Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise...
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.
That dude is really trying to kill his own platform, isn't he?
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.
Quarterly reports demand that line go up.
The line must always go up.
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
The enshittification must go on!
Lot of wishful thinking in here. Fact is, Reddit isn't going anywhere.
Meh, I deleted my account and moved on. Other than snarky comments I don't really care what happens to it anymore.
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
Short-term gains > *
The truth is in the better days of Reddit I would've paid 2 or 3 dollars to access Reddit if that helped maintain it sustainable and if some of that money reverted to mods. Now? Reddit can burn
That was the first sales pitch for Reddit gold. That they just needed a couple bucks a month to pay for the servers. Lots of power uses back then did just that, and felt pretty good about themselves. There were people also arguing even then that anybody who paid Reddit’s bills for them was an idiot, but lots of people did.
I mean I get their feelings. Netflix et Al started with reasonable prices and then the greedy fuck heads raised the prices, so I bet Reddit would do it as well.
I definitely bought Reddit gold to support them. Then they got all greedy. Today I pay Sync for a nice app and donate to my Lemmy and Mastodon hosts.
Yeah I immediately thought of the funding bar for gold back in the day.
It was honestly fine. Made sense. Showed if they had made enough revenue to cover costs and let you make a personal choice beyond that.
I never directly paid for Reddit Gold (in the sense that I had a subscription to it), but I definitely gilded others' comments a lot.
Yeah this feels like a move that would have worked a lot better before Reddit had burned a bunch of bridges with their most active users.
The pool of people with enough goodwill to pay now is likely small, and shrinking. The causal new users probably are that keen to pay up either.
Nonsense. The users who have left are an infinitesimal portion of users.
I’d happily pay 29.99 to access /r/japancirclejerk2
Fark still exists with that small monthly payment to support the site model. Drew, the owner, regularly meets up with folks, too. And if you’re a subscriber he must buy you a beer if you ask him per the “terms” of service.
A nice, relatively small, community. That’s what Reddit used to be. Your post really resonated with me.
Find out where he lives, move there, stalk him everywhere you can get a drink, never pay for a drink again!
“I think the existing, altruistic, free version of Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just the way it has,” Huffman said.
There's nothing 'altruistic' about reddit
If anything, they're the ones benefiting from altruistic users giving them free labor to profit off of.
Pretty much, when they removed search engines who wouldn't pay them was the final straw and I went back to reddit (after not being there since the API debacle) 1 last time and replaced all my 26,000 karma worth of comments with "Comment removed in protest of Reddit blocking search engines." Took me a while, but meh, if they want to hasten its enshitification, I don't mind doing my part.
Spare a thought for those that have bought Reddit Gold over the years, only to then discover just how much the CEO was paid, up against how much Reddit actually makes as a platform.
It's not just free labour. They're literally paying him.
I guess reddit was feeding me all those ads out of the kindness of their hearts and took no money for hosting them. "Altruistic", lol.
The users used to be altruistic, helping other people just because they wanted to be friendly. Because the site used to feel like a real community. But, now that the site is so clearly for-profit I think a lot of users are going to be much less helpful to strangers.
It's hard to quit the site because it gets so much traffic, which means so much stuff gets posted there. On the other hand, I think the high-quality comments from someone trying to help out are less common.
I just made a Lenny account because of this. Fuck them
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What did you do to that poor lemming, you creepy bastard!
I’ve switched to using this as well but it has very little user interaction. I hope it grows and is able to compete with Reddit one day. It would be nice to be able to go to a basketball or political subreddit (what do we call them here?) and actually be able to have a nice conversation.
they're called lemmy communities, and there's plenty of interaction! honestly it reminds me of the old days on Reddit before it ballooned into the monster it is today, I legitimately prefer it in every way other than lacking the niche communities (looking at you [email protected] >.>)
you can find good political discussion in [email protected] or [email protected]
dunno if there's any good basketball communities tho, not my bag lol
It would be great to have people like you on https://fediverser.network. Follow the subreddits that you miss from there and use to promote the Lemmy alternatives.
