- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Reddit has gotten so bad that it’s funny. I love reading about whatever awkward, bumbling cash grab they’re trying next.
What’s a good word for constant, ongoing enshittification? Diarrheafication?
Funny and sad at the same time, to be honest… That douche busted up a lot of awesome communities with wonderful people, and he’s on the right track to ruin things completely…
In the name of profits.
Don’t be mistaken, he and his board will make tons of money from this. Everyone is rooting for the demise of the site, but the bad guys will win. So what everyone liked will be gone and dead, and those parasites will be even richer.
Man this reddit site sounds awful
i really wish there was an open source alternative to it :(
looks around
…wait.
Digg: “join us reddit…”
We all float down here 💩💩💩
Not a great decision from Reddit.
“more ads” as if it isn’t already as flooded as meta sites.
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 insane 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…
You’re gonna pay the mods then, right?
Right?
Most likely it’s going to be some sort of onlyfans system where people can pay to get access to specific content and the content creator gets to keep a share of it
no
Kholer, American standard, and other toilet manufacturers are scrambling to match Toto’s ad popularity in “the go” ad business.
If you’ve changed your extractor fan recently, you might have come out of the restroom humming something new or maybe something familiar like the McDonalds jingle. But such feats of advertising have never been part of the true #2!. Things like bidet splash modulation… Lara papa pa!!! Right in the butt! Or flush ads! A display banner integrated on to the flush tank, and if you open the lid you’ll get ads around the bowl and in the back of the lid.
Clorox is coming up with a brad new cleaning chemical family. If you forget to clean you’ll be presented with scum in the shape of the clorox logo and the proper code and link to Amazon.
Oh yes please! Enshittify the one and only sanctuary we believed we had!
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.
I had the exact same experience except that I never got onto Insta because Meta bought it.
Delete
Delete
Delete
Mikami Teru, is that you?
Real af, I always talked about missing old reddit and didn’t realize the experience I missed was budding over here
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram:
Sigh unzips pants and fuck u/spez
r/spezholedesign
Wave incoming
Its never been a better time to ignore reddit
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 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.
Youtube is not easily replacible.
Creating quality videos are much more difficult than memes on Reddit/Lemmy type of sites.
No content creators is gonna move because of the issue of monitization. And most couldn’t care less about Youtube’s enshittification. You cant say “Just use Peertube” when there are like nothing interesting to watch. It’s like trying to stop watching popular Movies / TV shows because “big corp media bad”. Piracy would be the best mitigation in the Movies / TV situation, and that in Youtube’s situation is just using an adblocker.
In contast, Reddit/Lemmy type of sites are just strangers talking to strangers. You are moving from Stanger Group A to Stranger Group B. It’s the easiest transition ever.
Not to mention, the storage for Lemmy instances is like in the GBs. Get a 1TB harddrive and you’re good for a long time. A Youtube replacement? On you’re gonna need PETABYTES, and all the bandwith to serve the content.
There’s not the same amount of content as YT, but have a look at the pinned post in this community about channels to follow: !peertube@lemmy.wtf
YouTube hasn’t been replaced because adblockers still work.
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.
