this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
141 points (98.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43965 readers
1911 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Just from using reddit, I can only really see a few ways for them to make money.
Subscriptions/awards. Not many people do this, certainly not enough to keep the doors open.
Advertisements
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.
Couldn't they have integrated ads as posts, then it'd show on any third part app. And I saw other ideas floating around about making third party app access a feature behind Reddit Premium. So many alternatives and they choose the most idiotic one
or buy the apps and incorporate their functionality
Thanks for the thorough and understandable response! You wouldn't believe how many responses aren't even a full sentence much less an explanation.