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Comment by low_tech_punk | Hacker News Reader

Thinking on how to forward from here.

Is the missing ADs revenue the crux of the problem?

Instead of raising API price, what if Reddit injects ADs as real content for non premium API calls, so those API free riders/crawlers would get ADs indistinguishable from content. Well intended apps like Apollo could allow users to provide their premium identity and get AD free content. If this works, Reddit could even lower the price of premium account thanks to increase in AD revenue.

Also, I believe Reddit should share ADs revenue with subreddits moderators. This would truly align the incentive of all parties.

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The age of adtech as the dominant technology revenue model is drawing to a close and Reddit missed out on the golden age. Trying to make ads work now, when it’s clear the future is subscriptions and the like, is just dumb.

Only Google and FB figured out ads, and they were planet-scale companies. Twitter pulled in ad revenue but couldn't make a profit. Reddit's audience is extremely hostile to ads, and they've never managed to attract big advertisers anyway.

And they haven’t figured out a way to do it *legally*. Both are getting fined more by the day in the EU and fending off more class lawsuits than you can believe in the USA.

Once you take away the “grossly illegal activity” dividend neither is nearly as rosy as it seems.

Amazon?

Aside for my own curiosity: Why do you capitalize the word `ad` like that? It’s not an acronym, it’s an abbreviation; short for `advertisement`.

> Is the missing ADs revenue the crux of the problem?

No, it is the whole shebang which is why Reddit is forcing this extinction event for 3rd party apps.

I use the Now for Reddit Android app and Reddit Enhancement Suite extension on desktop. With this combination, Reddit has stayed visually identical for the past decade. I never saw things like NFT avatars, RPAN livestreaming or any of the things Reddit has added to make it something other than an old school messageboard.

Users like me are a disaster for Reddit because I treat it like a PHPbb forum from 2010. There is no hope of upselling me into something I would pay for. Reddit's owners however believe that they should be multiplying their wealth many times over for running a bigger Phpbb instance. That is the crux of the problem.

They could very well convince me to pay a subscription fee if they promised to not change the site anymore. Sure, that’s not exactly a great business model, but I do wonder if they’ll eventually pull the plug on old.reddit

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