Reddit CEO signals subreddits requiring a subscription fee coming this year
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/reddit-plans-to-lock-some-content-behind-a-paywall-this-year-ceo-says/Open linkView original on lemmy.world836
Comments256https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/reddit-plans-to-lock-some-content-behind-a-paywall-this-year-ceo-says/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Welcome to Lemmy former redditors
The revolution will be televised; behind a paywall.
The revolution will have a subscription.
You will not own the revolution and you will like it.
Thanks. I just switched - apparently just in time!
Me too friend!!
The only subreddit you need is
r/redditseppuku
Yeah I signed in for the first time in like a year right after seeing this lol
Thanks, I love you too.
"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.
Ugh, aCtUaLly the almighty Reddit Admins and
janitorsModerators will act decisively to ban anyone who dares use the report button.The problem is the existence of the complaint, so this solves the problem
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?
Doubtful. If I remember the statistic correctly, 95% of social media users are lurkers. Greedy Little Pigboy wouldn't pass up the opportunity to milk the remaining 19/20 users.
Scroll down a few times and -- "THERE'S A WHOLE LOT MORE TO SEE WITH REDDIT+"
and then, get exclusive content, from reddit+ prenium.
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.
or they allowed subs, but with immense amount of ads: require to watch video, or watch this ad for a certain of time to use it for free. just basing it off how aggressively youtube, facebook does it.
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.
Dollars to donuts it's going to immediately devolve into an onlyfans competitor
could be something like a private sub, where only approved members can enter.
thats why they have been aggressively going after OF subs/bots this month, they arnt getting a slice from the profit they are earning externally. from another forum,(where people flee after getting banned this way) alot of them lost tons of accts recently. yup one of my accts was temp ban for using the report button, how many is too much? it depends on the mod and the sub, if they dont like that you are reporting are reporting a person that should be reported, or the comment, you get banned for report abuse. these bans seems much severe than a subreddit ban.
I’m having a good time with my popcorn!
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.
I think people who are content with Reddit being the way it is deserve someone like Spez.
The users still on reddit are even dumber than him
digg v5 just dropped
Quora did it. I don't go there anymore.
Don't lie. When 70% of your search results are Quora, you are going to click, you are going to encounter the login banner, you are going to rage, and you are going to click away.
Nope, those "answers" didn't help even once, so now they're filtered out of search results, and DNS banned. Quora does not appear on my devices.
I've had some help from Quora, but overall I feel it wastes my time a lot more than not. And I've never had an instance where only Quora had the answer.
This why it pays to use a search engine that lets you blocklist sites
So like Google 15 years ago when it was still kind of not shit?
Any recommendations?
At the risk of sounding like a shill, I like Kagi.
Or use the ublocklist extension, this puts a button besides all search results to perma ban that domain and allows URL lists like this for automatic garbage removal.
Even when the login banner doesn't appear, lately all the answers are "Hm, it appears that you are trying to do [question title]. To do [question title], [basic bitch advice]. Hope this helps!" Style AI slop.
When it isn't the built-in AI helper doing it, it's the users blatantly copying from different chatbots
Anecdotally, I remember using it for answers to things about probably business, government, and certain how-to's. I also remember when the pop-over banner started covering up half the answers and that's around the time I stopped.
Here's a post discussing quora from Dec 2018.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644489
Once upon a time, Quora was okay, before they started paying people to generate a bunch of yahoo answers questions / AI slop questions, and then fucked with the UI and made their site into a virtually unusable mess.
Isn't it mostly bot-generated content?
How the hell would I know?
holy shit what is this from, i swear i saw this 20 years ago. what is it, george of the jungle??
Yep.
damn i nailed it!
It's a classic. :)
Guys, Gals, my non-binary pals.
I hope you understand the assignment.
It'll be the porn they charge for.
They know only wankers will give them money.
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.
There isn't really any porn left on reddit, it's pretty much just OnlyFans ads now.
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.
I don't want it to have ads either but bandwidth is not free and someone somewhere is paying for it.
Is the donations don't cover the bills there are few options.
I really enjoyed the Reddit gold model. I paid them $30/year for many years because I got so much out of the site that I felt they deserved it. Their monetization was pretty innocuous.
