Reddit CEO Says Paywalls are Coming Soon

[vdeane]

Well, this sucks.  Reddit is THE place to view and participate in discussion of most anything since internet forums seem to be either dead or impossible to find outside of this one, and Reddit replacements like Lemmy never took off.  Especially for those of us who don't like live chat and as such don't use things like Discord (which is where a lot of online discussion seems to have migrated to).  Heck, I don't even have a Reddit account, but I lurk on several subreddits every single day, and it's amazing how many web searches I have that end with "site:reddit.com" as the only other results are articles that don't quite offer what I want, especially when I'm looking for answers to esoteric questions, such as why certain political trends are happening around the world and whatnot.

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.

Huffman described the paid content model as a "work in progress" but mentioned it would be one of the "new, key features" that the company intends to introduce in 2025. It marks a continuation of Huffman's focus on requiring payment to access certain areas on Reddit. Last year, the CEO said the company was looking into building a new type of subreddit that would include "exclusive content or private areas" hidden behind a paywall.

https://gizmodo.com/reddit-ceo-says-paywalls-are-coming-soon-2000564245

[LilianaUwU]

Fuck spez.

[kalvado]

Problem of each and every internet project - regardless of how great and useful they are, they struggle to pay for themselves.

[SEWIGuy]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

[CtrlAltDel]

Well, this sucks.  Reddit is THE place to view and participate in discussion of most anything since internet forums seem to be either dead or impossible to find outside of this one, and Reddit replacements like Lemmy never took off.  Especially for those of us who don't like live chat and as such don't use things like Discord (which is where a lot of online discussion seems to have migrated to).  Heck, I don't even have a Reddit account, but I lurk on several subreddits every single day, and it's amazing how many web searches I have that end with "site:reddit.com" as the only other results are articles that don't quite offer what I want, especially when I'm looking for answers to esoteric questions, such as why certain political trends are happening around the world and whatnot.

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.

Huffman described the paid content model as a "work in progress" but mentioned it would be one of the "new, key features" that the company intends to introduce in 2025. It marks a continuation of Huffman's focus on requiring payment to access certain areas on Reddit. Last year, the CEO said the company was looking into building a new type of subreddit that would include "exclusive content or private areas" hidden behind a paywall.

https://gizmodo.com/reddit-ceo-says-paywalls-are-coming-soon-2000564245

I wouldn't worry about it too much just yet, since it will probably just be the NSFW stuff. The rest of the site is essentially just a message board that no one is going to pay for.

[Rothman]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

Found the Tory.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

You create some very strange villains in your narratives.

The reality is also that most people don't have money to throw at every single thing that decides they have to get a cut from its users. It's a sticky situation for everybody.

[kalvado]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

You create some very strange villains in your narratives.

The reality is also that most people don't have money to throw at every single thing that decides they have to get a cut from its users. It's a sticky situation for everybody.

The other reality is that ones like reddit and wikipedia, Linux foundation or libroffice - are big companies which need to pay their employees, maintain and power servers, pay their Internet provider bills etc.
So money still have to come from somewhere. Some ads definitely help, but there are adblockers as well, and ad market capacity is limited anyway.

[hotdogPi]

There are already features to pay for in Reddit (or receive for free if you make a really good post and others spend their money on you).

[TheHighwayMan3561]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

You create some very strange villains in your narratives.

The reality is also that most people don't have money to throw at every single thing that decides they have to get a cut from its users. It's a sticky situation for everybody.

The other reality is that ones like reddit and wikipedia, Linux foundation or libroffice - are big companies which need to pay their employees, maintain and power servers, pay their Internet provider bills etc.
So money still have to come from somewhere. Some ads definitely help, but there are adblockers as well, and ad market capacity is limited anyway.

I'm aware of that.

[SEWIGuy]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

You create some very strange villains in your narratives.

The reality is also that most people don't have money to throw at every single thing that decides they have to get a cut from its users. It's a sticky situation for everybody.

??? There is no villain and I have no narrative.

Businesses have to make money somehow to survive. Paywalls are a way they can do that. And of course people don't have enough money to throw at everything. Reddit, just like the New York Times or Netflix or whomever, is banking that the quality of its product means that people will pay for its use.

[wanderer2575]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

I agree in theory, but the issue is whether people decide it's worth paying for.  I follow a few Reddit forums (Choosing Beggars, Bridezillas, Wedding Drama, Clever Comebacks, We Want Plates) but none of them means enough to me that I think it's worth worth paying for.  I won't lose any sleep if I lose access to any of them tomorrow.

[thspfc]

A person that would pay for reddit exactly matches the description of a person that should not be paying for reddit.

Admittedly, if the entire site theoretically became paywalled, I might pay $1.99 a month or whatever for r/NFL during the football season. That's it though.

[TheCatalyst31]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

Nearly all of Reddit's content is user-generated, and the users aren't getting paid for that. Why would people post content for free that would then end up behind a paywall that would make money for someone else? For that matter, since the mods aren't paid either, why would people moderate the user-generated content for free so someone else can make money?

