this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 hours ago

Do it, please, the subreddits need to migrate here

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 8 points 2 hours ago

You’re gonna pay the mods then, right?

Right?

[–] sma3in 4 points 2 hours ago

fuck /u/spez

[–] CastorSulMush 18 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

There are ads in comments now?

[–] BitsAndBites 6 points 2 hours ago

Yep, ads masquerading as comments. It's awful. I'm so glad I moved to Lemmy.

[–] underfreyja 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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 insane 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...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Yea ads have been in comments for at least a year now

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I'm not on Reddit much these days but every time I am and I see threads with people discussing these Reddit policy changes Lemmy gets mentioned. Usually with people complaining they already tried or couldn't figure it out or that it isn't good enough...

I think as the enshittification marches on they'll be some more exodus from Reddit but generally I think everyone is just getting used to all online social media being a total corporate disaster.

[–] Butterpaderp 5 points 3 hours ago

It's not that everyone's getting used to the current hellscape of the internet. Kids born today have never experienced a world without it. I watched my niece playing on my dad's phone, and she was just blasting through every single ad, interacting with every ad until it took her to the install page, and then she moved on to the next ad. People were upset about the tiktok ban cause they didnt care about their data. Shit like that is wild to me, coming from the early internet era.

Unless countries step up with better tech laws, I only see it getting worse from here.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I just joined yesterday because of this article. Honestly I feel like I’m using Apollo to access Reddit again. My Reddit account was 12 years old and I deleted it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago

Oh god, you’ve out me down a rabbit hole. Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago
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[–] Littux 10 points 7 hours ago

r/spezholedesign

[–] [email protected] 57 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Ok tidy up this place. We have visitors coming soon.

[–] robbinhood 16 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The announcement is why I created a username here. I doubt I'm coming alone.

[–] FinishingDutch 6 points 10 hours ago

Welcome! We can definitely still use a few more people, especially if they’re willing to contribute to content.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Still no frictionless account migration...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

What's to migrate other than your name? My reddit usage was limited to lurking so I genuinely don't know.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

History, reputation, relationships (this a nuch bigger problem on mastofon) (yes migration as a lurker is easy)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

well Hexbear is just about gone so that should help

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

great timing for them to lose both of their domains

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 hours ago

Another day of thanking my past self for leaving

[–] Bonskreeskreeskree 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

In order for lemmy (or any alternative) to really take off, efforts need to be made to mass migrate content. The biggest inhibitor of adoption is the lack of communities, and the user submitted info backing them. Not only would it be beneficial for alternatives to have this on their servers, efforts should be made to index and back up the mountain of how to and general hyper specific sub reddit information for the good of society. The world already lost so much during the last purge of users comments and posts, further enshitification of reddit will only lead to more getting lost. Are any groups working to scrape all (or the most important data) from reddit and break it out in a searchable format here?

[–] merari42 4 points 8 hours ago

That is something that some tech savy Lemmy users could already easily do. I repost stuff from all over the web. But some systematic preservation of good old subreddits aught to be automated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

It does seem like a lot of ads for "3% of inventory". I can't ever see a reason to pay for a subreddit.

[–] Cheems 3 points 7 hours ago

Wave incoming

[–] Kalkarino 5 points 9 hours ago

It’s crazy how everything slowly turns into shit in the end

[–] mrhenry77 7 points 11 hours ago

great, hopefully more people leave the sinking ship

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