Then the enshittification happened.
They usually do. When we opened for donations, we pretty much hit our goals within days and our donations currently exceed our expenses without having to do donation drives. @[email protected] had a thread where Lemmy Admins discussed their costs and a lot are already fully funded.
We run one of then largest lemmy server. We're fully donation-funded. Lemmy.world is also the largest, also donation funded.
It's not free, but it's pretty cheap. When you don't have to have massive marketing departments, huge management bonuses, expensive office space, crappy proprietary software, and massively scaled highly available platforms it costs a lot less to run a social media platform. Donations can often cover it all.
If one server gets too big, they can just cap registrations and people move to a different server.
Good point. Way less staff to keep this service running as long as growth is not a priority like it is with most companies.
At some point they are going to need lawyers, and more expensive anti-spam.
And there's a scaling problem, right? Like, the bigger the federation is, the more traffic each instance gets.
Maybe large institutions (universities, some governments, some companies, and so on) can each host their own instance. It would be a drop in their existing hosting costs.
You're getting very close to describing how Usenet works.
Heh, is that a bad thing? I think not.
Next wave of reddit exodus coming soon...
I followed Reddit Sync to Lemmy during the API fiasco. Even then, it was better than reddit had been in years. It's only gotten better.
Same bro, I'm still on Sync typing this to you 😄👍
Sync user, checking in.
What’s Reddit sync to lemmy?
Sync is an application that originally was designed to browse Reddit on Android. When Reddit destroyed 3rd party access, Sync was redesigned for Lemmy.
Oh how exciting!
It's not even worth using for free
I hope all the lemmy instances are ready for a surge of users. Let's encourage redditors to join Lemmy and learn the kinks and quirks by trial and error. Let's be kind to the newcomers.
This is the mindset to have when new people discover anything you enjoy. Great way to put it.
As soon as I read that I thought I'd make an account here.
Welcome! It's weird here, but it's great.
Same, fresh refugee here. I’ve tried mastodon before and I didn’t feel good with Fediverse, but only because I never really used Twitter. Surprisingly I only discover Reddit few weeks ago (to properly spend some time there… where was I all these years lol) I’m starting to like this fediverse though 😁
Honestly, same. Mastodon is fine if you like the Twitter format, but I never did. Lemmy works for me, largely cuz Reddit also worked for me, until the API debacle.
Welcome! Hope you like it here. I'm happy to see people are jumping ship despite the "it's too complex to switch to Lemmy" false narrative.
Just gotta compare it to signing up for an email. You gotta choose a provider.
I personally don't really like that analogy. With email, you can send and email to anyone who has an email address. You can only see emails you have received after creating your email account. It's simple and clear. With the fediverse, for past posts, you can see some: only if it was posted on your instance or if someone on your instance was following them when it was originally posted or has interacted with it since, meaning there is some technicality that prevents you from seeing everything you think you should be able to see.
In terms of account creation, I agree. Just pick a provider (instance), if you don't like it you can create a new account somewhere else later.
I think the analogy will hold only because the problems you've presented should get worked out over time. I feel the same with how fediverse links work and how it interacts with your Lemmy account (like it's super easy to link a fediverse comment/post, just a little harder to get from your account instance to that link where you can interact with it).
My first Lemmy account was on a little instance where I had to go through subscribing, like you said, for those instance feeds to pop up. I also see that as just another wrinkle that will be ironed out over time, as the setting up and hosting of instances becomes more mainstream (well from at least it's current state).
Saaaame
Same here.
Curious to see the comments about it on Reddit
Edit:
You made a great comment showing some easy ways to join Lemmy, and that's what I appreciates about you!
Thanks!
It'll be a great comment for a few hours until Reddit deletes it all and bans OP.
Still up, 600 points, 130 comments
I appreciates many things about Ms. Katie
I wonder how long this will stay up.
Curious as well
sounds like they are coping
service that owes its popularity largely to its low barrier to entry signals higher barriers to entry
cool! please do.
The whole reason reddit became as popular as it is now is because of bots in the beginning. The founders admitted as much.
