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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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It’s only weird if you think this wasn’t the result they wanted. They don’t just want the ad revenue. They want the user numbers for their IPO and the tons of sellable user data you can collect with a smartphone app.
I've adopted the same IPO theory. Huffman thought this would drive more people to the official app, and he expects that increase to help the IPO so he'd make more money from it. If it works he'll make a lot more money a lot faster than the approach in the screenshot. Then he can just serve everyone ads anyway, sell data etc.
Also he probably thought we were all a bunch of spineless addicts who would cry really loud and eventually fall in line, and a lot of users have. Now let's wait and see the quality of community and content he gets after pissing off the people doing the most to create it.
It may be more likely people just engage less with reddit by waiting until they are at a computer.