Ghil

I don’t think your analogy works, and here’s why.

In that analogy, Reddit provides the beer, but in reality it doesn’t.
It owns the building, but what the customers are consuming are other customer’s beers. It doesn’t have to serve the beer, people being some on their way in.
And in that analogy, yeah, the third-party apps are not on premises, so they can’t watch the ads that pay for the building…
But they brought more clients to the bar. They advertised the heck out of the bar, especially when it was growing, and they pump beer back in the bar. It costs Reddit in ad revenue and in facility maintenance (they built the pipes themselves), but they absolutely get back things through the pipes, it’s just not straight money.

Reddit wasn’t build by Reddit. They own the place, that’s all.