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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Hi, I think I’m doing this right. Just joined Lemmy lol because of this. Can people see my comment?
Not only do I see your comment, it’s not yet buried even 5 days after you’ve made it.
Yes! Welcome to the fediverse
One of us!
Happy cake 🎂 day!
yep, even from my solo instance
si
Nope, cannot see this.
😉
Welcome!
One of us!
Ok tidy up this place. We have visitors coming soon.
The announcement is why I created a username here. I doubt I’m coming alone.
Still no frictionless account migration…
On Voyager app you can “migrate subreddits” at least
Not sure what else would even be feasible
What’s to migrate other than your name? My reddit usage was limited to lurking so I genuinely don’t know.
History, reputation, relationships (this a nuch bigger problem on mastofon) (yes migration as a lurker is easy)
How do you even migrate history? Would people even want that
Reputation definitely not. Also who even cares about reputation
Subreddits you can migrate in some apps at least
If you can’t do these things then users and communities will remain locked to server instances and dominated by server owners and their moderation delegates just as they are on reddit. This is repeating the problem is not enacting the any of the promises of federation. It is federation for prisoners.
I’m glad I jumped ship back during the ban on 3rd party apps. That was it for me.
Tbh, I didn’t care about the 3rd party apps.
I just didn’t like the silencing of opposition.
If they are willing to do mass censorship for benign things like a 3rd party apps protest, what’s to say they wont booklick governments/corportions and censor info of horrible things that a government/corporation is doing.
It’s the censorship that I was more afraid of. Besides, I always wanted a decentalized platform, but none of it had any users until June 12, 2023.
That’s the truth. It was tone deafness, a lack of responsiveness, and a clear lack of principles that made me leave during that.
Wild that that was almost 2 years ago now…
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.
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.
I’ve gone back to reddit a few times from searches, and after spending time away it is really apparent how negative most of the comments over there are.
For example, anytime someone asks for help, someone always has to show up and get angry that they didn’t search instead of asking. Then a third person shows up and says that a search brought them to this thread… and no one ever answers the question. Thanks reddit!
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.
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.
imagine charging for displaying content you didn’t even make.
the balls are astounding, but this ain’t gonna go well for them.
I disagree. I hate the decisions they make and personally, along with you, I think it’s idiotic.
But while I hate on them, they will get away with it. Theyre not stupid. The decisions don’t align with its users but it will still work.
Look at netflix raising prices for arguably worse content. Working for them.
Reddit; Charging for the API essentially killing almost all 3rd party apps. Not sure the effect but reddit doesn’t seem to really be hurting. Users want to move but reddit is just too good. I even still use it because the user content on there is amazing. I try to ask all my questions/have discussions on lemmy, but I’m one person. Reddit has infinity more always contributing. I think the management sucks, but the platform just isn’t fully rivaled yet so they can keep milking their audience.
Netflix was always a paid service though. I don’t know if people will want to pay for something they’ve had for free for over a decade, especially if the free subreddits will still exist.
I’d also imagine that for any paid subreddit, someone will make a free version with similar content.
Welcome to Mbin ;)
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
You’re gonna pay the mods then, right?
Right?
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
We’re happy to have you here
This is a cool guide for starting https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
Thank you! I literally signed up 30 mins ago after seeing Lemmy mentioned a few times on Reddit. I’m at the ‘what the heck is this, where am I’ stage but feel like I understand how it works a bit better now!
Welcome to Lemmy!!
Good news for Lemmynites.
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.
Do it, please, the subreddits need to migrate here
Can’t wait to see the mental gymnastics subreddit moderators will perform to defend this!
It was wild how spineless most of them were when the API stuff happened, and it showed how attached they are to their little bubble of power.
And some of them acted even more pathetic with virtue signaling.
Like the r/de mods allowed memes for a full week in “protest”. Such rebels… they sure showed spez with that one…
I was proud of them for those subreddit blackouts, but when communities started to come back online after the mods were threatened with replacement - I knew I had to get out of there for good.
I managed to stave off the threats until a couple of months ago since someone put a reddit request in. Oh well, fuck spez and reddit.
You have my respect. I’m guessing all the mods with a tad of integrity left during this time, leaving their subreddits closed
Over half of us in r/Android left and while a few of headed over here and made our very own instance, some stopped on and, I paraphrase
I’m not seeing some shitheel coming and doing spezs deeds, and I’ll just mass approve/remove shite
Brave fucker that mod.
I haven’t had an account since the Apollo purge but fuck Spez.
Fuck Spez
Is there anywhere I can find a complete scrape of Reddit threads and comments from before the 3rd party app apocalypse? There was a lot of useful info shared on there, but I don’t want anything to do with what that site has become. I’m happy just to CTRL+F a big dataset. It’ll probably still work better than either Reddit or Google does nowadays. Without media I imagine I could fit it somewhere.
Also, Spez is a greedy little pig boy.
Looks like I dropped Reddit at just the right time.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find it?
There are reports of Reddit banning Lemmy mentions, and Google searches floating “Lemmy is bad” Reddit threads to the top.
I came over to Lemmy during the Great API third party disaster. The exodus had commenters saying to come over to Lemmy.
Same, word of mouth is how I found lemmy. Beehaw, then a few others, now I’m here on db0.
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.
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…
