- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
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.
That dude is really trying to kill his own platform, isn’t he?
Taking lessons from Elon.
Maybe they need to charge users a monthly fee and add blue check marks. Lol
So Reddit gold?
Wasn’t Huffman singing Elon’s praises after the Twitter purchase?
I remember that too, but am not that sure…
Oh yeah, he did! https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700
Doing right as his role model!
Huffman is a full on Musketeer.
Quarterly reports demand that line go up.
The line must always go up.
The way I interpret what he is suggesting is that they are planning on going after Patreon type websites that provide a private paid for space for a creator’s supporters. It’s unlikely, but they could also pretty easily go after OF to keep that traffic on site.
Lot of wishful thinking in here. Fact is, Reddit isn’t going anywhere.
It was wishful thinking when people revolted for 3 days against the API going away. What happened? Nothing. People were back to Reddit as normal a week later. Reddit’s userbase has only grown since then. People will complain to the ends of the Earth but there’s no amount of abuse you can levy at the them that will convince them to make the minor inconvenience of moving to a different platform. See: Twitter.
Lemmy’s largest userbase growth of all time, ever, happened during the reddit API fiasco.
Did some people leave? Sure. Any actual significant portion? No, not even a little.
It’s kind of indicative of how bad the web has gotten that twitter and reddit still have users. Digg completely imploded over much less than this. Just that back in 2010, there was somewhere else to go.
inb4 Lemmy. I get it, but we’re not there yet.
Short-term gains > *
The enshittification must go on!