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’m glad I jumped ship back during the ban on 3rd party apps. That was it for me.
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.
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.
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.
Same, my mouth dropped reading the article.
Obligatory fuck spez
Wild that that was almost 2 years ago now…
Me too.
Man people really like taking a beating.
imagine charging for displaying content you didn’t even make.
the balls are astounding, but this ain’t gonna go well for them.
Not to mention that paywalled content being moderated by unpaid volunteers.
And commented and reposted by bots.
It’s like using the failed Reddit Gold lounge as a business model. A sub of awkward dudes that paid to be there and random people passing through and not sure WTF is going on with the awkward party.
I was thinking a profit sharing concept for the people running the sub would make sense. I’m sure that’s not what it is though.
I’m going to frame your comment and sell it!
Hi, I think I’m doing this right. Just joined Lemmy lol because of this. Can people see my comment?
Yes! Welcome to the fediverse
One of us!
Welcome!
One of us!
Hi mate
Happy cake 🎂 day!
si
yep, even from my solo instance
Same here.
hunter2
yes we can :) welcome!
One of us!
Not only do I see your comment, it’s not yet buried even 5 days after you’ve made it.
Awwww yeaaah. Welcome friend, stay a while
I just left, deleted my account of 15ish years tonight, no regrets. Happy to be here.
I left 2 years ago from my 13yo account, deleted everything as well
Obligatory Fuck You spez
No regrets, I love Lemmy
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
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.
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.
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.
Welcome!
The fediverse situation has been improved a lot since the first API migration, hope you enjoy it here!
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!
thére are dozens of us
Good news for Lemmynites.
Lemmings?
Lemlords?
Lemmyburghers
Lumbergh…
Lemmards
I’m more of a LemSerf
Bad news is that we’re still not setup for Reddit-level user counts. Lemmy needs much better moderation tools to allow communities to stay on top of reports.
Hopefully a lot of new users will also produce new people contributing to Lemmy. Or, maybe some people will form some sort of nonprofit that allows dedicated designers and engineers to continually work on Lemmy. When people contribute as a side gig, most give up after a few months. Most of the Lemmy clients that were build during the Reddit APIocalypse are no longer alive.
We have plenty of clients tho, arctic, mlem, voyager, my favorite thunder, are all available on ios and there are more, they all get updates
For desktop phtn and tesseract are solid.
Lemmites?
deleted by creator
It will be the same types that buy a blue check for Twitter, like it’s a badge of honor to pay for free services.
One of the funniest consequences of the checkmark is people claiming “I didn’t pay for it, Musk gave this to me!!”
That’s why I left. I regret nothing.
Just came to lemmy again after learning this shit!! mass exodus coming soon
I wouldn’t be too sure just yet, seeing how annoying youtube and it’s ads have gotten yet it isn’t replaced still.
We might have an increase, but plenty will never leave.
YouTube hasn’t been replaced because adblockers still work.
Youtube is probably the most difficult platform on the internet to replace. Video content delivery is extremely resource heavy and technically complicated, especially once you start to scale. Many, many competitors have attempted it over the years, and while some found their niche, none of them have achieved anywhere close to the scale of Youtube.
It took decades of Youtube to become profitable, only doing so after achieving mind-boggling economy of scale. The majority of humans on earth have used Youtube. About half of all (global) internet users use it monthly. I don’t know if any other platform can claim stats like that.
Youtube is one of those platforms that only exists because it got a head start in the unique conditions of the early internet. I don’t know if it’s even possible to create a true competitor, though I could see multiple platforms taking over different niches.
This is what people always seen to ignore about YouTube. It’s not just another database frontend to use generated content. That is definitely part of it, but behind that is probably the largest public facing content library on the Internet with a full video recoding infrastructure attached. YouTube is the platform for which I understand that they need to monetize.
Sure, nowadays there’s also tiktok as another big video service. But I like to think that YouTube is way bigger in most metrics.
same here lol. If they paywall subreddits ive been visiting for the past FOURTEEN years, i will lose my shit. by throwing it at the reddit headquarters.
I’m surprised they aren’t talking about subscriber subreddits. With the amount of porn/OnlyFans posts, I would have thought they could position Reddit as a friendly and familiar OF alternative.
I wouldn’t be surprised if NSFW subreddit are what he is talking about.
I wonder what the legality is of that when people are posting content from these porn sites and reddit is charging users to access it. How is this any different than paid piracy streaming sites?
That probably is the idea, to have a competitor to Patreon and OnlyFans. They should have probably mentioned that as an example before some people start thinking /r/worldnews becomes paywalled.
Seems like a pretty huge opportunity for Reddit. If the article mentioned it, I missed it.
It does not mention it and I cannot see any official statement, but that seems like a logical reason. Reddit management however is not famous for being logical so we will see.
Probably because OF gets a lot of their business through promoting on Reddit.
So why not cut out OF and keep the users?
Risk vs reward. I could see reddit swinging either way depending on which they think smells like more money.
You’re gonna pay the mods then, right?
Right?
Digg: “join us reddit…”
We all float down here 💩💩💩
I’m not on Reddit much these days but every time I am and I see threads with people discussing these Reddit policy changes Lemmy gets mentioned. Usually with people complaining they already tried or couldn’t figure it out or that it isn’t good enough…
I think as the enshittification marches on they’ll be some more exodus from Reddit but generally I think everyone is just getting used to all online social media being a total corporate disaster.
I just joined yesterday because of this article. Honestly I feel like I’m using Apollo to access Reddit again. My Reddit account was 12 years old and I deleted it.
Welcome friend. :)
Thank you!
Welcome
We’re happy to have you here
It’s not that everyone’s getting used to the current hellscape of the internet. Kids born today have never experienced a world without it. I watched my niece playing on my dad’s phone, and she was just blasting through every single ad, interacting with every ad until it took her to the install page, and then she moved on to the next ad. People were upset about the tiktok ban cause they didnt care about their data. Shit like that is wild to me, coming from the early internet era.
Unless countries step up with better tech laws, I only see it getting worse from here.
the internet was better when it was anonymous, where you were explicitly and forcefully told that no one should know anything about you but your handle.
Lemmy was hard to use a year ago or so.
No it wasnt.
I’m not particularly tech savvy and I found it confusing and hard to parse at first. It was worth it to figure out, because fuck Reddit, but I can understand people struggling with it, especially at first.
Honestly, I was just giving up going here, lemmy is very complicated, also I miss my beautiful snoo :(
I haven’t had an account since the Apollo purge but fuck Spez.
The api shit they pulled is why i left and never went back
Same. I left when it was announced.
Fuck 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
watch them lock old reddit behind a paywall just because it’s the best part about reddit
