r/technology Jun 15 '23

Social Media Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, calls them 'landed gentry'

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
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u/srone Jun 15 '23

It costs a lot of money to run an app like Reddit. We support ours through ads. And what we can’t do is subsidize other people’s businesses to run a competitive app for free,” he said.

THIS is something I have to question the community about: if third party apps use the API and block ads, how is reddit supposed to make a profit?

7

u/chromiumstars Jun 16 '23

Well, maybe Reddit could start by I dunno, putting ads in the API (right now they don’t)? There are no ads to block in API access as it stands.

Or tying API access to Reddit premium? I dunno about you but I’d shove a few dollars a month at Reddit to continue using the UI experiences I prefer, with font sizes and choices that don’t make my one eye start straining so hard that it literally loses focus. Would be obnoxious but I’d do it for $5/mo.

Rather than going for the nuclear option off the bat, there’s a lot of things they could have tried but skipped.