[josephg]

Yep. They could also have kept the api free but insisted that 3rd party apps show ads. The developer of Apollo also agrees that would have been reasonable. But no.

[emodendroket]

They could have but this would have still represented giving up a lot of control over how ads are shown.

[josephg]

Not necessarily. They could have added an extra requirement for accessing the api that Reddit must approve how ads are displayed.

[emodendroket]

Right, but if they control the app they can make changes on the fly whenever. If they have 10 partner apps then everything will be glacially slow.

[josephg]

Its not like the way ads are presented changes a lot. But I acknowledge the point.

I think I wouldn't mind so much if their official app was anywhere near as good as Apollo.

[aaomidi]

I don't ack their point. They'd get one warning and then they'd be kicked out and it would be justified.