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.

      • Magister@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        5 months ago

        I did that in June last year, after 13 years of reddit and thousands of comments, all “gone”

        • The_v@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          33
          ·
          5 months ago

          Go back and check again. They are actively restoring deleted comments. About once a month I log back on and delete another round. Usually another 10-15 “mysteriously” pop back up again.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            5 months ago

            Son of a bitch your right. All my posts got restored! I ran one of those scripts that went through and deleted them all… and sure as fuck I can find them if I search for my reddit account name.

          • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            5 months ago

            I think they’re catching people who are mass deleting comments at once. I recall reading that people were having more success deleting comments in smaller batches during the whole API debacle.

            • The_v@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              5 months ago

              They were a bit more tricky than that I believe. They capped the user page at 3 years of search. So when you delete everything using those scripts it deletes the newer stuff but misses all the older ones. Then after the script runs it shows - no comments.

              • glockenspiel@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                5 months ago

                There’s also credible reports that Reddit is testing an even sneakier method. They will hide the “deleted” comments when you are logged in and looking for them in your history. But other people can still see them; Reddit just understands you are a hostile actor in their eyes so they pull manipulation games like with shadow banning.

                • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  I only have a layman’s understanding of this but wouldn’t that violate the GDPR in Europe if say your IP address somehow changed to an EU country? I thought the GDPR gives you the right to delete your information permanently, though maybe there is some legal loophole where your comments in a forum don’t count?