The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful…
Because the goal was never to get some kind of fair price for using the API. That’s why they priced it at “Fuck You.”
Ultimately what they want is for people to stop using 3rd party apps entirely because 3rd party apps either don’t show advertisements, or they show advertisements that give ad revenue to the developer.
They want everyone using their app because the valuation of tech companies directly correlates to the number of eyeballs they can serve ads to. Old.reddit will be next, and I bet they’ll try to start blocking ad blockers after that.
The only thing stopping 3rd party apps from showing reddits adds though was reddit never including them into the api. They actually HAD an agreememt with the rif author to take a cut of rif’s ad revenue but as soon as spez took over as ceo he quietly axed that.
Investors wanted to see “app growth” for multiple quarters not underatanding that the app isn’t what maked reddit, and so
spezspaz is doing what he is in a desperate and stupid attempt to claw up some numbers so he can cash out when the ipo hits.Reddit app use DID see some grown during the pandemic, but can’t sustain that because its app is shit. They haven’t improved it ever. It began as a 3rd party app and they purchased it from the original dev. The only changes were to add that pathic coin shop and some sticker/avatar crap to sell you.