Absolutely, though this ignores the fact that Reddit's own actions determine its expenses. Reddit's expenses would decrease dramatically if it didn't support image or video uploading and focused only on being a text-based forum. Of course, this would drive away a lot of people who want to consume image and video content, which is unacceptable to the investors who want to maximize user growth now and figure out profitability later.
But then they don’t get the sweet sweet tracking metrics from their app. Once you pay for Reddit , you don’t see ads in the OEM app either, they can squeeze more value out of people by forcing their app and sucking as much data and analytics about you as possible. They’ve already begun A/B trials of disallowing mobile browsers to access their website, and forcing the app download.
This is less about ad revenue than it is jealousy over closed communities like Instagram and tiktok where you are locked into their app.
What tracking metrics do you get from the app that wouldn't get by logging API calls? It can't be the valuable to track metrics when you aren't serving ads (since if you have Reddit Premium you don't get ads).
I think things like time spent looking at an ad, time spent in comments, time spent replying. Capturing all entered data even if its deleted prior to send, etc.....
I agree this is why they are doing it, but they cant be blind to how bad their app is in comparison to what their power users are using? Is an exodus worth it if you keep 25% of the people in the app and the remainder move on? I think you can get metrics via the api, maybe not apples to apples but it can be addressed in the future.
Right now they are sticking their head in the sand, middle finger in the air and daring people to leave. Poor community relations and messaging for a community based website.
They made their bed by accepting VC money. There is more than one way to skin a cat and I think they choose poorly.
Because they want user's off of 3rd party apps completely. Their API pricing is such that its not realistic for anyone to use it, that is entirely intentional.
They want to completely control the experience, so they an extract as much user data as possible to drive ads.
So long as user's are in 3rd party apps those 3rd parties control the relationship, which Reddit has deemed is unacceptable.
Im not sure. I feel Reddit does deserve to be profitable. The bad choice they made was how they went about it. I feel there were a couple reasonable paths to profitability. But charging app makers for api access didnt seem like a good one.
It might have stuck a chord with some users, but I think overall it would have been net positive for Reddit and the narrative from leadership much more palatable
Could Reddit not have gone the 501(c)(3) route like the Wikimedia Foundation? Wikipedia has an immense amount of content, moderation, high traffic, open API, and they manage to keep the lights on.