In the great reddit to lemmy migration of 2023, a lot of users complained about the lack of content and engagement on lemmy. A number of lemmy moderators who came from reddit basically said the same thing and that they were working on deploying bots over here.
It looks like they did make some progress as there is a lot more content than there was 2 years ago. However, SOOOOO many niche subs just do not exist over here yet. Including most of my favs.
I am not that interested in linux or computers anymore.
That is actually the only reason I come back to reddit from time to time.
i was looking at subs on here that were some of the ones i frequent on reddit, yea its a deadzones in some of the niches, no content for a year, i think alot of them went back to reddit. the ones that stay are usually the ones that get banned from reddit. the ones that are currently evading bans are on another forum(not associated with lemmy or reddit, im in one of those sites)
Over moderation is also an issue. See the digg to reddit move in 2010 or 2011. Corporatize, moderate, lose engagement
and bot is the reason its still active, i think i read a reddit post about how most of the bots on the site are from places like RUSSIA, sowing dissent with thier troll farms. it make sense since reddit isnt doing much to removing much of those bots, instead targeting people like us and OF FANs. as soon as they did thier usual purges of bots, which include some from RU, reddit because eerily quiet and non-engaged(nobodies raging about what the other party did in alrge numbers), and the well known conservative subs, are silent. until the troll farms reorient thier trolls to come back. its easier for them to evade bans, because of thier resources. on some posts that were discussing it, reddit doesnt do enough against them.
Hello friend.
Here, take this:
Enjoy our ![email protected]
2 hours fresh out of the oven!
Well I think we're gonna see another influx
Can confirm. That's why im here. Figured I'd just jump earlier with the whole avoiding US companies vibe too.
Yep, hi, here am I. Usually I think news like these are fearmongering for clickbait, like those old "Facebook is going to be paiiidd!" (As if "being free" wasn't at the very core of its appeal and selling point) but reading the room this day and age I don't think I'd be that surprise if a change like that did happen to Reddit. The only good think about this shitstorm of an age is that it made me find the fediverse and I will never forgive myself for not caring enough to find it earlier.
a few days ago i saw how r/redditalternatives has only "lemmy bad!" posts and i know for a fact folks here have been spreading the word about lemmy in a positive way so don't blame yourself, reddit has been actively censoring any good thing said about lemmy or the fediverse in general
i looked marginally deeper into this and it's apparently all the way to shadow bans :) link
Oh, so that's why I saw some post about reddit alternatives and the person replying had to mask lemmy. Oh wow.
seems like its posted around the same time reddit started banning people in large numbers.
Yea, I'm one.
one of us one of us
Same, just got fed up about all this bullshit and degoogled every device in my life, as time passes we get more and more exploited by these giant companies.
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.
Watch them fuck up the implementation and suffer the worst PR disaster in recent history when they slap a paywall on r/suicidewatch.
You should read the article:
Because when reddit was introducing the new API pricing and said it would be affordable and they would work with developers of 3rd party apps to make a smooth transition, that was obviously how things went. Everyone knows that because reddit makes a claim they follow through on it with 100% accuracy. You're not wrong to read the article and cite info from it, but there's no reason to believe that's what's going to happen either.
I’m sure they’ll let mods flip a subreddit to paid-only and offer them a cut.
fun fact: you dont have to use websites
Recent recruit from Reddit. Finally made the jump. Love the apps like Boost, Thunder and Voyager.
I like Voyager too. Im on Android but prefer the Apple design right now in terms of look and feel.
Just keep doing the Fediverse favors Steve!
Is fine hosting nazis and now is getting internal paywalls. I didn't know spez wanted to be Substack so bad.
Eat shit spez!
You mean the guy who claimed credit for his dead friend's work?
Reddit is just borderline unusable because of the API thing.. The app is unusable, and Red Reader is just too bland to use.
The official Reddit app and new Reddit layout drive me crazy... The amount of suggested content and the confusing algorithm for best sort really turned it into facebook. I find myself much happier here on Lemmy. I understand the algorithm. I'm even pleased to see that posts can last more than a day at the top of the "active" page. I think it means that Lemmy encourages discussion and going back to a topic even if it is a few days old. Probably better for our collective attention span.