And I hope to see you soon on [email protected]. :)
My guy create a Lemmy community about whatever topic and I will post something weird and offputing there, high-five !
Welcome!
What’s next? Change the name of the platform to Y.com?
Y not?
Nah spez_Fu*ker101.com
Wouldn't be shocked if it cane out he had a burner/secondary on one of ViolentAcrez subreddits
Now the IPO is done Reddit has to continually feed the investors at the expense of the quality of the thing that's supposed to make money to feed the investors.
This is gonna be fun.
They don't care as long as they can get in, make a few bucks, and get out. Long-term stability isn't the priority anymore, just quick profits.
lol I saw this on reddit and was like fuck it, and made a lemmy account.
Welcome to Lemmy. Go fuck yourself /s
Hello hello! Welcome!
welcome here 👋
Welcome back to trench.
Yay, new friend!
welcome here 👋
Welcome friend 😁
Heyyy!!! Happy to have you here. Enjoy it while it's small ;) feels like old Internet here.
Hey nice to have ya!
Friendly reminder that the Fediverse is awesome, and you have the power to control the content in your feed not only by which subs you subscribe to or instances you make an account on, but also which you can block - including specific users if it comes to that. Of course, instance admins can do the same, and if that happens to content you want to see, you can always make a new account on a different instance and see everything.
It takes a little to understand the Fediverse structure, but imo it's one of the best ways social media can be structured.
Remember to try hiding vote display and see how it changes your usage. It’s underrated feature that imo makes you focus on the quality of the content rather than popularity.
Greetings, happy to have you. :)
I haven't been over there in a while but I noticed the AIs are starting to show up here. How was it over there? Rough percentage of how many?
Aaron Schwartz didn't die for this.
The decent ones always either die or turn into a boomer parasite
The sad thing is yeah, he did, and Alex Ohanian played Switzerland
Altruistic? ALTRUISTIC?!
Just who in the fuck does he think he is?!
The only altruists on Reddit are the users who freely provided the content that this fucking parasite feeds off of.
I'm so glad I left that awful shithole of a site.
And the moderators
This got under my skin too.
That parasite constantly refers to user content and comments and as being the property or Reddit, and his schemes to generate profit off the back of that asset are almost always to the detriment of the user base who are keeping him in business.
Like all rich assholes, he's got this expectation that everyone will deeply respect and admire his mission to enrich himself by exploiting whatever market he has access to.
Yeah that word choice is quite a bold strategy after all the bullshit they've put their revenue generators (the users and mods) through over the last couple years.
"altruistic"... fuck off.
Didn't feel altruistic when they told me I couldn't put affiliate links in the sidebar for my subreddit.
Are they TRYING to kill the site or what?
I think this comes down to what the intentions are
Paywall /r/videos? Fuck off.
But create a system like Patreon where a content creator can put their own content and interact with their own users and there's a revenue share between reddit/creator that doesn't sound terrible.
If they're gonna do it on Patreon, why not try and lure them to reddit?
Just had some more thoughts on this as well.
If Reddit can lure Patreon users, they could also likely protect that content creators data from being shared on the platform. The creator uploads a commissioned drawing for it's paid users, and then someone tries to copy it and show it in /r/pics. But since reddit has the source image, they could be scanning for identical images by hash, or matching images via AI and then prevent it from being posted outside the community.
It definitely isn't THAT easy, but it opens up the potential, and being able to tell your potential customers you have tools to help prevent unauthorized sharing on a prolific platform probably has some merit.
As others have pointed out, it'll be more like OnlyFans most likely.
Why do all of these companies decide they are so tired of existing?
It's the final stage of the pump n dump.
They think that their domination is strong enough so that after an initial backlash, the users will come back since they have nowhere else to go. And they’re kind of right.
Spez got his millions, he no longer cares, probably.
And Aaron Swartz is dead.
They think they are so entrenched that the thought of users leaving is not a consideration at all. He said it himself and been proven right. Governments are also asleep at the wheel. Their users are prisoners.
You assume that the governments of which you speak are not assisting intentionally. These companies did not write the EULA legal frameworks that allow them virtual carte blanch to take and do whatever they want just because the population is trapped in the endless cycle of coercion that is our life.
