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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Its never been a better time to ignore reddit
How is this new? Reddit gold gave you access to the subreddit that only gold members could access. It didn’t have anything good in it as everyone would rather have a larger reach.
If he intends to convert an existing sub to it, he will quickly find how much people are happy to more to a new sub.
i too deleted my 15-Year Club reddit account
I just left, deleted my account of 15ish years tonight, no regrets. Happy to be here.
With the API changes, I became read-only (without an account) on Reddit.
I now skim the communities that don’t really exist here.
… it’s actually saved me a lot of time now that I can’t (and thus don’t feel the need to) debate local politics with morons anymore!
… unless and until they come to Lemmy.
Looking forward to having more conversations with fewer people. I’m not trying to argue politics anymore. It’s fruitless.
The energy and time I’ve saved not arguing on reddit is wild, I initally came here defensive and its been so nice
Welcome, I joined here after the API protests. It’s a smaller community so content is slow to move but it’s nice to have forums where you’re having constructive conversations with people, not a huge amount of bots or repeated to death catch phrases
Enjoy this little bastion before it attracts mainstream attention. :)
The internet feels post-apocalyptic now. I no longer have any social media accounts (does lemmy count?) . Places that I spent over a decade on now feel so hostile and foreign. I joined reddit as a teenager wanting to read f7u12 comics, and now reddit feels like a total outrage machine. I mean the ads are crap but the algorithm doesn’t show me content I WANT to see anymore. It just shows me videos of car accidents and street fights and other things that get my cortisol levels up. Blocking subreddits straight up doesnt work. I like that on lemmy I can just filter only by the communities I subscribe to
Same thing here… I only just discovered Lemmy. I don’t know how I managed to only discover it now. But so far so good. It’s not quite as active but that’s okay, Reddit used to be the same way and was actually better then.
I do feel like the old parts of the internet were decentralized and based on protocols, not single websites. So this is very refreshing and feels like getting back to the roots.
Yes same. I don’t want to be stressed out by the internet anymore. I want internet for millennials back.
Nice to meet you, everyone’s been so lovely thus far.
I’ve been online since the late 80s and the Internet, generally speaking, has gone to shit. I’ve been on Reddit for 16 years and it’s been going down the tubes for a while now. Too many people, overzealous mods and now a soft paywall? Yeah, I’m done.
Same bromo, finally felt like it was time. So many good memories on Reddit for me over the last 14 years but finally felt like it was the right move to no longer give it my attention!
Welcome!
The fediverse situation has been improved a lot since the first API migration, hope you enjoy it here!
I left 2 years ago from my 13yo account, deleted everything as well
Obligatory Fuck You spez
No regrets, I love Lemmy
Man I kinda thought they had already hit enshittification bottom. And then they bring out the backhoe and dynamite.
I feel like this is gonna be a cash cow for reddit, just not in a way spez can just openly talk about.
A huge portion of reddit is OnlyFans promos. Reddit is making zero off of all this, because traditional advertising doesn’t want to associate themselves with porn. A bunch of these “paid subreddits” will basically be a reddit’s attempt to compete with OnlyFans.
I honestly think it’ll work. There’s a lot of money in porn.n
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.
I’m glad I jumped ship back during the ban on 3rd party apps. That was it for me.
Me too.
Man people really like taking a beating.
Same, my mouth dropped reading the article.
Obligatory fuck spez
Same. I had even paid for the paid tier of my 3rd party app because it was such a good value to me that I wanted the devs to have some of my money. Thanks to that app, I was on the site more and pretty much never via computer anymore.
I think it was for the best though. Quality over quantity here. I find it to be far less toxic on Lemmy overall. It’s like how people tend to be nicer in a small town because you know you’re gonna run into these people over and over again, but the big city you came from had more variety in stuff to check out. Definitely a trade-off, but I think it’s worth it to have this much more pleasant space that isn’t so packed with content as to be addictive. Good vibes.
Its improving over time, I think it’ll find a decent grove as more communities pop up. I find the comment sections really engaging too I’ve had some solid conversations over here.
I’ve gone back to reddit a few times from searches, and after spending time away it is really apparent how negative most of the comments over there are.
For example, anytime someone asks for help, someone always has to show up and get angry that they didn’t search instead of asking. Then a third person shows up and says that a search brought them to this thread… and no one ever answers the question. Thanks reddit!
There are some instances where Reddit is still a great source of information just due to the sheer size of the community. But there’s a lot more shit to wade through after the exodus a couple years back. I haven’t signed back in for years.
I don’t even use any apps and was just planning on boycotting it for a few days in solidarity. Then Greedy Little Pigboy made his statement about how everyone will come crawling back and that was that.
Oh i didn’t even hear about that. Fuck spez.
The memo is in this article, if you’re curious.
thank!
This is the actual reason for me too. I’m making a point to never visit that website again.
There’s exceptions like when searching for troubleshooting help and a relevant result happens to be on Reddit, but otherwise I avoid it as much as possible.
I figure as long as you visit with adblock enabled and don’t post anything, you’re not contributing to them in any meaningful way.
Agreed, and to be fair I still stop in at niche subreddits I used to follow to see what’s new, but never logged in.
Yep. When RIF was killed, I closed that door immediately (was not easy). It was to be expected though, I think. Once a site reaches critical mass, money interests enter the picture and greed can always screw up a good thing. It’s a shame.
Wild that that was almost 2 years ago now…
deleted by creator
That’s the truth. It was tone deafness, a lack of responsiveness, and a clear lack of principles that made me leave during that.
Second influx to the Fediverse?
RIP Reddit
Digg: “join us reddit…”
We all float down here 💩💩💩
What’s “reddit” and why does Lemmy seem obsessed with it?
As much as we’d like to joke about the sudden influx of new Lemmy users that will result from this lets all be real, it will be a few new users. Most Reddit users will accept whatever is thrown at them from that company while crying about it on Reddit. I don’t know what the phenomena is but it seems that most people would rather stay on the bad platform than try something new and slightly different. I’m cool with that, I like niche platforms.
That’s fine. A more fragmented internet is better for the world
Its a toxic relationship, I literally could not leave, became aware of lemmy maybe two months before I left and always had the intention to make an account but put it off til I was perm banned, looking at my notifications I was getting less replies than ever. And if ppl replied it was to actively not be helpful or tell me to do anything other than answer my question.
The key part here is that (at least initially…) they won’t put any existing subreddits behind a paywall. So users’ habits won’t really be interrupted.
I almost wish Elon would buy it, so he can “manage” it like he did Twitter
