I think charging to use the API is fine, but it was definitely overpriced to the point that it was obvious they wanted to nuke TPAs. They need all that sweet user data to sell to others, and they can’t get to that with TPAs.
My understanding is that the app has the API key that’s making requests, so, from Reddit’s point of view, it’s one key requesting all of that content, and they don’t see the granular details of who requested what.
They could’ve probably gotten around that by requiring personal API keys for each user, maybe tied to a premium/gold membership?
I mean user data can very much be completely inferred from API calls. It’s not about the user data itself, it’s about being able to say to advertisers “all our users will see your ads”.
I think charging to use the API is fine, but it was definitely overpriced to the point that it was obvious they wanted to nuke TPAs. They need all that sweet user data to sell to others, and they can’t get to that with TPAs.
How can they not get user data on TPAs? It’s their user and their data which they are serving to TPAs.
My understanding is that the app has the API key that’s making requests, so, from Reddit’s point of view, it’s one key requesting all of that content, and they don’t see the granular details of who requested what.
They could’ve probably gotten around that by requiring personal API keys for each user, maybe tied to a premium/gold membership?
I mean user data can very much be completely inferred from API calls. It’s not about the user data itself, it’s about being able to say to advertisers “all our users will see your ads”.