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Reddit plans to lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says | Reddit executives also discussed how they might introduce more ads into the social media platform (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 days ago by ForgottenFlux to c/technology

258 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] Brown_dude69 44 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Just came to lemmy again after learning this shit!! mass exodus coming soon

[–] CrowAirbrush 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I wouldn't be too sure just yet, seeing how annoying youtube and it's ads have gotten yet it isn't replaced still.

We might have an increase, but plenty will never leave.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Youtube is not easily replacible.

Creating quality videos are much more difficult than memes on Reddit/Lemmy type of sites.

No content creators is gonna move because of the issue of monitization. And most couldn't care less about Youtube's enshittification. You cant say "Just use Peertube" when there are like nothing interesting to watch. It's like trying to stop watching popular Movies / TV shows because "big corp media bad". Piracy would be the best mitigation in the Movies / TV situation, and that in Youtube's situation is just using an adblocker.

In contast, Reddit/Lemmy type of sites are just strangers talking to strangers. You are moving from Stanger Group A to Stranger Group B. It's the easiest transition ever.

Not to mention, the storage for Lemmy instances is like in the GBs. Get a 1TB harddrive and you're good for a long time. A Youtube replacement? On you're gonna need PETABYTES, and all the bandwith to serve the content.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

There’s not the same amount of content as YT, but have a look at the pinned post in this community about channels to follow: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

YouTube hasn't been replaced because adblockers still work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Youtube is probably the most difficult platform on the internet to replace. Video content delivery is extremely resource heavy and technically complicated, especially once you start to scale. Many, many competitors have attempted it over the years, and while some found their niche, none of them have achieved anywhere close to the scale of Youtube.

It took decades of Youtube to become profitable, only doing so after achieving mind-boggling economy of scale. The majority of humans on earth have used Youtube. About half of all (global) internet users use it monthly. I don't know if any other platform can claim stats like that.

Youtube is one of those platforms that only exists because it got a head start in the unique conditions of the early internet. I don't know if it's even possible to create a true competitor, though I could see multiple platforms taking over different niches.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

This is what people always seen to ignore about YouTube. It's not just another database frontend to use generated content. That is definitely part of it, but behind that is probably the largest public facing content library on the Internet with a full video recoding infrastructure attached. YouTube is the platform for which I understand that they need to monetize.

Sure, nowadays there's also tiktok as another big video service. But I like to think that YouTube is way bigger in most metrics.

[–] Grassgrowz 4 points 4 days ago

same here lol. If they paywall subreddits ive been visiting for the past FOURTEEN years, i will lose my shit. by throwing it at the reddit headquarters.