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.
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…
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.