Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO - 9to5Mac
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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise...

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise new sources of income.

He suggested that the company might experiment with paywalled subreddits as it looks to monetize new features. “I think the existing, altruistic, free version of Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just the way it has,” Huffman said. “But now we will unlock the door for new use cases, new types of subreddits that can be built that may have exclusive content or private areas, things of that nature.”

This is another move likely to anger Redditors. While the platform is a commercial enterprise, its value derives almost entirely from freely offered user content. That means Redditors feel at least some sense of ownership in a community endeavour, so the company needs to tread carefully when it comes to monetization at user expense.

  • Queen HawlSeraEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    …He does realize this isn’t going to work on a platform that bans you for breathing the wrong way right?

  • @MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    Go ahead. Only the occasional link brings me to reddit these days and I will treat his paywall just like all the others. By closing the tab and moving on.

  • @salmo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    That’s why I’m here testing Lemmy.

    Sad if it ruins reddit since I like that place.

  • @DudeDudenson@lemmings.worldEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    I know the lemmy hivemind jumps at any opportunity to trash reddit, but if properly implemented (which to be honest they probably won’t ) this could be the same as paid forums back in the day. It just depends on how much of a cut they get and how do they manage revenue share. If you could have your own private forum for free and have people subscribe to it for 2 bucks a month and you get 75% revenue of every sub it would probably spring a lot of high value forums, I’m mostly thinking like car forums used to be but it’d probably be used as another only fans

  • @AeonFelis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    Medium’s paywall gets lots of hatred, but at least they use it to pay the authors of the paywalled posts, so it kind of makes sense - you pay to consume content and get payed to create content. But Reddit is a forum, not a blogging platform - the separation between content creators and content consumers is much more blurred. If a subreddit gets paywalled, then the Redditors who create the content there - both the posts and the comments - will need to pay. Which will instantly ruin these subreddits when most of the posters will just take their posts elsewhere.

    Did Reddit decide to imitate the business model of academic journals?

  • @ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    I’m glad I’ve overwritten all my comments.

    The easiest tool: PowerDeleteSuite
    Don’t forget to make the script prepare a backup file and download it once complete. In the replacement string, link to your Lemmy account so that anyone looking for the content can just PM you.

  • @Phegan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0•9 months ago

    What’s going to stop people from creating a new community and migrating the second reddit pay walls it.

    Oh pics is now paywalled, looks like everyone is using pics_free