Reddit CEO signals subreddits requiring a subscription fee coming this year
How will Reddit generate content for paid-for subreddits?
Watch them fuck up the implementation and suffer the worst PR disaster in recent history when they slap a paywall on r/suicidewatch.
Next wave of reddit exodus coming soon...
It'll be the porn they charge for.
They know only wankers will give them money.
There isn't really any porn left on reddit, it's pretty much just OnlyFans ads now.
Reddit has cracked down on many porn subreddits in the last few years. Most porn on reddit is now just ads for onlyfans.
What’s funny about that is Reddit is mostly just an advertising front for onlyfans at this point
I mean yeah, and that's the piece of the pie they want. It will start with letting content creators charge and probably end by some ban or disincentive on direct only fans links.
Based
First they came for the porn subreddits, but I didn't say anything because I was not a porn subreddit.
Yes let's put a site that consists pretty much entirely of user-created content behind a paywall, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, Spez is a special kind of stupid.
The users still on reddit are even dumber than him
I think people who are content with Reddit being the way it is deserve someone like Spez.
Isn't it mostly bot-generated content?
This is a terrible idea but let me entertain it for a second.
I don’t see any of these panning out except maybe the last one, but why wouldn’t you go to other sites like Etsy for that?
Welcome to Lemmy former redditors
Well, that’s the death of the free* forum. Went from BBS to newsgroups to phpBB to Reddit, each soft-killing its predecessor. But like WalMart killing Main Street, Reddit is going to kill the free forum.
Thank goodness for Lemmy and other free* social network software.
*free with the asterisk because we know it’s not free, we are enjoying the service that others volunteer to pay for.
Lemmy will need ads to support individual servers, eventually, when they're not attached to another org (like a server CNN would run for just outgoing news dissemination). The rest of them, with bills and needing to eat, may need to go to ads.
I support proper ads that do not get priority placement and aren't in-your-face.
I support prioritization of profile migration so we can vote with our feet if a particular server's ad volume and content offends our sensibilities.
But I'm just saying I fully expect some ads are gonna happen, and I hope we can prevent full enshittification when that happens.
No, it will never have ads. If the devs put ads in, it will get forked. If server admins put in ads, they will be defederated. That's nonnegotiable if you want a free (as in libre) fediverse.
Mastodon is way bigger than Lemmy and it doesn't need ads. Donations and subscriptions (for severs that choose that path) are enough.
Some subreddits, like r/Watchexchange, where Redditors “buy, sell or trade watches,” according to the subreddit’s description, are centered on transactions. Huffman said the fact that users are already “transacting on Reddit kind of opens the door” for such monetization.
"Hey! How dare you exchange things with each other without giving us a cut!"
Whole lot of “Reddit, what are you going to do about the scammers now that we’re paying you?” posts are coming. The answer is nothing. They’ll do nothing.
Actually, they’ll write their lack of culpability more explicitly into the ToS, and then do nothing.
I’m wondering how they would charge people. Who would pay for a subreddit they’ve never been to? Could a non-paying user view the subreddit but be unable to post/comment?
Scroll down a few times and -- "THERE'S A WHOLE LOT MORE TO SEE WITH REDDIT+"
Could easily see certain subreddits being like OF or Patreon. Pay for access to content. Pretty tried and true business model and it will probably work well enough to keep it around.
Even YouTube has "memberships" to channels now where you get bonus content and stuff.
The people that are interested will pay and those that aren't won't.
Let's be honest - this will kill many subreddits. Of course some mods will start a paid subreddit next to an existing one and try to bring their users to subscribe. So expect those subs to become like those YouTubers who are constantly trying to push you to their Patreon.
Dollars to donuts it's going to immediately devolve into an onlyfans competitor
Reddit has been shit since 2014, some would argue since its inception. It never properly replaced serious forums that specialized on their own niche, like PC hardware, gossip, cars, or whatever. The subreddit replacements always felt like lower quality EVEN THOUGH Reddit mods are (in general) more trigger happy than those running proper forums. The astroturfing, the deception, the lack of respect for its users, the UX dark patterns, it has all been getting worse and worse. Some haven't gotten the memo yet, that Reddit serves no one but itself, it's a cancer.
The amount of hatred I feel when I'm on my PC using a VPN and trying to look up something on reddit since it's first in search results.
I can totally relate to what you are saying.
I’m having a good time with my popcorn!
Hello to all the new users!
My understanding is that they want to offer monetized subeditors for content creators and influencers, a mush up between Patreon and onlyfans
Guys, Gals, my non-binary pals.
I hope you understand the assignment.
This is amusing, in the day and age where everyone is tired about subscriptions everywhere???
Ever been on /r/lounge? If you have you've probably got a pretty good idea of what to expect from these subs.
What an incredibly uninteresting sub that was.
It's not even worth using for free
Reddit executives also discussed how they might introduce more ads into the social media platform.
Oh how exciting!
So people will start using reddit alot less than they do anyway.
Forever growing profits and money to grow the IPO this is the logical choice. I saw this comming. I left reddit a few months ago. Never been happier.
Good. At this point reddit is just a weak sauce place for bots/marketers to post where other bots/marketers scrape them. It's rumored that 10% of their revenue is from content deals with Google. At this point, most of the interesting communities on reddit have gone elsewhere and it's long ago jumped the shark.