Self destructive addiction even happens to corporations.
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!
...
Wouldn't the contributors to those subs just make a new one that's not paywalled?
Reddit is going to be asking users to pay to generate content on specific subs, but they're forgetting again that the sub isn't the important part, it's the users.
This would just fracture the biggest subs and destroy the communities.
Sure till they copystrike their own subs
The common thread I've seen online is this:
- Google's search algorithm sucks. I always append reddit.com to get good forum results
- Reddit's search algorithm sucks.
These two tools are quickly becoming coupled for Google-Fu expert users. The historical forum history that goes back 3-5 years on Reddit is their goldmine. You can't just make a new subreddit overnight when a sub gets paywalled. All of that historical data will be lost and paywalled.
I think a paywall could be an effective money maker for Reddit because they've basically become their own Google - in that each subreddit acts like a unique website with real, human, responses. The only problem is that reddit has a god awful search algorithm that they refuse to improve. So people use Google to essentially search reddit. The "whales" so-to-speak are the only people they need to capture. People like myself (frugal people) aren't in their peripherals. But the people that think "I'll pay each month for NYT" or "it's just a few dollars for the WSJ" are going to use the same logic for Reddit: "it's a small amount of money to have access to high quality forums on X, Y, and Z".
In addition, this might bolster Reddit's content even further. Since paywalled subs will automatically reduce the amount of AI content spammed on them, they will inherently increase the legitimacy of each forum.
Lastly, this will give them a path towards monetization for moderators which doesn't require them skimming off of their own pay checks to achieve it.
Do I like this? No. Is this fair? Also no. People contributed to Reddit under the impression that their data would be available and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. That implicit guarantee is being violated. It's an afront to the hard working individuals that have developed these communities brick by brick.
But does this "solution" make a lot of business sense? Possibly. As long as they survive the changeover in the short term, I think they'll thrive from this choice for the reasons I stated above.
Again, it's going to give them a pathway for:
- Monetization
- Reduce AI spam (a big fear of all forums)
- They could make even more money off the back of this
I'm pretty much over Reddit anyways. Lemmy has been my backup social media for a while now. The Internet is still free - for now. I just hope we can all find better search engines and forums in the future. Google has been degrading. Reddit has been locking things down. We obviously need to pivot to other platforms. Or maybe just go back to the old days where you find niche forums hosted by some dude in his basement. Nothing wrong with that.
I've seen some content creators having a discord channel that is pay to get into where the content creator participates in it as a way to generate additional money. I suspect Reddit wants to do something similar and take a cut of fee.
And I fully expect this to devolve into becoming a new OnlyFans.
Wouldn’t the contributors to those subs just make a new one that’s not paywalled?
My guess is that the paywalled subs are going to be a way of interacting with celebrities. Like, a House of the Dragon sub featuring AMAs with cast members, but behind a paywall. You could make a House of the Dragon non-paywalled sub, but the celebs wouldn't post there because they have a side-deal where they get paid for posting in the paywalled subreddit.
I think you’ve gamed out the next step the right way, what that means is that older subs and their content just get locked away behind the paywall. Eventually all of reddit is on the slack free account.
What's going to stop people from creating a new community and migrating the second reddit pay walls it.
Oh pics is now paywalled, looks like everyone is using pics_free
inb4 they make creating new subs cost money too
Oh man that's an idea that if they didn't have before I bet they do now.
The problem with media platforms like Reddit and Twitter is that they take place in a single Instance, with thousands of communities. So it's easy for one person (like an Elon Musk) to completely screw it up for millions of people.
With Lemmy, everything is decentralized. Communities are spread out and duplicated over hundreds of Instances in many countries. So if somebody ruins one Instance or community, people can just hop over to the second or third most popular Instance, and the original instance will dry up and disappear.
Reddit will likely ban any community that exists to evade the paywall
Second wave of Reddxiters on Lemmy in 3...
I just joined - in fact this is my first comment. I was tired of my page (and now comment sections) getting flooded with ads.
The Reddit experience isn’t going to get better, it’s just going to get more profitable for shareholders.
