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I think the mistake is to assume that user interaction data isn't something that they desperately want. Regardless of the AI/ML play on the data - I suspect th

I think the mistake is to assume that user interaction data isn't something that they desperately want. Regardless of the AI/ML play on the data - I suspect they just aren't willing to lose the user signals. Frankly - it's a good way to provide more compelling numbers around advertising effectiveness and impact, and it lets them tap into that information to generate more effective campaigns. I think reddit's advertising success depends a lot on being able to help companies approach the userbase effectively (and charge money for that service). Otherwise... it's a really tight position - because companies will just do an end run around paid services by generating their own organic looking content and posting it directly to the site (Why pay reddit for an ad for these boots... I can just generate some posts on r/buyitforlife and then bring it up in the comments)

reaperman 3y ago
The reddit API is insanely granular. They should still get a huge amount of interaction data, unless 3rd party caching is involved -- which by default it shouldn't be because that costs 3rd parties a lot more money if they don't have to do it.
- horsawlarway 3y ago
  The average user doesn't submit, comment, or vote all that often. Those are certainly strong signals, and yes - they can probably capture that data through api interactions. That's not what they're after. They're after - how long did the user view X, which item did they pause on, what did they hover over, how long do they scroll, etc... I'd be willing to bet good money the reason one of the complaints against Apollo was them being "inefficient" is a result of basically exactly the following conversation between product/engineering: --- Product: Can't we just capture exactly what the user is doing through the API? Engineering: Sort of - we have some idea, but clients tend to load comments/posts in batches. We don't know exactly which one the user is looking at, or for how long. Product: So the client is pulling more information than it needs? And that's causing us problems with our analytics? Engineering: umm ... We can capture that data if the user is on the official client.

reaperman 3y ago

The reddit API is insanely granular. They should still get a huge amount of interaction data, unless 3rd party caching is involved -- which by default it shouldn't be because that costs 3rd parties a lot more money if they don't have to do it.

horsawlarway 3y ago
The average user doesn't submit, comment, or vote all that often. Those are certainly strong signals, and yes - they can probably capture that data through api interactions. That's not what they're after. They're after - how long did the user view X, which item did they pause on, what did they hover over, how long do they scroll, etc... I'd be willing to bet good money the reason one of the complaints against Apollo was them being "inefficient" is a result of basically exactly the following conversation between product/engineering: --- Product: Can't we just capture exactly what the user is doing through the API? Engineering: Sort of - we have some idea, but clients tend to load comments/posts in batches. We don't know exactly which one the user is looking at, or for how long. Product: So the client is pulling more information than it needs? And that's causing us problems with our analytics? Engineering: umm ... We can capture that data if the user is on the official client.