this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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What this is really about and people are just starting to realize is: the interests of the shareholders and CEO who want to get rich is not compatible with a volunteer created, volunteer run, and volunteer modded site. People aren't eager to do unpaid work just so the CEO can get rich. This API stuff is just exposing it.
The weird thing is that they ARE compatible. They could have charged slightly more per user than they make on the official app and everything would have been fine. This move reduced shareholder value and user value.
Reddit makes $350m a year in advertising revenue, it is in theory a fantastically successful business that could make plenty of profit for its shareholders.
The problem is solely down to them raising more and more capital the latest at a $10B valuation. Because of this they need to increase the revenue even further to try and justify the inflated valuation and that is what has led to the latest situation.
I am sure they could use less drastic ways to rise revenue, clearly without spreading lies about Apollo creator and alienating moderators. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. And than there is very wrong, Reddit way to do things.
What really told me that reddit was squandering its revenue sources was when they shuttered redditgifts two years ago. Maybe there were issues behind the scenes, but they had commissions from the storefront and from elves, and something reddit has never been particularly good at: Good publicity. And instead of figuring out how to make it profitable, they just killed it.
They didn't even bother to answer questions why.
It was at that moment I knew the current leadership was rudderless, and now everyone's finally come around to it.