Ironically, if Reddit were to adopt a reasonable pricing scheme for the API, the more reputable AI companies would probably just pay it instead of switching to web scraping, and Reddit could actually make something from it.
I've been a software developer in corporate America long enough to have some guesses as to why they really want everyone using the first-party app.
Yea seriously they could have made a shitton of money just asking for a reasonable price for API access, the issue is the absolutely absurd pricing. If they wanted ads in 3rd party apps they could probably just have them show up as posts through the API and ban devs from blocking them, but this is about the collection of user data 100%
thanks for using Leebra!
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The primary excuse for the API change, to charge AI companies for Reddit's data, doesn't hold water. After the change goes into effect, AI companies can just switch from the API to web scrapers. It'll require marginally more processing power, which AI companies already have in spades.
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