Reddit is planning to introduce a paywall this year, CEO Steve Huffman said during a videotaped Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Thursday.
Huffman previously showed interest in potentially introducing a new type of subreddit with “exclusive content or private areas” that Reddit users would pay to access.
When asked this week about plans for some Redditors to create “content that only paid members can see,” Huffman said:
It’s a work in progress right now, so that one’s coming… We’re working on it as we speak.
When asked about “new, key features that you plan to roll out for Reddit in 2025,” Huffman responded, in part: “Paid subreddits, yes.”
Reddit’s paywall would ostensibly only apply to certain new subreddit types, not any subreddits currently available.
Reddit executives also discussed how they might introduce more ads into the social media platform. The push for ads follows changes to Reddit’s API policy that, in part, led to the closing of most third-party apps used for accessing Reddit. Reddit makes most of its revenue from ads and can only show ads on its native apps and website.
Reddit started testing ads in comments last year, with COO Jen Wong saying during an AMA that such ads are in “about 3 percent of inventory.” The executive hinted at that percentage growing. Wong also shared hopes that contextual advertising, or ads being shown based on the content surrounding them, will be a “bigger part of” Reddit’s business by 2026.
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I can’t imagine what sub-reddits they think people would willingly participate in that are paid-only. Decreasing visibility and potential participation group automatically makes those worse in most cases.
Porn?
Yeah, actually. I could see them taking on OnlyFans if they wanted to. But I think they want to be more mainstream than that.
Late this fall, after all of the nonsense on Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram I asked myself a very simple question.
“Is the reason I joined these sites still valid? What do I actually enjoy about social media these days?”
The answer was basically “rose colored glasses.”
I joined **Reddit **after the ‘deaths’ of Slashdot and Digg. It became my source to get new and interesting content I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. Now it’s bots arguing with bots and 75+% of the content is just recycled shit by people trying to make money. Much of the rest is from people trying to manipulate you.
Delete.
I joined Facebook to keep in touch with my friends and family - especially those I don’t see often. Over time, the amount of good content from people I knew dropped to maybe 25% of my feed. Most of it now is AI-generated bullshit or more of the same recycled content you see on Reddit.
Delete.
I joined Instagram to share some of my landscape photos and view some of the great photos some close friends were sharing. Over time that became less and less. Queue the recycled and AI-bullshit content.
Delete.
So, I challenge everybody to ask themselves do they actually enjoy social media? Do these sites actually add value to your life and in any way remain true to their promise when you joined them so many moons ago. Are you actually making any connections with people? The ‘social’ in ‘social’ media? Or just watching people talk at each other, not to each other.
After answering those questions, the answer about whether to stick around is pretty clear.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram:
Delete
Delete
Delete
Mikami Teru, is that you?
I had the exact same experience except that I never got onto Insta because Meta bought it.
Glad I was finally early to something for once. It’s been nice reading the reddit news from Lemmy for the last year or so.
That’s why I left. I regret nothing.
I’m so glad I left.
What I find hilarious is all these companies doing this shit after all the advancements in programming languages and paradigms in the last few years.
Thanks to tools like Node.js, React, Flask, Reflex, OpenAPI Gen, GoLang, and more, people that are fed-up and have the know-how can stand up competing technology in record time.
I look forward to see what comes out of this corporate power grab. Hopefully there’s not a lot of pain and suffering alkng the way.
“more ads” as if it isn’t already as flooded as meta sites.
There’s nothing on Reddit anymore. It’s really unfortunate but I don’t see how this is going to help them regain any consistent user base.
By far one of the easiest decisions was jumping on over here - and I barely understand it half the time.
Second best was ditching Facebook like it was cancer.
Reddit: Here’s another reason not to use our site.
Users: Ok bye.
i hope there is a mass migration here
The more they do shit like this the more they will
I mean, honestly Reddit is a dead site walking. At this point is not if it will “die” but how fast and I guess more importantly where will its users go. Hopefully here but who knows
fuck /u/spez
Do it, please, the subreddits need to migrate here
well, not all of them.
I can think of a handful I would much rather see thrown into a furnace.
I wanna talk nerd shit about Sonic, Yugioh, and Sims again
More ads? There’s already a bunch of them mixed with posts and comments. What more, force people to watch an ad before loading pages?
There are ads in comments now?
Yep, ads masquerading as comments. It’s awful. I’m so glad I moved to Lemmy.
Yea ads have been in comments for at least a year now
They snuck them in during some AB testing like 5 years ago, they didn’t stick though obv
Yeah, people like me and I assume you, who used to browse reddit via a third party app or with RES + an adblocker on pc did not see it but it’s a bit insanely how much ads there’s already on reddit right now. I migrated to GNU and firefox last week and forgot to add the extensions as I was just looking for some information in the Endeavour subreddit and I was shocked at the state of “default” reddit… I’m glad I left and I hope most of the userbase will…
What’s “reddit” and why does Lemmy seem obsessed with it?
Looks like I dropped Reddit at just the right time.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find it?
There are reports of Reddit banning Lemmy mentions, and Google searches floating “Lemmy is bad” Reddit threads to the top.
It was word of mouth for me. But now you’ve got me curious about occurrences of the term Lemmy on Reddit.
I came over to Lemmy during the Great API third party disaster. The exodus had commenters saying to come over to Lemmy.
Same, word of mouth is how I found lemmy. Beehaw, then a few others, now I’m here on db0.
I googled Reddit alternatives. I see Reddit as turning into just the next Twitter cesspool. There’s no longer any constructive conversation.
The problem is you can’t have real conversations that stoke any flames because they’re a public company and answer to the shareholders, so they, reddit, deem what is appropriate to be posted.
