They were generous with the gold because they're probably going to shut AlienBlue down. AB doesn't have any ads, they can't make money off those users.
Uh...what are you talking about? AlienBlue has sponsored posts that show up in the feed. It is incredibly annoying too. Unless it is because they screwed up the whole "pay for AlienBlue" thing they did a while back and I wasn't supposed to be seeing ads this whole time despite having paid...
My guess though is that this new version will have more of a focus on ads and monetization for sure.
If they do that, they would break every 3rd party reddit app, which reddit said they wouldn't do. Of course, that doesn't mean their position will change in the future.
My guess though is that this new version will have more of a focus on ads and monetization for sure.