Just logged into my year old account, checks out
Yep, I’m one of them
Hopefully I'm thinking of maybe getting reddit just to copy content to lemmy and to advertise it.
Someone already got stealing from reddit fully automated. It's mostly for porn.
Hi
Fuck Spez
Porn, they're going to monetise it.
I always wondered when they will do it. They have the set up.
So they will make money of people's nudes and they will still expect them to post them for free?
Or maybe they will share it with users? but still this isn't good for actual communities.
Why do you think it would work like that? Why would anyone post content under that model?
I'm guessing there will be some compensation. Something like the streaming model. Company makes $ and gives a cut to user. The most popular ones can make quite a bit. I believe Twitter does this now too if I'm not mistaken. You can get paid based on total impressions to your post
Yup, this is going to be their first stop
i love seeing so many new accounts in the comments
This is a terrible idea for a site that relies solely on user-generated content and even user-moderation. It's not like Twitter hasn't tried this before - didn't work out so well, I'd say. But hey, this concept probably works for the upper management. I guess it doesn't matter to them if all that's left is scorched earth, as long as they can cash out.
So...this is for porn.
Only fans, but on Reddit.
I suspect it will work out sickeningly well for them.
Proof of concept for allowing super users to have a patreon model maybe?
Though I can't remember the last time there were site wide famous users. Last I remember is that bird lady.
If this is their endgame the bot problem would get even worse as the value proposition improves for abusers
So...this is for porn.
Only if those subreddits have something where the user... creating that gets a portion of every subscription payment.
Not only that, reddit won't be able to take more that 15% in order to be competitive with onlyfans. And also, the subs will have to be exclusive to one creator otherwise how would you spread payments
Only if it's a competitive model, only fans takes 15%, not sure about patreon, fansly, and other platforms. So reddit will need to take no more than 15% for creators to want to participate. And if you monetize a sub with multiple users, how will you spread the money? And how are you making sure reddit is paying out the fair share? So pay wall subs won't really work unless they are exclusive to one creator.
OK, so you've laid out they're likely to do.
But... How? What's stopping people from cross posting ? Creating new subreddits that mirror closed ones?
I mean that's a lot of effort for very little reward...
All the big companies trying to clear out the porn to make it monetisable, only for porn to be the answer all along...
I hate how everything has to be monetized nowadays, or how money is to be expected for everything. Eventually people who provide free service or altruism will be seen as competition.
It's called digital enclosure. Enclosure was a movement that began in Britain in the 1700s (but really it's always been going on...) to close off the commons that pastoralists had been using to publicly graze their sheep. It happens to all new media because it's the only way capitalists can imagine their operations.
They are competition if you intend to do something similar for money.
Just created an account here because of this.
Burn, baby, burn!
I dont usually upvote posts about Reddit...
...but when i do they're shooting themselves in the foot
So you're lying.
All posts about reddit is them shooting themselves in the foot. So you must be upvoting all the Reddit posts ;)
Hahaha, fair point.
I bet it’s for the porn. I bet you he’s going to paywall the porn.
Oh no! Where will I go to see OF spam bots now???
It’s steve huffman so it’s definitely for jailbait porn.
Who goes to Reddit for porn when so many other better options exist? I always thought that was weird. That'd be the last place I'd look for it.
Also, commenting about porn is creepy as hell to me. Like, I do not want to read some other person's opinions/fantasies about a piece of media I'm jerkin' it to. It's like the people that try to make smalltalk at the urinal. Get in, do your business, get out, and keep that shit to yourself.
I use it only to get niche porn that can be a pain to find manually online.
Under a few specific circumstances comments can make sense, like if it's a community for drawn stuff of one variety or another, that's used by newer artists looking for constructive feedback.
I don’t read the comments lol
That's why I'm here testing Lemmy.
Sad if it ruins reddit since I like that place.
....He does realize this isn't going to work on a platform that bans you for breathing the wrong way right?
Yeah. 4 accounts getting randomly banned was enough for me. This will just prey on the clueless who don't know your account can get shadow banned for any reason (or no reason).
I got banned from kickstarter scam subreddit then forgot about it, commented on another account and got IP/browser banned sitewide thrice that way.
