> During the call they said that third party apps like RedReader represent something like an "opportunity cost" for them, as they are unable to gather revenue d

> During the call they said that third party apps like RedReader represent something like an "opportunity cost" for them, as they are unable to gather revenue directly from these users. They say that usage of third party apps is increasing over time, and this is a threat to them. They raised the question of what would happen if such apps became the majority, in which case it would be unreasonable to expect the minority of official app users to bear the costs for everyone else. Can you imagine the horror if users were allowed to control what and how a website displays on their own device?! I’m curious the ratio of ad-block users. It’s got to be higher than the average internet user. Probably even more so for the ones that are logged in. > Because of this, it's best to think of RedReader a bit like a web browser -- even though usage from RedReader as a community is high, it's really just a bunch of individual users accessing Reddit directly as if through a browser. There's no central organization or service responsible for all the usage. The word is “user agent”. A web browser is just one such program. You can even name it whatever you want because like all web standards from that era, it’s just a line of text with implicit trust of the sender.