The bad, although expected news is that according to Similarweb via Gizmodo Reddit traffic is back to pre-protest levels. The caveat is that some of the traffic might still indicate protests, (i.e. John Oliver pics). Most interesting:
However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.
For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.>>>
Fairly certain RIF scrapes. That’s why it grabs “pages” of content. Beyond that, most reasonable folks don’t think the API needs to continue to be free. It’s just ridiculously cost prohibitive. Many services offer APIs that cost money. It’s just Reddit’s costs aren’t based in a reality dictated by cost. It’s created to force large apps offline. We’ll see how long infinity lasts. It’ll likely cost significantly more than reddit premium. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 50% more.
So API not an issue?
Sure, 3rd party apps break reddit’s business model.
Scraping is very easily blocked which is likely what they’ll do if forced to do so. They are probably just including scraping clauses in their agreements. So RIF will have to adhere to those agreements because they’ll probably have to accept them to even gain access. St that point it’s a legal mire. If they want to avoid court, it could just be an arms war. Scraping is extremely easily broken and would constantly need updating. It’s not cost effective from a developer point of view.
In regards to business model, not really. They’re literally changing their business model from the ground up. You can’t “break” something that doesn’t exist yet. They could have offered reasonable API costs. They did not. They could easily monetize third party apps. It’s clear however that spez is just a jealous shithead. He’s upset they made profit when he didn’t and doesn’t like that someone found a way to be profitable. Reddit could have offered the same features and app reliability. They did not.