It just doesn’t make sense that you can comment on some shady subreddit then get banned site wide by some scummy company/mod/russian troll that operates the questionable subreddit.
It was just one for me, they banned me for "abusing the report button"
Apparently I can't report rule breakers if Reddit admin agrees with their bigoted bullshit
Medium's paywall gets lots of hatred, but at least they use it to pay the authors of the paywalled posts, so it kind of makes sense - you pay to consume content and get payed to create content. But Reddit is a forum, not a blogging platform - the separation between content creators and content consumers is much more blurred. If a subreddit gets paywalled, then the Redditors who create the content there - both the posts and the comments - will need to pay. Which will instantly ruin these subreddits when most of the posters will just take their posts elsewhere.
Did Reddit decide to imitate the business model of academic journals?
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.
Posts like this remind me just how grateful I am for the Fediverse.
Lets see what this app is about
While I look forward to the continuing demise of Reddit, I'm not looking forward to the influx of even more Redditors.
I am looking forward to more non-tech communities.
One that I miss is r/Accounting. Mostly non-tech community but with a relatable degree of cynicism about the corporate world and high quality memes.
Some of us are from there. We can't all be that bad.
Most Redditors are okay but a lot of the tankie witch hunt and assorted vote seeking grandstanding nonsense is from .world users, who are largely from Reddit.
I thought that most people from here are just from various influxes of redditors.
What you want is quality of small platforms with the amount of content from big. It’s unsolvable problem so far
I prefer small platforms with less content but civil engagement. Lemmy is still better than other options but the increased population has led to a lot of unnecessary drama, mostly from .world's idealogical circle jerks.
Hey! I just read this on Reddit before I made this account! 🥲
Do it. Fucking do it, man, I WANT it to happen. Mash that self-destruct like there's no tomorrow, Spez, see how low you can go!
I got offered a chance to buy into reddit's IPO. Im glad i didn't
Isn't that stock still up?
"How DARE you take your subreddit private? Then Google can't index it and people can't access it! I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO THAT!" - spez
Lol glad to move to lemmy
that's why i'm here
Woo! Paywalled porn subreddits! Commodify everything!! :D
I can't even imagine the creators in those subreddits would be thrilled since so many of them seemingly use those subs as a free advertising spot for their onlyfans. More of them are trying to be creative with overtly sexual questions in askreddit and people just stumbling in to their profile.
No! That’s all I use Reddit for nowadays…
I mean, it's not like it's a new concept, is it?
Not really, but it doesn't need another vector.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
wait, let me catch my breath, turning purple over here
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hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
They already are. They put all nsfw content behind a privacy paywall (pay with email and browsing habits). Luckily it can still be subverted through old.reddit.com - but the question is for how long.
Luckily it can still be subverted through old.reddit.com
Wait, really? That's hilariously stupid.
And that’s one of the reasons that brought me here.
Maybe it was the permanent banning for creating another account trying to talk to a mod that had banned me in a way I thought was harsh, and muted me before I could even speak.
Regardless, Reddit is starting to remind me of when Digg took a massive shit like 15 years ago. And saying that makes me feel old.
As long as I’m not dealing with AI chatbots spamming these communities, I think I’ll like it here.
digital champagne room
They had that, you get enough gold you get access to the lounge where people with internet money just talk about how to spend their points in other people.
Funny, you get enough virtual gold folks just want to share it. Real money, not so much
It was a lot more boring that people thought...
You got access to mega lounge if you never bought the gold for yourself and were instead gifted it
I got to the front page and got invited to a private community, forgot what it's called. It was just random people posting random boring shit. I mean it was nice, felt like people just sharing stuff and hanging out but I wouldn't pay money for it.
The only way I would see this working is if it was like a patreon/discord model where user get exclusive access to creators content. But in that case you would need big creators to participate to bring them into these gated communities and the creator get a competitive share of the user's money.
The dumbass does not have an original idea or vision in his body. After turning his users into consumer goods, now he's just thinking about reddit r/lounge 2.0 and combining it with reddit awards 2.0 and reddit talk 2.0.
