- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise new sources of income.
He suggested that the company might experiment with paywalled subreddits as it looks to monetize new features. “I think the existing, altruistic, free version of Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just the way it has,” Huffman said. “But now we will unlock the door for new use cases, new types of subreddits that can be built that may have exclusive content or private areas, things of that nature.”
This is another move likely to anger Redditors. While the platform is a commercial enterprise, its value derives almost entirely from freely offered user content. That means Redditors feel at least some sense of ownership in a community endeavour, so the company needs to tread carefully when it comes to monetization at user expense.
There’s nothing ‘altruistic’ about reddit
I guess reddit was feeding me all those ads out of the kindness of their hearts and took no money for hosting them. “Altruistic”, lol.
The altruistic, free version of Reddit is Lemmy.
Free*
*Except for very real server costs.
Free*
*as in Freedom, but you’re absolutely right
Not saying you meant it that way, but people often forget that the Fediverse costs money to run; unlike companies like Reddit, though, the admins are usually not trying to also turn a profit at the same time.
The users used to be altruistic, helping other people just because they wanted to be friendly. Because the site used to feel like a real community. But, now that the site is so clearly for-profit I think a lot of users are going to be much less helpful to strangers.
It’s hard to quit the site because it gets so much traffic, which means so much stuff gets posted there. On the other hand, I think the high-quality comments from someone trying to help out are less common.