- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- reddit@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- reddit@lemmy.world
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.
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After seeing this article on Reddit, that’s what made me finally jump ship and join in here. It’s been nice so far.
Reddit is hardly even the same site it used to be. Especially with bots taking over. And I just don’t think it makes sense to make people pay for what was meant to be a user-generated experience. We’ve sadly come a long way from the narwhal baconing at midnight.
But here’s to new beginnings!
Much like you I saw this article on my reddit feed today, googled 'reddit alternatives, and ended up here.
Me too! I just made an account. I’m discovering Lemmy right now. This is my very first reply. Hello Lemmy world!
Welcome to the Fediverse! I think you’ll like it here.
Same joined Lemmy yesterday.
I don’t even get how this would work. If you paywalled, say,
/r/gaming, could you just make a new community called/r/freegaming? And do the moderators get paid for the communities they created?It all feels really half-baked and a desperate plea for money from investors when the money well is drying up.
Then they’ll skate around that by implementing a paywall for creating new subs.
My first thought was that they are trying to be a new onlyfans.
Elon comes to make Reddit worse
Post submitters would have to get a cut to encourage them to post OC on the pay subs and file takedowns if anyone else reposted their content elsewhere. I think it could only work for single user subs.
There’s probably something in the terms of use that prohibits that.
Lol glad to move to lemmy
Why I’m here (first comment yay)
While it isn’t great, because one of the biggest issues with social media is the users, its design, and philosophy, are way ahead. Welcome.
Hey! I just read this on Reddit before I made this account! 🥲
That dude is really trying to kill his own platform, isn’t he?
Taking lessons from Elon.
Maybe they need to charge users a monthly fee and add blue check marks. Lol
Taking lessons from Elon.
Wasn’t Huffman singing Elon’s praises after the Twitter purchase?
Huffman is a full on Musketeer.
How has this demonym only just now come to my attention?
It’s fantastic, thank you.
See also: Trumpet - people who start singing the same tune as Trump for their own political gain.
He pointed at Twitter’s “success” after Elon took it over as reasons why he is enshittifying Reddit. That comment is why I left Reddit and haven’t looked back.
I remember that too, but am not that sure…
Oh yeah, he did! https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700
Doing right as his role model!
So Reddit gold?
I don’t miss the often-regurgitated response of “Gee, thanks stranger” that Redditers would say after receiving gold. It would always annoy me.
Thank you kind stranger!
edit: Wow, didn’t expect this to blow up!!!
Oh god, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Thanks stranger. 🤮
It’s kind of indicative of how bad the web has gotten that twitter and reddit still have users. Digg completely imploded over much less than this. Just that back in 2010, there was somewhere else to go.
inb4 Lemmy. I get it, but we’re not there yet.
I love Lemmy but I really, really miss the old web. Back when people would just create their own website and put it out there to share their niche interest with the world. People just organically linked their sites to each other to form web rings, an easy method of federation without any reliance on sophisticated server-side software.
I still do this!
Does anyone find your stuff? Search engines seem to be less and less capable of finding indie websites and show most results for shopping and/or image results (ie the paid ones), or else if it’s a question it goes Reddit/quora/stack exchange before any search results.
I finally shut off my old self hosted Wordpress last year because traffic had dwindled to a couple hits a month or less. Besides the constant bot traffic trying to hijack the site.
No idea honesty, I don’t collect metrics.
They’re still around.
How do I find them though? I would love a search engine that only finds these sites and excludes all the commercial ones and all the ad spam.
Good news! https://search.marginalia.nu/
The makeup of web users has changed a lot since 2010. The average web surfer was a lot less passive in attitude in decades past.
He’s trying to make money, he doesn’t care about the platform or its future. The Boeing’s CEO during the two 737 MAX crashes had to resign… with $62.2 million in his pockets. These people live in a different world.
https://www.ft.com/content/522fab9c-34f2-11ea-a6d3-9a26f8c3cba4
Quarterly reports demand that line go up.
The line must always go up.
The enshittification must go on!
The way I interpret what he is suggesting is that they are planning on going after Patreon type websites that provide a private paid for space for a creator’s supporters. It’s unlikely, but they could also pretty easily go after OF to keep that traffic on site.
i mean, this is the site that blocked nsfw content from hitting the front page
Lot of wishful thinking in here. Fact is, Reddit isn’t going anywhere.
What will likely happen is the worst assholes will be the ones paying for this stuff, much like Xitter, because it is a demonstration of being a part of the alt-right, ultra-capitalist in-group.
It was wishful thinking when people revolted for 3 days against the API going away. What happened? Nothing. People were back to Reddit as normal a week later. Reddit’s userbase has only grown since then. People will complain to the ends of the Earth but there’s no amount of abuse you can levy at the them that will convince them to make the minor inconvenience of moving to a different platform. See: Twitter.
How many of them are real users vs bots though? It’s easy to inflate numbers
i love seeing so many new accounts in the comments
They already exist! r/TheLounge is an example, but any sub can lock itself to premium users.
that’s why i’m here
A new challenger joins the battle in the Elon / Cloudstrike “ruin an established company any % speed run” challenge?
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.
Reddit is a media company now, they’re not a community. Tons and tons of ads, thin skinned moderators with God complexes running completely out of control, and they now have platform profit responsibility.
Will cost them - this is a significant change to, by definition, some of their most popular content. Many people go to Reddit purely to find non-paywalled versions of content.
Welcome. I came here, when they disabled RIF. Was it a year already?
Yep. About a year now. Happy belated cake day to RIFugees.
Yep, I was definitely one of those
If you’re gonna spend money to post on a forum, might as well just sign up for Something Awful. Or pay for access to Usenet if you don’t get free access from your ISP.
I can already imagine how many scams this new feature can enable
“Join our private subreddit to unlock the secret to become rich” and then inside all you find is something like “yolo on Intel” and so on