Not to mention bloated and loads like crap on older mobile devices.
Red reader is perfect. I wish they would add Lemmy support.
Imagine paying actual money for shitty memes and mean comments.
It'll probably be the porn. What seems a bit bizarre to me is presumably you'd have to pay the subscription to post there, who's going to pay to provide content for someone else to make money off?
Just jumped the ship at the right time. The API wars were just a preview...
Time to move on over here I guess.
Seems like a bad time to be introducing such a thing in the immediate future when European users are already seeking out alternatives to US tech giants and US users are losing their jobs and facing rising grocery prices.
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.
::: spoiler dictionary
astroturfing = "Public relations tactic using fake grassroots movements" (used by, among others, corporations, politicians (remember the Trump 2016 campaign on Reddit?), and governments)
UX dark pattern = user experience dark pattern = "A dark pattern is a design feature that subtly encourages users to perform a specific action." (like Reddit's "Howdy paddner" error if you use a VPN so that they can de-anonymize you) :::
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 forget the word for this, outpoopification? Insufficification? It escapes me.
Spezification?
Diarheageddon
Xitterfecation
enshittification.
Lemmy admins, hold onto your butts
mfw someone makes r/paywalledwhatever then someone else mirrors it with r/unpaywalledwhatever
They should pay me to swallow US regime garbage.
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.
Each time I visit a reddit link and see the word "Deleted" in OPs post, my heart fills with joy.
I deleted my history on reddit (10+ years) and am moving over here. Still figuring out how to find the communities I want but I'll get it.
So Reddit wants to move to a pay model, which would mean they'd have banking information on record for any user that might be of interest to the federal government.
No thank you.
I just got permabanned because the admins didn't like me saying "the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi"
I don't know about you, but I'm fucking done with social media companies kowtowing to Nazi, racist, and outright fascist bullshit with the intent of "not inciting violence". By tolerating intolerant people, they fell victim to the paradox of tolerance.
Welcome! The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi!
Nazi lives don't matter
Niche subreddits need to start archiving posts and wikis immediatly.
Too late with the API changes. There are lots of old guides that were deleted or changed in protest, and whole subs that went MIA or got banned.
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...
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.
Reddit lounge was innocuous, and not at all the same. (Even if the basic mechanic is the same.)
they do see the advertising revenue from/per user more than the prenium accounts. seems like they are trying to copy facebook model.
[email protected] ?
Last post was a week ago! Pretty fresh!
This will be good. They will eventually drive everyone away!
Who's on there except bots?
Soon, bots will be here too. I know how this works. It's better that the worst Redditors stay there, contained by the bot army, than then bringing bots here.
It all depends on the scope of the medium. There is free speech in the US as long as it has little audience and no impact. You can say what you want. When it gets too big, like Reddit (doubled users in 2 years 2014 to 2016 from 75mil to 180mil) a regime operative is put in place.
Enter Jessica Ashoosh. https://mronline.org/2021/06/14/jessica-ashooh-the-taming-of-reddit-and-the-national-security-state-plant-tabbed-to-do-it/
The results were very noticable. Quarantined or deleted subs. Banning/ghostbanning and early bots. And has gotten worse year by year.
When they can't control the medium, like TikTok or anything from another country with content that is not in line with the US narrative they will make up a reason to forbid it.
Paywall forum, what can go wrong ?
Let me guess. These will be the AI-content subreddits, right?
Nope, the NSFW and OF ones.
They're trying to direct creators to stay on Reddit instead of just using it for an advertising platform
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.
screw the haters I'm going to make a porn one. i am valid
lemmy.nsfwis calling for youAt that point, wouldn't making an OnlyFans be easier and more likely to attract paying customers?
like how every other comment has a new account flair
The fediverse is expanding!
Holy crap good thing I just moved to this platform!
Hello to all the new users!
I don't think that is a good idea.
I think it's a great idea. It might finally pry me off the reddit teat once and for all.
Welcome to the world of quarterly earnings reports
The bonfire is about to be lit.
Just. Fukken. Lol
I know it won't affect current subs, but the thought of a paid Piracy subreddit is amusing nonetheless.
