You Can't Look at Porn on Any Reddit Third-Party App Now

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 1380 points – You Can't Look at Porn on Any Reddit Third-Party App Now
vice.com

Following changes to its API access, users are forced to log in on the official Reddit app if they want to view NSFW content on mobile.

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it's such a stupid thing. like reddit is not earning anything anyway if I am going there only for porn. like advertisers are not going to put ads in NSFW subs anyway. what's the point of this change

The point of this is to:

  • Reduce the number of API requests from whatever 3rd party apps are left; this reduces server load and costs.
  • Coerce users into trying the 1st party app and tolerating it so they can watch NSFW content. This may cause some users to abandon the 3rd party app and just settle for the 1st party app.

I doubt it has much to do with advertising.

Number 1 isn't correct. The API requests are still there whether it's the official app or a third party app. I can't say if it's true but the Apollo developer, Christian, said the the official app uses more API calls then his app did.

You may have misinterpreted what I said; I probably wasn’t clear enough.

If NSFW content isn’t available through a 3rd party app, I’m assuming that usage will fall (as the user looks elsewhere), hence less overall API requests.

I’m not trying to say that because the API responses won’t contain as many NSFW posts, it’ll save data or anything (still sending a full “page” of responses at a time).

Your point still stands however! If the user leaves the 3rd party app and goes straight to the 1st party app instead, yeah it’s a wash and they are serving the requests anyway.