this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
1372 points (96.9% liked)

Reddit

13633 readers
1 users here now

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
1372
Reddit Tries to Get Users to Pay by Making App Icon Ugly (9to5mac.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
322 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Well you see, finding a way to reliably deliver ads via the API would have taken far too much developer brainpower for a company that can't make a functional video player or a mobile app

It honestly wouldn't be that hard at all. You deliver ads via the API alongside actual posts, as if they are an actual post, and forbid altering them in the developer ToS. If you want to be anal about enforcement, run popular 3rd-party apps in an emulator to verify that the JSON returned by the site is unaltered when it's rendered in the app. You could put this together in a weekend.

Which really just speaks to quality of talent at reddit, or the management at reddit suppressing that talent. Or both.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure the real issue is the data collection Reddit wants about user habits. They can't get thst from 3rd party apps, even if they make browsing habit data (scroll speeds, post linger time, ads displayed, etc) a mandatory part of the API they cannot verify what the 3rd party app is reporting and it becomes junk data that advertisers cannot rely on. They need complete ecosystem control to make the marketing optimizers happy. So, fuck the consumer!