[pasabagi]

The replacement of external links with inferior in-house versions (the reddit video player is particularly egregious) makes sense if you're trying to maximize profit-per-user.

I think there's an alternate timeline where reddit just kept on being a low profit-per-user site, and didn't do the 'monetization-degradation-decline' cycle we've seen so often with other sites over the years. There's no reason why you have to make all the money at once, especially if it's a tried and true method of trashing your platform, just so whoever absorbs all your fleeing users can repeat your mistakes in a few years time.

Why not just stick with what works?