Then again. I hate using my phone in general, so I always think that any content creators would use desktop and maybe old reddit.
I can type just as quickly on a phone as I can on desktop, and in many ways I prefer it.
Imagine a free music festival with zero security. It would be chaos and the volunteer artists would stop performing.
It takes someone who is more than just a bean counter to realize that maybe, just maybe, the only reason people are interested in those free requests in the first place is because of the communities on Reddit that bring all the actual value.
And who knows, maybe one day everyone will realize that the “free social media monetized by ads” business just totally sucks and can only ever lead to situations like this.
Reddit's free APIs left a lot of uncaptured value on the table. This has become obvious by the sheer number of AI models trained on Reddit data. Free Reddit data goes into the machine, and piles of VC money comes out. Reddit wants in on it, but is unable to stop free API access without the consumer apps being collateral.
YouTube got away with lots of bad changes because many creators are getting paid to produce content and competing with YouTube is near impossible. But Reddit is one of many primarily text-based online communities and they are currently destroying the only things holding people on their platform. Aside from the userbase Reddit has no redeeming qualities that would make anyone hesitate to leave.
Reddit is a shell of what it was when I started on the platform 14+ years ago.
Labeling that as "only costs" is extremely shortsighted.
