Reddit still gets most of the user data even for people that use 3rd party apps. They won’t get all of the telemetry and other marketing data pulled from their mobile app or website though, so I suppose that is a consideration, but that’s not as valuable to the LLMs.

He doesn’t intend to make money off of the third party apps. If he did, he could have set a reasonable price. He wants to shut them down so he doesn’t have to worry about them and to force people on to their app. Few, if any, 3rd party apps will ever pay the advertised price, so it will be peanuts if not literally zero as a revenue stream. The strategy is to get all users on Reddit-owned properties, be it the website or app or whatever else they may come out with.

I actually like Mooncake.

Well honestly, I think he’s mostly going to get away with it. There will be some repercussions, but Reddit won’t be shut down and the normies that stick around will probably actually be the more profitable less tech-savvy users. Sure it will change the culture of the site and many long-time users will leave, but there will be others to fill that void over time. The enshitification process will continue, but the masses won’t really care.