The good apps are (a) free, and (b) don't show any ads. Pretty much by definition they can't compete with that and make money.
I used Apollo because it provides a much better user experience and it is not even close to Reddits own App.
I guess they can't and they won't unless they become a NGO.
And I’d say that aiming for long term viability by ensuring they run at least break even is in the interest of their users, so not sure how their current actions are against the interest if their users.
And the fact that users put time and effort in creating content on the platform, this doesn’t mean all its services need to be provided for free to these users.
Oh boy. First, this already happened once, that's why Reddit exists. Second, it wasn't happening because it wasn't enough of a problem. Once they generate enough ire it will happen. Will this be enough? Maybe. If not, something else will. It always happens.
always
When for-profits are involed.
You make the same mistake they do - to believe that the success they have is deliberate, and not just mostly dumb luck. Had Digg not failed, nobody would give the slightest shit about reddit. But right up until that point, what you said here could have been said about Digg. In fact, it was said. By lots of people. Yet they moved to Reddit.
In the end, these communities don't exist because of reddit. They exist because people have shared interests. The only thing reddit enables is for them to find each other. If reddit disappears, they will find each other again. I've watched the end of similar sites. I had friends on them. We found each other again on other sites.
For the long term survival of Reddit it is essential they become profitable, otherwise they’ll go bankrupt. And seeing that these communities depend on the existence of Reddit it’s also in the interest of these communities that Reddit turns a profit.
They seem to have serious revenue, about 500M in 2021 (https://businessmodelanalyst.com/reddit-business-model/), you’d think they could make a profit based on that. They had 2000 employees in June 2023 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit), assuming average of 100K cost per employee, that already adds up to 200M.
That may seem excessive for running some community website, but they get 400M+ from ads. Just running an organization to handle a 400M+ business for ads will require lots of people, infra, marketing, etc.
I can see the reasoning behind the thought that if you’ve created all this to enable these communities, someone doing less that 1% of the work, by simply putting an app on top of your APIs and infra and starting to make a profit seems unfair.
What i don’t understand is why they can’t outcompete these apps by providing a better app.