First all the bs with Twitter and Elon, then Reddit having an exodus to Lemmy (not complaining lol), then Twitch. Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?
First all the bs with Twitter and Elon, then Reddit having an exodus to Lemmy (not complaining lol), then Twitch. Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?
IF that’s something they can do? I don’t know. I don’t know a thing about backend work on third-party programs.
There’s a part of the that thinks Reddit is the same way and just went “Hell with it, use us or nothing at all” and nukes the whole API except for the big-rollers.
I wouldn’t even know who would pay such a high price for that anyway, outside of advertisers and algorithm scrapers.
It is possible for them to return sponsored posts via the API.
Apps will request something like “Give me the first 100 posts from the subreddit /r/aww, using the sorting Hot”. And then Reddit can return 95 actual posts with sponsored posts sprinkled in between every so often.
Like everything that gets advertisements, ad-blockers will be built. While technically possible, look at the quality of SponsorBlock for YouTube. Serving ads in the API will clutter up feeds, data gathered by automatic programs or moderation tools, and it’s impossible to tell (on the Reddit server side) if they have actually been viewed.