Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise...
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.
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“I think the existing, altruistic, free version of Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just the way it has,” Huffman said.
There's nothing 'altruistic' about reddit
If anything, they're the ones benefiting from altruistic users giving them free labor to profit off of.
Pretty much, when they removed search engines who wouldn't pay them was the final straw and I went back to reddit (after not being there since the API debacle) 1 last time and replaced all my 26,000 karma worth of comments with "Comment removed in protest of Reddit blocking search engines." Took me a while, but meh, if they want to hasten its enshitification, I don't mind doing my part.
They have an edit history for every piece of content on the site. All you've done is post a giant flagpole on all your content stating "this account was previously owned by a real live human" and increased the value of those comments for AI scraping. Unfortunately your protest has done nothing but help them.
The best way to stick it to reddit these days is to not interact with it at all. Don't add to their data store, don't give them traffic, don't click on them in search results. Don't protest-edit your content because you're just helping them separate wheat from chaff.
Don’t protest-edit your content because you’re just helping them separate wheat from chaff.
How about just replace some of your content with this stuff from time to time.
Spare a thought for those that have bought Reddit Gold over the years, only to then discover just how much the CEO was paid, up against how much Reddit actually makes as a platform.
It's not just free labour. They're literally paying him.
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 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.