zlacker

I found it interesting that spez admitted in his call with the apollo dev that the actual hosting cost for the api calls were pennies compared to the 'opportunity cost' of not having users use the official app. He basically admitted that harvesting data via the app and selling it to advertisers was reddit's bread and butter now.

>>wing-_+(OP)
People have to realize, from a standpoint of "how do I make all of the money?", this is the only way these sites can survive in a world of reasonably-high interest rates.

There are only so many people who would be willing to pay $x for a Reddit subscription. Would the quality of content and discussion go up? Absolutely, but that's not what Huffman and his VC backers care about. They care about _scale_, and if you can collect the information of every person who goes so far as to even click on a Reddit post that's a result in a Google search, you can have near-infinite scale. At that point, the question isn't "how do I get Joe Schmoe to pay for a Reddit subscription?", it's "How many ads can I cram into every GET request made to Reddit and maximize the price advertisers are willing to pay to be in that GET request?"

>>wing-_+(OP)
Adtech business models are a blight on society. It’s a drug that ultimately, 100% of the time, leads to the downfall of the company due to the fundamental mismatch between company incentives and user desires.

>>wing-_+(OP)
Why is it interesting? Alternative apps aren't necessarily going to show ads, which is how Reddit makes money. Surely those statements are mundane.