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.
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There’s nothing on Reddit anymore. It’s really unfortunate but I don’t see how this is going to help them regain any consistent user base.
Looks like I dropped Reddit at just the right time.
What I find hilarious is all these companies doing this shit after all the advancements in programming languages and paradigms in the last few years.
Thanks to tools like Node.js, React, Flask, Reflex, OpenAPI Gen, GoLang, and more, people that are fed-up and have the know-how can stand up competing technology in record time.
I look forward to see what comes out of this corporate power grab. Hopefully there’s not a lot of pain and suffering alkng the way.
Reddit: Here’s another reason not to use our site.
Users: Ok bye.
I feel like this is gonna be a cash cow for reddit, just not in a way spez can just openly talk about.
A huge portion of reddit is OnlyFans promos. Reddit is making zero off of all this, because traditional advertising doesn’t want to associate themselves with porn. A bunch of these “paid subreddits” will basically be a reddit’s attempt to compete with OnlyFans.
I honestly think it’ll work. There’s a lot of money in porn.n
i hope there is a mass migration here
Do it, please, the subreddits need to migrate here
More ads? There’s already a bunch of them mixed with posts and comments. What more, force people to watch an ad before loading pages?
There are ads in comments now?
Yeah, people like me and I assume you, who used to browse reddit via a third party app or with RES + an adblocker on pc did not see it but it’s a bit insanely how much ads there’s already on reddit right now. I migrated to GNU and firefox last week and forgot to add the extensions as I was just looking for some information in the Endeavour subreddit and I was shocked at the state of “default” reddit… I’m glad I left and I hope most of the userbase will…
Hopefully this will drive even more users to switch over. I find myself finding Reddit less useful as time passes by
If small dick energy had a face it would be Steve Huffman’s.
Late this fall, after all of the nonsense on Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram I asked myself a very simple question.
“Is the reason I joined these sites still valid? What do I actually enjoy about social media these days?”
The answer was basically “rose colored glasses.”
I joined **Reddit **after the ‘deaths’ of Slashdot and Digg. It became my source to get new and interesting content I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. Now it’s bots arguing with bots and 75+% of the content is just recycled shit by people trying to make money. Much of the rest is from people trying to manipulate you.
Delete.
I joined Facebook to keep in touch with my friends and family - especially those I don’t see often. Over time, the amount of good content from people I knew dropped to maybe 25% of my feed. Most of it now is AI-generated bullshit or more of the same recycled content you see on Reddit.
Delete.
I joined Instagram to share some of my landscape photos and view some of the great photos some close friends were sharing. Over time that became less and less. Queue the recycled and AI-bullshit content.
Delete.
So, I challenge everybody to ask themselves do they actually enjoy social media? Do these sites actually add value to your life and in any way remain true to their promise when you joined them so many moons ago. Are you actually making any connections with people? The ‘social’ in ‘social’ media? Or just watching people talk at each other, not to each other.
After answering those questions, the answer about whether to stick around is pretty clear.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram:
I’m surprised they aren’t talking about subscriber subreddits. With the amount of porn/OnlyFans posts, I would have thought they could position Reddit as a friendly and familiar OF alternative.
That probably is the idea, to have a competitor to Patreon and OnlyFans. They should have probably mentioned that as an example before some people start thinking /r/worldnews becomes paywalled.
Seems like a pretty huge opportunity for Reddit. If the article mentioned it, I missed it.
It does not mention it and I cannot see any official statement, but that seems like a logical reason. Reddit management however is not famous for being logical so we will see.
I wonder what the legality is of that when people are posting content from these porn sites and reddit is charging users to access it. How is this any different than paid piracy streaming sites?
“more ads” as if it isn’t already as flooded as meta sites.
I can’t imagine what sub-reddits they think people would willingly participate in that are paid-only. Decreasing visibility and potential participation group automatically makes those worse in most cases.
Porn?
Yeah, actually. I could see them taking on OnlyFans if they wanted to. But I think they want to be more mainstream than that.