[SEWIGuy]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

Nearly all of Reddit's content is user-generated, and the users aren't getting paid for that. Why would people post content for free that would then end up behind a paywall that would make money for someone else? For that matter, since the mods aren't paid either, why would people moderate the user-generated content for free so someone else can make money?

I guess we might find out right?

[Scott5114]

Linux foundation or libroffice - are big companies which need to pay their employees, maintain and power servers, pay their Internet provider bills etc.

Comparing open-source projects like LibreOffice to big tech companies like Reddit is like comparing apples and oranges. Mainly because open-source projects generally have no profit motive.

Open-source projects like Linux and LibreOffice (and Simple Machines Forum and Gimp and Inkscape and Firefox and KDE and...) are written by volunteer programmers for fun (Linux was famously created simply because it was winter in Finland and Linus Torvalds wanted to learn how the 386 processor worked; I guess renumbering American highways and creating spurious calendars to pass the time never occurred to him) or because they need them to exist (one of the developers of Krita, a digital art program, is the author of a webcomic and programs Krita on the side any time he needs a feature the program doesn't have yet). Companies can then use these programs without needing to pay for them. However, if a company needs XYZ feature that doesn't exist yet, they have two options. They ask nicely for it and hope someone does it for free, which may be unlikely if there's a lot of people asking for features or if those features don't matter to the rest of the userbase. Or they can hire someone on their own payroll to add the feature, thus expediting the request.

Generally open-source projects don't have a lot of overhead, because they have no employees, and the server costs aren't really expensive. The Linux Foundation mostly exists to own and protect the Linux trademark, because Linus had a bad experience in the 90s with someone trying to trademark it out from under him. Normally there's a small organization that handles that, small enough that it can be handled through donations from Users Like You (Thank You). I think KDE gets part of its funding from developer get-togethers that they sell tickets for, the proceeds of which are used to pay the overhead (it would be like if Alex charged $20 to attend a roadmeet and put all the money he got into server costs).

The real hazard that kills open-source projects is not financial but rather just not being able to attract enough developer attention, and the program goes unmaintained. Sometimes that happens because there's a shinier new project to attract the attention (like Wayland starting to usurp X.org, which itself usurped XFree86, or Inkscape usurping SodiPodi), sometimes it's because the senior devs pissed everyone off (which normally leads to a fork, like AARoads Wiki), sometimes it's just because the idea became obsolete (as has happened to a lot of dead programming languages).

[vdeane]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

You create some very strange villains in your narratives.

The reality is also that most people don't have money to throw at every single thing that decides they have to get a cut from its users. It's a sticky situation for everybody.

??? There is no villain and I have no narrative.

Businesses have to make money somehow to survive. Paywalls are a way they can do that. And of course people don't have enough money to throw at everything. Reddit, just like the New York Times or Netflix or whomever, is banking that the quality of its product means that people will pay for its use.

Maybe they should have thought of that before they got everyone used to getting things for free.  A lot of enshitification could have been avoided if people had thought up their business plans first instead of saying "let's just set something up on the internet to attract users and then figure out how to monetize it later".  Inevitably the site can't be monetized without having to force people to pay or making the user experience worse.

We're also seeing this with news.  Newspapers are going under and often turning to paywalls since they just put everything up for free online without thinking of how they would make money.  Trouble is, now everyone is accustomed to reading an article here and an article there, and nobody wants to go back to committing to one source to subscribe to.  While they were there "attracting users" and leaving the monetization problem for later (if they even realized they had one... many news organizations seemed to think their website would remain a novelty and that newspapers/cable would remain the primary way users would get their content), the world changed.

[SectorZ]

Conspiracy theory: they believe at some point soon that net neutrality may be biting the dust, and in doing so a high traffic site like Reddit may be stuck footing a bill they've never had. Have to pass that buck somewhere.

[Scott5114]

Conspiracy theory: they believe at some point soon that net neutrality may be biting the dust, and in doing so a high traffic site like Reddit may be stuck footing a bill they've never had. Have to pass that buck somewhere.

That may well be part of it. However, a more obvious motivation is simply that, due to interest rates being raised to combat inflation, the era of cheap money is over. You can't just take out a loan for operating expenses the way you could through the 2010s.

This is part of why I harp on people to actually take their own pictures of road related stuff and not just rely on GSV for everything, incidentally. GSV is really cool and a valuable tool for our community, but it's also not entirely clear how much it pays for itself. Google could just delete it if they ever decided it cost them more than it was worth.

[SEWIGuy]

And I'm not sure why people expect they should get it for free.

You create some very strange villains in your narratives.

The reality is also that most people don't have money to throw at every single thing that decides they have to get a cut from its users. It's a sticky situation for everybody.

??? There is no villain and I have no narrative.

