They could’ve taken other more creative measures to start earning more money. One idea could be to charge companies for more ad service on their platform in the form of buying the top pinned post to be whatever post they want. In addition they could have their own section under the “about Community” section where companies would have a permanent ad that they have access to, so they can change it for every new release.
for an example. Netflix could invest so they have the top pinned comment to be about their latest releases on r/netflix while also buying access to r/stangerthings ‘About Community’ page to talk about new releases, new seasons, episodes and such. That way they could get more money from the bigger companies that have plenty to spend rather than preying on the small little third party apps. All of these info that companies then buy could be set up so that it’s forced to be the first thing every time when going into a subreddit from a third party app.
There’s so many other solutions and in the end it could’ve been a collection of all of them instead of just a single few that will kill off business for others.
I’ve found out that my account is shadowbanned on Reddit now. Every single comment I write will show up as [deleted] for others. But I’ve found out its only in threads where I have already said ‘fuck you u/spez’ or anything like that.