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.
This is amusing, in the day and age where everyone is tired about subscriptions everywhere???
LoL, bye bye. Not sad, tho' we're building a whole new place here in Fedi-land! Whee!
Wait REQUIRING?
so if a sub gets popular enough they can just say "pay wall."
i think they will have a youtube/patreon type thing going on, free content on youtube, while thier patreon gets"exclusive content"
No one said he was a rocket surgeon.
A few years ago, everyone was wondering when Reddit would have its Digg moment
How many times does Spez have to whip his subjects before they will finally learn about fediverse alternatives.
My understanding is that they want to offer monetized subeditors for content creators and influencers, a mush up between Patreon and onlyfans
To be honest, this is actually a genius move when it comes to NSFW content.
Almost every pornographic sub has already been astroturfed by e-girls plugging their OnlyFans and Fansly links. Giving them the ability to paywall their content directly on Reddit effectively cuts out the middle-man and allows Reddit to undercut the likes of OF and Fansly with lower transaction fees.
there's no way to monetize lemmy, right?
just making sure i'm on the right liferaft...
Maybe yes, but realistically no. It's open source, so anyone could make their own clone of it with whatever monetization methods they want. If you ran an instance, you could also charge people to post on it. That said, with the way Lemmy is organized, people would just leave the offending instance for a different one.
there's probably a way to monetise everything but with the numbers of Linux people (yes we know you use arch shush) and anti-capitalists, i think we're safe?
Just don't get too attached, Reddit was Digg's liferaft... Once Thing go to shit, move on.
That would probably depend on the instance creators. Donations are paying the way so far, but maybe someone will test out an instance with a registration fee or something. I don't see that working out unless every other instance is in dire straits and super unstable because they're running out of money.
Lmfao that’s hilarious
Has the US collectively eaten something that tells them "Moar Tariffs"? It's as if Neoliberalism-Central got mercantilism cancer.
This is just where we've been heading since rich assholes took control of everything. Nothing has value beyond the money it makes. Everything will be reused and defiled until it stops making money. Everything will be rented to us
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 glad i left a long time ago
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.
Oh this is perfect!
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?
From what i've read it would be like lounge but for a single sub? And it's only for new sub, old sub aren't eligible to turn premium. So if you want to access to 10 paywalled sub you have to pay for each sub.
I have a feeling they gonna wipe porn off the free one so they can only use the paywalled sub.
Just remember, when the barrier to entry is low then the quality of participants declines.
Edit: I just realized that I should have specified an intellectual barrier. In the case of Lemmy that's the minuscule technical understanding or research ability needed to sign up and get on an instance. It's amazing how just that tiny obstructions helps keep out the dumbest of Reddit users.
When the barrier is monetary, are you really getting the best folks?
A quick visit to Twitter would make the answer abundantly clear - no
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.
Any good Lemmy app recommendation that uses the latest material design for Android?
Sync for sure!!
https://join-lemmy.org/apps
IDK about material design, but Jerboa is great.
I was using Sync for Reddit before the API issues (switched to old reddit with ublock and Firefox after that), and the creator make Sync for Lemmy with the same feel.
I'm a big fan of boost, it feels the closest to what RIF was before the bs with 3rd party reddit apps
How is that different from the lounge?
It probably already exists in some form of private subs
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.
So people will start using reddit alot less than they do anyway.
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.
hell yeah lmao
lol, now you will have to pay to get banned.
You’re new here, did you get banned? Welcome!
Thanks. Was banned in a couple subs, but mainly I haven’t left because I was looking for a replacement… and I found it.
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 assuming they don't look at a sub and just say "you're now paid, congrats" and the mods just go along with it. I can see greedy mods seeing the ability to profit from that kind of forceful hand and then complaining about disengagement.
Yup, i was thinking the same thing too
i also wonder if they are going to push something like subscription tiered system, like subscription with ads, or a "free sub with ads"
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.
probably going to bury the "free" groups til they cant be seen in a feed, and promote the paid ones to the front page 100% of the time. much like how youtube does it, the most "paid" popular channels get 100% front page coverage.