Businesses have to make money somehow to survive. Paywalls are a way they can do that. And of course people don't have enough money to throw at everything. Reddit, just like the New York Times or Netflix or whomever, is banking that the quality of its product means that people will pay for its use.

Maybe they should have thought of that before they got everyone used to getting things for free.  A lot of enshitification could have been avoided if people had thought up their business plans first instead of saying "let's just set something up on the internet to attract users and then figure out how to monetize it later".  Inevitably the site can't be monetized without having to force people to pay or making the user experience worse.

We're also seeing this with news.  Newspapers are going under and often turning to paywalls since they just put everything up for free online without thinking of how they would make money.  Trouble is, now everyone is accustomed to reading an article here and an article there, and nobody wants to go back to committing to one source to subscribe to.  While they were there "attracting users" and leaving the monetization problem for later (if they even realized they had one... many news organizations seemed to think their website would remain a novelty and that newspapers/cable would remain the primary way users would get their content), the world changed.

Your first paragraph makes no sense from a business perspective. No one is going to sign up for a subscribtion Reddit-type site when it launches because it has no value. The users, and the interaction between them, is what provides the value. Setting up the site....attracting users and the value they bring...and then figuring out how exactly to monetize it IS the business plan.

Regarding your second, I think you are correct that newspapers intially thought that their websites would be more of a novelty but they had an essential problem before the internet came around. They made most of their revenue in classifieds and not subscriptions - in many ways people had decided their content wasn't worth the cost long ago. The internet absolutely killed off their main revenue source.

That being said, there is still room for news sites that provide quality content. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, etc. are all "traditional" publications that have done fairly well with attracting users to their site. But there are also a ton of quality substack (or similar) publications where people will pay for quality content.

Part of the problem with newspapers like Gannett, is that they just cut costs instead of investing in content. And their web experience is awful. Sites that look like the 1990s with constant pop up ads is not what users want. Why would I pay for that?

[thspfc]

Maybe they should have thought of that before they got everyone used to getting things for free.  A lot of enshitification could have been avoided if people had thought up their business plans first instead of saying "let's just set something up on the internet to attract users and then figure out how to monetize it later".

Do you think this is realistic?

[formulanone]

Web popularity tends to work against itself: The perpetual clash over the information 100% provided by users and the owners, programmers, hosting expenses means we'll probably just get even more obnoxious advertising.

Let me guess, three free views a month, and then you have to pay a monthly fee to see anything else. So the first click is wasted on something that could have found on the web if they did 15 minutes of research, the second click is some stranger just bragging without much of any useful insight, and the third one was just a rehashed argument with a comment string about the friends we made along the way.

I can't see the paid model working well; the incentive would be canvassing more umpteen-times-seen junk for "karma" and then more misinformation gets floated to the top, instead of drowned out, as the model generally works (except for hive-mind issues).

I've found the r/photography and related subs are also quite useful. There's plenty of technical information out there on the web but when it's one-sided, used for shock-and-awe, and promotion-based, my skepticism kicks in. You get a lot more experience and know-how from people who have used items for the long term, not just long enough to get the YouTube video published. And there's really no replacement for r/justrolledintotheshop...but I also should curtail how much I browse it some days...

[jeffandnicole]

Regarding your second, I think you are correct that newspapers intially thought that their websites would be more of a novelty but they had an essential problem before the internet came around. They made most of their revenue in classifieds and not subscriptions - in many ways people had decided their content wasn't worth the cost long ago. The internet absolutely killed off their main revenue source.

That being said, there is still room for news sites that provide quality content. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, etc. are all "traditional" publications that have done fairly well with attracting users to their site. But there are also a ton of quality substack (or similar) publications where people will pay for quality content.

Many newspapers were very late to finding their place on the internet. Using the example of classifieds, Craigslist and other sites where people could sell stuff and list it for free beat anything newspapers were offering. Job sites and their associated listings are another example.

Newspapers thought of themselves as a "you need us" type business. When it was found people could do things cheaper, newspapers respondwd not by doing what they do better, but by cutting staff and eliminating the very things people bought newspapers for.

When the Eagles won the Superbowl,  I expected the Philadelphia Inquirer would have a lot of stories about ths game. What I didn't expect was for them to raise the price of the paper from $2.95 to $6.95. And they really didn't have that much in the paper about the game.  Just absolutely horrible goodwill that'll be remembered and will hurt future sales.

[Takumi]

I run a couple smallish car-related subreddits and don't see the benefit of this for either the user or the sub.

I can't see the paid model working well; the incentive would be canvassing more umpteen-times-seen junk for "karma" and then more misinformation gets floated to the top, instead of drowned out, as the model generally works (except for hive-mind issues).

That already happens now with repost bots and other spambots.

[LilianaUwU]

I run a couple smallish car-related subreddits and don't see the benefit of this for either the user or the sub.

I know for a fact that I won't make anything in the subreddit I own locked behind a paywall. If they force me, I'm out.