First of all, that only works if moderators get payed or you get some extremely gullible and power hungry ones, which for the first I doubt his money scrounging self could allow and for the second, that's the problem.
It will also open up a whole can of worms that reddit certainly has deserved for some time now, people suing if they are banned from these communities, specially if it was due to personal fickle prerogative of one of the mods. But considering what reddit has gotten away with, this last point is not really that likely.
Reddit cannot die fast enough, I wish to hasten its demise and piss on the ashes!
They already exist! r/TheLounge is an example, but any sub can lock itself to premium users.
Ha. Line must go up or it affects the stock price. Profit first, users last.
What’s he been huffin’, maaan?
Elon's farts, very musky ones
He off that Nitrous just like Ye
If I ever become the CEO of a multibillion dollar company, I'm going to say nothing at my first shareholder meeting.
Instead, I'm going to climb up on the boardroom table, remove my trousers and pants and drop a great big shit right there on the desk.
I will then say "That's what we're going to do to our users" and watch in awe as my salary and share price goes through the roof.
From the article "helping users dive deeper into products, shows, games" - that right there is their focus. It's spelled right out that it's going to be primarily an advertising platform.
A new challenger joins the battle in the Elon / Cloudstrike "ruin an established company any % speed run" challenge?
On 2024, July 1, I uninstalled Reddit for good. About two weeks later, I finally made the jump to Lemmy, and added a suffix to my username that reflected on this decision.
I am not looking back.
I'm assuming this is going to be more like a creator space type thing like patreon/OF. It will make reddit worse of course because patreon and OF already exist we don't need reddit for that but as long as they aren't trying to paywall user generated content on existing subs I don't really care that much tbh.
If they paywall my old comments that I've left up to help others I'm going to go back and delete them.
I could also see them banning outside links for patreon etc if they're trying to take over that space and get a cut. Huh, guess they're not happy just getting money from user content, they might feel like they deserve part of the creator's profits as well.
As long as the creator knows what they're getting into when they make a paid subreddit it doesn't really bother me. And it's honestly probably a good plan monetarily for reddit. But just like when games started adding microtransactions it's likely to change the core of reddit even further from what I used to like about it. But I'm on lemmy now anyway...
Fuck spez
nice. This won't backfire
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.
So, I’m not a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, but I absolutely believe the theory that Spez & Musk are being paid handsomely under the table by dark money to do their best to ruin Reddit and Twitter. It was the two largest places that liberals congregated, communicated, and publicly posted, and the right wing wants to hamper and/or destroy both sites. I think both are seriously compromised now, and many of the left have fled. In the case of Twitter, it’s just turning into Truth Social lite, and Spez is trying to monetize what’s left of Reddit as fast as he can to rake in cash off what’s left of the dying carcass/bot farm.
I am 100% convinced Twitter is being intentionally destroyed by a cabal of evil oligarchs and nation states.
Cute of you to assume this is right v left issue... actually it dilatory.
This was always bottom v top...
I absolutely believe the theory that Spez & Musk are being paid handsomely under the table
First of all, it's Steve Huffman, don't use his reddit username. By doing that you're making it hard to tie the asshole to these shitty things he's doing.
Second of all, he doesn't have that kind of power. He's just the CEO. He's answerable to investors who would remove him if he were trying to tank the site. As CEO he also doesn't get to make most of the changes, he's just the guy who might have final say.
What's happening with Reddit is what happens to startups when interest rates rise. Investors who used to be willing to wait to get paid now want their money right away. So, they risked long-term damage to get paid in the short term. They rushed an IPO so the VCs could get their money out. And, now that they're public, they have to keep grinding out short-term profits for their shareholders even if it dooms their long-term prospects. At the moment network effects are keeping people there, and the enshittification of the service isn't enough to chase them away. But, I only give it a few years until it's gone.
Until recently, I would have expected that once it flames out, someone like Meta or Google would buy it. But, now that we're actually starting to see robust anti-trust action, maybe that wouldn't be allowed, and it will just flame out and die.
