I agree this is why they are doing it, but they cant be blind to how bad their app is in comparison to what their power users are using? Is an exodus worth it if you keep 25% of the people in the app and the remainder move on? I think you can get metrics via the api, maybe not apples to apples but it can be addressed in the future.
Right now they are sticking their head in the sand, middle finger in the air and daring people to leave. Poor community relations and messaging for a community based website.
They made their bed by accepting VC money. There is more than one way to skin a cat and I think they choose poorly.
What tracking metrics do you get from the app that wouldn't get by logging API calls? It can't be the valuable to track metrics when you aren't serving ads (since if you have Reddit Premium you don't get ads).
I don't see the point.
I think things like time spent looking at an ad, time spent in comments, time spent replying. Capturing all entered data even if its deleted prior to send, etc.....
Everything you can do on the web I guess.
This is less about ad revenue than it is jealousy over closed communities like Instagram and tiktok where you are locked into their app.