this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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People are more concerned about privacy and adblocks are almost ubiquitous to using the internet. The companies need more data to profit than what the users are willing to provide, so they are shutting down or severely limiting API access. These API are also what bots and karma farmers use to create content and engagement on these platforms. But platforms have a hard time separating the two.
Users who are used to using these services for free (in exchange of their data) are now not happy they can't have it their way while they limit the company's means of profit. So they are "threatening" to leave.
Reddit is an echo chamber manipulated by bots and mods are facilitators of karma farmers and PR/marketing agencies. They're protesting in the name of users but really are just afraid of losing that bot generated content/engagement.
What I find funny is that if these people just did old fashioned ad banners at the top, bottom or sides of the page, I would leave ad blocker switched off.
Old fashioned ads are much less lucrative than highly personalized ads. It's why so many sites require you to create an account to access their content. The end goal of the platform is to extract heaps of advertising data from you.
Then they end up getting nothing and making things worse. This is why we can't have nice things :|
Perhaps a new equilibrium will emerge. Large companies find out the hard way that this sort of business just isn’t profitable enough. They make their platforms hostile (but profitable), which drives the users away. Perhaps some companies will be able to keep the lights on with the number of users who are willing to tolerate an environment like that. Everyone else will just go the fideverse.