It's clear that the corporate goons in charge are busy just trying to squeeze any remaining nickles out of the userbase. At this rate it won't be long before a private equity firm buys reddit and you start seeing articles "Reddit: what happened?"
Too bad, it was a site that used to be so good and was sold out 5 ways to Monday and the corporate overlords have fucked it again. At least lemmy is around... it doesn't have the scale of reddit but it's way better in a lot of ways already.
I was going to say something snarky about how they're going to fail because who would pay for social media, then I remembered blue checkmarks.
Yeah, people are fantastically stupid
Reddit also has the trophies/reward bullshits.
Curious to see the comments about it on Reddit
Edit:
Welcome to the world of quarterly earnings reports
Eat shit spez!
You mean the guy who claimed credit for his dead friend's work?
How many times does Spez have to whip his subjects before they will finally learn about fediverse alternatives.
Is fine hosting nazis and now is getting internal paywalls. I didn't know spez wanted to be Substack so bad.
Just keep doing the Fediverse favors Steve!
I forget the word for this, outpoopification? Insufficification? It escapes me.
Spezification?
Diarheageddon
Xitterfecation
CEO, tell me you don't know what you're doing without saying you don't know what you are doing.
You're, please.
Damn, thanks.
I hate reddit as much as the next guy but from time to time I find myself searching in subreddit like newborns, New parents etc. These subreddits do have a lot of experience shared from the past which has not yet come over to lemmy. And now reddit is pulling this subscription shenanigans I'm like WTF??
The article says it won't affect existing free subreddits. It's also worth pointing out that Reddit Lounge (a subreddit exclusive to Reddit premium members) has been a thing for a long time. So really, this probably isn't that big of a deal, Reddits most profitable asset is its huge user base and I don't think they're dumb enough to torpedo it. Then again, look at what happened to tumblr, you never know...
Reddit lounge was innocuous, and not at all the same. (Even if the basic mechanic is the same.)
Idiots will absolutely drop a dollar chasing a nickel, but still believe they were so clever that they came out ahead. I wouldn't put any amount of stupidity past them at this point.
Last post was a week ago! Pretty fresh!
OnlyFans creators gonna be eating good
Or are we talking about the fee going to reddit??
Edit: oh shit this is a premium for reddit access. Get the fuck out of here
Only if Reddit takes a smaller cut. If it's the same or more Reddit will be incentivized to curtail them trying to shunt users off site. I suppose it depends on what only fans biggest referrer is.
like how every other comment has a new account flair
The fediverse is expanding!
Just. Fukken. Lol
I know it won't affect current subs, but the thought of a paid Piracy subreddit is amusing nonetheless.
Oh this is perfect!
LoL, bye bye. Not sad, tho' we're building a whole new place here in Fedi-land! Whee!
so glad i left a long time ago
All it would take would be 1 person paying the subscription and just reposting the content in a hundred other subs.
We can do even better. Think of lemmit.online. A reddit account reposting content can be banned, a bot spamming that into an instance is unstoppable for them. Hell, most redditors don’t even understand instances to begin with.
Imagine the amount of salt we could mine this way.
So the same MO as always. To take a stranglehold of the internet. "Creators" or "influencers" or whatever buzzword will be all over this as it's an opportunity to monetize. I'm sure reddit corporate will be taking their piece of rent seeking of course.
The bigger implication that everyone always ignores is that this is going to lock users into the walled garden. Up to now posters have been driving people off site. The comic artists are a good example. They post their comics as image posts. They direct people off site to access more content. They will no doubt jump on the chance to have a paid subreddit. This is an attempt to kill off whatever sites the artist use. If they had some other service providing monetization then that company is probably panicking a little right now.
Has the US collectively eaten something that tells them "Moar Tariffs"? It's as if Neoliberalism-Central got mercantilism cancer.
The bonfire is about to be lit.
Lmfao that’s hilarious
I'm sure this will turn out great (just kidding, I was using sarcasm there).
You say that but thousands if not millions will buy into it.
We'll see. Maybe, maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they faked subscriptions just like they fake users.
And it costs very little to do, so anyone who actually pays is automatic profit.
hell yeah lmao
Interesting article. Clearly says the pay groups would be new groups and this wouldn't affect any existing groups.
Assuming that's true, all they have to do is close down any sub they want a subscription from. New sub is made, new sub is required.
Subreddit takes on a whole new meaning.
That's how it always starts, then they'll widen it a bit more "Ok now we'll include subreddits that were created within 3 months of announcement" then a bit more "ok now within a year" then a bit more "ok now if it's a buy/sell subreddit with > 1M subs"
And then before you know it, you need to pay 1.99/month to access r/memes.
Oh but don't worry! I'm sure they'll come out with an "unlimited" tier that's 49.99/month!
It's not like a company would ever lie to the public for money. They definitely wouldn't ever think of slowly rolling back free services and monetizing them....... I mean where would anyone even get that idea about a tech company?
Sure, until they A- arbitrarily change that once people have gotten used to the new normal, or B- game the system and find an excuse to kill off profitable subreddits knowing the community will just turn around and spin off a new one... thus having to start requiring a subscription.
