Reddit, a platform founded in part on the premise of openly and widely sharing information, is ready to put up some paywalls. In a video Ask Me Anything (AMA) session hosted by CEO Steve Huffman following the company’s quarterly earnings report (which went poorly), the founder and exec said Reddit is actively testing ways to make some content require payment to access and plans to roll out a “paid subreddit” feature later this year.
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Reddit might have some room to eat into Patreon’s model, allowing creators to put certain content behind paywalls. Lots of creators have their own subreddits already meant to facilitate community conversation in a way that comments on Patreon posts don’t totally allow for. So perhaps there’s some room for Reddit to sneak into that space.
That might actually work.
I have a feeling they’ll have a way to fuck it up tho
My first thought is their MO that they own whatever’s uploaded.
No, they just want to control the distribution. If they do, they can insert their ads and monetize directly.
And it’s not just Patreon, it’s onlyfans too. We all know reddit has plenty of porn, and by that I mean onlyfans spammers. So, since reddit already has the content creators and the content consumer userbase, why not cut out the middleman and monetize it themselves?
I believe they’ve already updated their TOS that they own whatever’s uploaded. They want to train AI and own search results and all that. That will conflict with being like onlyfans where people want legal control of their content.
I recall their TOS having a clause like that years and years ago. And usually it’s not a problem for the users or the creators, since everyone gets a cut.
I don’t think the creators mind too much. Even if reddit takes a cut, the net profit is still much greater due to the size of the audience.
Seriously? It’s a problem if you want LEGAL ownership over your content.
Most creators are willing to let that go to get access to the audience. It’s not an exclusive license.
But why would they do this through Reddit and not Patreon?
You can already make private subreddits.
Probably because Reddit is massive.
That’s why porn (which Reddit calls „NSFW content” not to scare advertisers) is not accessible over API at all. We should refer to Reddit as „that porn website” now because that’s what they’re going to make money on.
I knew it was time to jump ship and go somewhere else. This is a much better place.
Welcome aboard! If you still have a reddit account, I’d encourage you to spread the love to other frustrated redditors - best way to do that that I’m aware of it to edit as much of your comment history as possibly to replace it with a how-to on getting started with the fediverse. Idk if it’s smoother now, but it was kinda overwhelming when I bounced over here a couple years ago.
It is indeed, a refreshing change of scenery.
Isn’t it great? I would suggest switching to all with hot, top 6 hours and scaled to get the best experience here. Active is the default, and it seems the least active ironically. I have it set as hot in my settings. When you get to know more communities (subreddits), your subscribed will be nice too.
If I know nothing else in this world I know this: Reddit will never get a penny from me.
New argument is coming soon:
“Lemmy - FREE alternative to Reddit”
Fuck /u/spez
I bet they figure paywalled areas will produce more consistent, high quality comments for selling to LLMs too.
It’s probally partly a data farming move.
It’s probably the other way around. I can see him saying that paywalled subreddits won’t have their data mined for LLMs so if you want to keep your content out of that mill, you better pay up.
I’d have to be delusional to believe that they won’t sell that data to LLMs despite what they may claim.
They’ll probably paywall NSFW subreddit because they can’t monetize those with ad revenue, and I doubt they’re selling that content for LLMs anyway.
Farm data, or sell the solution to a problem they participate in creating.
Make the platform even more irrelevant? Go ahead, guys. 👍
God I fucking hope this will be their digg moment… however I know this is strictly geared towards OF creators
surely the people posting in the paid communities will get some kind of remuneration for their posts, right? they wouldn’t just try to sell other people’s stuff without giving them anything in return? surely they don’t think that little of their userbase.
Please just do it already.
I mean aren’t places like r/lounge technically already paywalled?
Great, now can we have Google omit Reddit by default?
Reddit CEO can go fuck himself!
Oh shit, my porn!
I, in other news, am not!