As for Twitter, that's just a rich guy who thinks he's a genius. Virtually all ultra-rich people own media properties. Because, as the saying goes, "Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel". Jeff Bezos went the traditional route and bought the Washington Post. Musk thought he could do the same thing (and maybe turn a profit) with Twitter. He didn't actually want to buy it though, but he's such an idiot that he was forced to honor something he said as a joke. Once he bought it, he knew that it was a money-losing company, so he thought he could use his ruthlessness and "business genius" to fire most of the useless people and still keep it running. But, he didn't understand the relationship advertisers had with Twitter.
Advertisers spent money on Twitter (not a lot, but a decent amount) because Twitter's trust and safety team made it a relatively safe ad. You might appear next to something goofy, but it wasn't going to be too awful. But, get rid of the trust and safety team and invite Nazis back to the platform and advertisers don't want to be seen next to that content, so they're going to leave. Even if he could credibly bring back the trust and safety team and allow them to do their jobs, it would take a while to re-establish that trust with the advertisers. But, bringing back the trust and safety team goes directly against his other reason for owning Twitter, which is to push a certain agenda that he likes and/or that generates money for him. He wants or needs the nazis on the site for political reasons, but they're destroying the profitability of the site.
I don't buy that Musk is being paid under the table because there's literally nobody rich enough to do that. It would take, at a minimum tens of billions to bribe him. If you had tens of billions to spend, there are a lot more effective ways to use it than bribing musk. Buying a supreme court justice seems to take nothing more than tens of millions. Winning a congressional or senate seat is a similar price.
Now, if you thought Moscow had compromat on Musk, that would be different. I could see him spending half his fortune to make sure that didn't come out. But, I still think that his ego explains what's happening better than some kind of nefarious thing.
So then they’ll move here, not such a bad deal.
But then, who makes sure that ActivityPub doesn’t sell out?
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
It'll anger Redditors but they'll gladly hand over their money
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.
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.
Here because of this
Right, you guys keep on penning that really long suicide letter.
Seriously i gotta pay to see a flipping subreddit
Tone down the snarky comments already guys. Never interrupt the enemy when they're making a mistake :>
True, don't want to risk a permanent ban lol
I mean, wasn't that what /r/lounge was for?
Bye reddit, it was fun while it lasted. Comments like this from out of touch ceos make me stop using the product. Same reason I canceled spotify after years of being a subscribing customer to move to Tidal
Aaron Swartz is rolling in his grave.
Glad I got out when I did
Proves yet another time that Aaron died for nothing
Why "some"? It should be "all". Select the subs you want to subscribe to and get billed monthly.
I don't see what could go wrong.
Oh no. anyways
"But now we will unlock the door for new use cases" ... like locking doors.
If only there was a free and open platform as an alternative to Reddit.
I'm glad I've overwritten all my comments.
The easiest tool: PowerDeleteSuite
Don't forget to make the script prepare a backup file and download it once complete. In the replacement string, link to your Lemmy account so that anyone looking for the content can just PM you.My guess is he wants to monetize the onlyfans posters. "Subscribe to my subreddit for $5 a month!"
Yeah, creating a venue for sex work is the only plausible use case.
And yet people will remain until the site exists. That's the sad part
So OnlyFans for Reddit. More spam incoming.
So they want people to possibly pay to visit certain subreddits and the content of those subreddits is most definitely going to stay server submitted and curated. Getting people to pay to be able to submit their own content is going to go over well with the user base. They are probably going to do it with the NSFW subreddits.
Stg I got out just in time.
Really this just sounds like YT membership, allowing users to create subscriptions for premium/special content e.g. gambling picks, porn, etc.
If that's all it was intended to be, it could have been an actually useful and not intrusive monetization strategy....5 years ago.
Even if that's how the feature gets rolled out now, unless it's an unmitigated disaster, I don't see them being capable of not overplaying their hand.
They will assume that because some users are willing to pay for private porn content, or gambling pick subreddits, that of course most users must also be willing to pay for cat photos and memes.
Personally, I am all for it. I am for Reddit making the worst choices possible and speed running their decline. Mostly, I would like a user exodus that results in Lemmy finally getting growth in a lot of their more niche communities that still keep me using Reddit on occasion.
been telling everyone on the reddit post about this to ditch reddit for lemmy. this could be a really good thing for this platform
I am going to try to revive some of the dead subs in here with posts and engagement.
