Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok all forbid third party clients.
The only outlier, Reddit, is massively unprofitable.
You can't run an advertising business while inviting competitors to use your content for free.
The only outlier, Reddit, is massively unprofitable.
You can't run an advertising business while inviting competitors to use your content for free.
You could expose the apis (or embed the ads into the feed api) that fill the ad spots and report back engagements with those ads, then state in TOS that clients not allowed to remove the ads from the feed and impose design rules on how they are presented to users.
You could do what Adsense does and create a library for clients to embed into their applications.
However I can see client devs wanting a slice of the adrev pie or a discount on their api charges if they were forced to included ads.
Imo it’s just easier to forbid 3rd party clients, that you get to control the experience (including ads) however you want / move fast changing things up, without having to go though the process of making sure 3rd party clients are on bored with the changes
It's time we have less toxic and actually sustainable business models.
1st you change your ToS
2nd you communicate the change
3rd you block third party apps
This is just a shitty move.
It'd be so much better if we just paid a small sum to own our accounts on those platforms. How much would it cost? Like a Netflix subscription? That'd be worth it.
I guess one reason why that isn't possible is that the platforms only work if everyone* is there, irregardless of income. If there's a subscription fee not everyone will afford it, especially young people who are (arguably) culturally more influential.
If it also reduces the incentives to implement dark patterns to boost "engagement" and collect personal information, that's just cherry on top
It might make sense to stop supporting third party clients, but announce that something like that will happen instead of doing it unannounced and then ignoring all questions about it. It's their API, so they can do with it whatever they want, but this is really a dick move.
Exactly. Clubhouse also has a total ban on third-party apps.
Discord only allows bots to live on it's platform and has a ban on direct third-party apps.