Months ago, many Reddit threads stopped updating for weeks due to changes in the use of the API, an API that became paid based on the number of requests it received from third-party applications, which which caused all unofficial clients to end up closing.
Reddit tightened the rope to the maximum and did not give in to the community’s demands sooner. In exchange, it introduced different ways for thread moderators to have the option of earning some type of income for their work. The strike, so to speak, of the main Reddit threads seriously affected the company’s income in addition to the problems related to not updating the content of the main threads indexed in search engines, which affected the number of visits.
This social network wants to recover all the money lost during this time and, in addition, increase the number of income it generates through the advertising displayed on its website. To carry out this mission, the platform has announced changes to the personalization of ads, reducing the number of options available up to that point.
Reddit changes privacy options for the worse
In a few days, the privacy options will receive a major update, considerably reducing the number of options that users had available both to personalize their experience with ads and when searching for information.
As we can in the thread Where these changes have been published, the platform will eliminate the ability for users to choose what type of ads are displayed when using the platform, meaning that all content displayed will always be based on their activity on Reddit.
In other words, when Reddit’s new privacy changes go live, users won’t be able to decide what kind of ads they don’t want to see. According to the company, this change is intended to improve the performance of the ads displayed, with this important change in privacy options being Reddit’s only tool to achieve this.
In this way, all our activity on this social network (comments, positive and negative votes, communities of which we are part or join, our comments) will be automatically evaluated by the platform to show a certain type of advertisement or others in order to increase the number of possible clicks and formalize more sales.
If advertisers see how Reddit has become an important source of visits, they will increase their advertising campaigns allowing the company to generate more money, all at the expense of the data they obtain from users.
Actually, this is not something new. Facebook is a clear example of how you can play with user data to focus all types of advertising campaigns to get the most out of each user. Due to the General Data Protection Law (LGPD) that apply throughout Europe, those changes will not initially affect users, and will apply first in the United States and South America.