The dumbest motherfuckers
bruh, bruv , brudda, REALLY?
Paywall all of them... don't care. Why do you think I'm on Lemmy?
Gave me the excuse to check this out. Makes me sad to kill my 11 year old Reddit account, but "needs must when the devil vomits in your kettle" as they say.
Wow, fuck absolutely all of that
Why are they trying to re-invent social media monetization schemes instead of incorporating already existing ones that are value-adds?
I could easily see a 'reddit marketplace' work well for them (i'd never fucking use it but i'm betting a bunch of people would), and it would drive more traffic to the site and lure more advertisers. Better than facebook marketplace, which requires real personal information to use, or craigslist, which feels a little too seedy and un-moderated for the faint-of-heart. Reddit could leverage their reputation for being a place for passionate hobbyists and even provide users a way to make their own income from their reddit activity.
Milking your users for paid-content seems over-the-top obnoxious when they absolutely had more options before needing to resort to that. What a trash company.
What a fucking moron
How about instead of paywalling. They just sort of concrete wall the entire site then leave it there too rot for all of eternity?
Damn, so now I gotta use reddit less than I use it already?
Trying to stop scrapers, I would imagine.
If scrapers have anything to do with the decision, I'd guess its not so much "stop" as it is "make them pay to scrape". However I'd guess this is just Huffman trying to squeeze more money out of Reddit.
Why not all?
Instead of gonewild girls promoting their OnlyFans, maybe now they can promote their paid subreddit lol.
I want to switch aswell, but what is to stop bigger servers from doing the same on Lemmy?
Also where can I find the best instance for each of the Reddit equivalent? For instance I want wall street bets, where is the most active instance of that?
If they grandfather existing subscribers in it might work for a few months or years, and what does the current Reddit leadership care if that community survives longer than they stay at the company. They also might make a few sales with paywalled celebrity IAmA threads. In any case I will watch from the sidelines and enjoy the spectacle 🍿.
The obvious reaction to anything typically free getting paywalled is vehemence, of course - and that's my thought given Reddit's track record.
Still, if it weren't them, I'm thinking about how this could be done in a classy way. Most people are not willing to engage on topics like politics because there will always be an unending army of trolls arguing in bad faith about them or needlessly engaging in flame wars. If there's some form of friction behind entry, that CAN at least get people to think twice about insulting each other.
Price tags as a form of friction are problematic, of course, in that they "only allow access to the rich". As such, I'd also be open to other ways of making it "difficult" to enter in a way that people could still do with no money. The silliest idea that comes to mind is that people must mail a physical postcard requesting entry (which could then loop back to price tags, since that uses a stamp)
Sure, if that's how a really popular subreddit pays it's moderators, it's not unreasonable. We just know that isn't what's going on here.
In addition, it would be unreasonable to expect users of a free service to suddenly start paying for it without an extremely huge value boost which there's been no mention of. If anything engagement will certainly go down, further reducing the value.
Enshitification is inevitable
If Reddit were run by competent people, I'd think that paywalled subs might be a good idea. I imagine that there are countless scenarios where people have really useful info to share, but at the same time, said info can't be spread too widely, and a paywall is one way of making sure that only people who truly care about said info can take advantage of it.
Wut?
The first thing that comes to mind is credit card point redemptions. Right now, the best information on getting stuff like free first class flights are on communities like FlyerTalk. If that info was super accessible, those opportunities wouldn't be available in the first place, and travel companies would be far less generous with rewards programs.
reddit ad remove
sudo rm -rf reddit*
I know the lemmy hivemind jumps at any opportunity to trash reddit, but if properly implemented (which to be honest they probably won't ) this could be the same as paid forums back in the day. It just depends on how much of a cut they get and how do they manage revenue share. If you could have your own private forum for free and have people subscribe to it for 2 bucks a month and you get 75% revenue of every sub it would probably spring a lot of high value forums, I'm mostly thinking like car forums used to be but it'd probably be used as another only fans