for different things. Once they all started homogenizing, I really stopped using most social media.
And when LinkedIn added their ripoff of Instagram Stories I was like…aaaaand that’s it for me. Why does a professional site need a stories feature?
Because companies don’t want money. They don’t want a lot of money. They want ALL the money. If another company has a feature that people like and use, then this company wants that money as well. So they either buy that other company or copy and push the feature in the hopes of converting users.
This is why YouTube has these asinine shorts shoved into your layout. They know YT users don’t want them. This is why you can’t disable them. They know that another company makes money with shorts and they want it - so YOU are gonna use them goddammit.
A third party YouTube app doesn’t have to show these shorts so YT wouldn’t be able to pressure their users into consuming that format.
I happen to like the shorts. I only wish your shirts subscriptions were separate from your regular subscriptions. Otherwise I don’t have any issues with it.
However, I do know a lot of people do take issue with it, and that’s okay!
I heard they are planning on adding pants soon, cant wait to see the drama around it
Control and money. They can serve more ads and harvest your data more easily if they control the platform
To them, loss of 3rd party users is insignificant because they’re users they weren’t able to monetize to begin with
If that insignificant number is disproportionately active users and moderators, then they will significantly feel it.
At least until they just have bots commenting, posting, and moderating.
Eyes on ads
Click through data
Ad impressions
This is why the often run “experiments”.
Everything you have seen happen recently is in service to the upcoming IPO.
Expect a similarly sized drama explosion when they take huge action against the porn on the site.
