4 ms·

Reddit plans to lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says

67 points by amichail 2y ago

duxup 2y ago
Would this be a sort of "new type of subredit"? Because subs I like now ... nobody is interested in talking to a small subset of the sub. And content is so variable that I don't see a reason to pay money to see better cat memes. I just find a new free sub if needed.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  I suspect that this will end up applying to 18+ Reddit, it would make them compliant with the latest "ID up" hotness, and create a much-needed revenue stream. I don't think it will work well, in fact I can't imagine many people paying for access to what's left of Reddit at all, but they're a public company and have to at least try to generate an income now.
  - duxup 2y ago
    Oh that would make sense. My subs are spammed by onlyfans type content ... a lot.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It would really be the end of the amateur exhibitionist community there though. This is already under heavy pressure from all the OnlyFans teasers. But hopefully some of them will find their way to Lemmynsfw. Ps for what it's worth I used to actually subscribe to Reddit. When it was called Reddit gold. But at some point they more than doubled the price and gave you crap tokens to give away to other people. I didn't want to do that and didn't want to pay so much so I quit. I think they can get a lot more subscribers if they just lowered the price somewhat.
    - stevenicr 2y ago
      1st ddg result shows /post/151 and that page is a cloudflare 504 gateway timeout page. Maybe too many people have already discovered it.
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        It's working fine, https://lemmynsfw.com/ https://lemmynsfw.com/ (note: obviously very NSFW!) Maybe they are blocking crawlers or something.
    - dannyphantom 2y ago
      Do you remember when buying Reddit gold gave you a coupon to buy beef jerky on that one website? It was a much better time on that website when it was still niche and felt (at least to me) like a "real community". There is a comment here that I regularly look back at as it remains evergreen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31363953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31363953 > My take is, if a community is constrained by quality (eg moderation, self-selecting invite-only etc) then the only way it grows is by lowering the threshold. Inevitably that means lower quality content. > To some extent, more people can make up for it. Eg if I go from 10 excellent artists to 1000 good ones, chances are that the top 10% artwork created actually gets better. > But eventually if you grow by lowering quality, then, well, quality drops. > I suppose for very small societies, they may be limited by discoverability/cliquiness and not quality, so their growth doesn’t mesh with quality and so they could also get better with size. > Note, “quality” doesn’t have to mean good/bad but also just “property”. When Facebook started, it was for kids from elite schools. It then gradually diluted that by lowering that particular bar. Then it was for kids from all schools. Then young people. Then their parents too. Clearly, it’s far from dying in absolute terms, but it’s certainly no longer what it initially was. To many initial users, it’s as good as dead though.
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        Uhh no I don't remember the jerky thing but I guess that was US only. We don't even have beef jerky in these parts (save for import stores) But yeah it was a better time.
  - fullshark 2y ago
    That would make them explicitly pornographers would it not? I think that's not the business they want to be in.
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      It's the business they've been in for quite a while, at least in part. If you run a site that's a quarter pornography, you're a pornographer right? Granted that's by number of subs, we don't know what percentage of traffic/engagement is driven by porn, but with a quarter of the site dedicated to the stuff it must be substantial. And frankly at this point I think Reddit would be happy to be in some kind of business that makes money, any kind of business.
      - fullshark 2y ago
        Yeah but it's different if you have an explicit porn income stream versus having a platform that has porn on it. I think Apple would have to ban their app for example if they did this. Advertisers would not want to advertise on the porn app either.
        EA-3167 2y ago
        They could spin it as "protecting children" by "putting a paywall on explicit material" rather than "We are a porn app." "The vast majority of our content is suitable for all ages, but out of concern for the minority that isn't and the evolving legal landscape, we felt that the best thing to do was silo our 18+ content. After looking at ways to implement this, while still respecting user privacy, our team came to the conclusion that a paywall is by far the most reliable method." Sure it's bs, but that's standard for this world.
vaxman 2y ago
"What does lock the barn door after the cows have left mean?" <creepy autocorrect begins typing at the speed of a 300bps modem...>
- pockmarked19 2y ago
  That's a very baud joke.
yesfitz 2y ago
The announcements of paywalled subreddits and supporting intra-subreddit commerce seem like a recipe to compete with Patreon. If Reddit offered community management, payment processing, and content hosting, and undercut Patreon's 8% fee, I think it's a real winner. The benefit to Reddit is that they get a user in their ecosystem, looking at ads, subscribing to more subreddits, etc.
ch71r22 2y ago
What Reddit alternatives are people using now?
- robotnikman 2y ago
  Lemmy has been good for me, though the population is still small. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you are looking for.
- gitprolinux 2y ago
  Someday chatddit.com if I code it a bit.
p2detar 2y ago
I want Reddit to fail. I do visit it and use it, but being a mod for an year and seeing the sub I was in attacked by rival subs and their community (including mods) and eventually banned by reddit admins was just mind boggling to me. Never have I seen such unfairness and at the end of the day, Reddit admins don't care. If you mod a small sub (10k or so), you're irrelevant. I guess because of ads revenue and clicks they favor big subs even thou their community and mods can be openly aggressive. Reddit can go to hell. edit: sorry for the rant, I guess I needed to vent.
- seasluggy 2y ago
  [dead]
- EA-3167 2y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, what was the sub that you were a mod of?
  - p2detar 2y ago
    I don't want to share it because it may connect this profile with it. I just wanna say - there was an active core in this rival sub that was googling people, searching for their real identities on any social network. A guy in our community (non-mod) had somebody call at their workplace and talk to their HR with the intent of getting them fired. Some people can be sick in their mind.
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      That's very fair, in any case I'm sorry to hear that you were so mistreated, I wish I could say that it surprised me. People love to blame the various mods, but in my opinion it was always the admins that were the problem. Of course the buck ultimately rests with Spez, which is a sentence no one wants to type.
    - fullshark 2y ago
      I'm fairly convinced the vast majority of internet media / posts are made by people with severe mental issues. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
randombits0 2y ago
Reddit only exists because of Digg 4.0. Let them find out the hard way.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
rcbdev 2y ago
When 8chan (and think of it what you may) shut down, it marked the definite end of the user-created forum/board/sub model. This system cannot work in today's internet.
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  4chan now makes people wait 5 minutes before posting anything.
  - _zagj 2y ago
    Only for the initial post.
    - the_real_cher 2y ago
      Oh really? I just gave up posting there. Good to know.
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        Looks like the filter worked as expected then.
        the_real_cher 2y ago
        It only works because of its huge userbase from NOT having a filter for so many years lol
unsupp0rted 2y ago
It's a different time now- I wonder if Reddit could get away with paywalls. They've gotten away with everything else so far. Reddit is already unrecognizable to me compared to long ago, when the narwhal still bacon'd at midnight. I mean I still use "Old Reddit" for the UI, but the content and commenters are entirely the opposite of what Reddit once was. It's like in Mad Max when the kids pass on an oral history of the "before times" of Captain Walker, in broad strokes that are largely made-up. Their reality is a fabrication, and it's impossible for anybody to tell them so. And they like their reality and heck maybe they'll pay to keep liking it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thisislife2 2y ago
Redditors are laughing at the idea - https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ipe74t/reddit_plans_to_lock_some_content_behind_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ipe74t/reddit_... https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1ipfctm/reddit_plans_to_lock_some_content_behind_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1ipfctm/reddit...
waltercool 2y ago
Cool They already paywall people behind a VPN, so don't care. If you like Reddit but you complain about their decisions, I would recommend to use Lemmy instead.
rkagerer 2y ago
Good riddance. Shame to see another swath of the internet go to crap, but I'm looking forward to them being supplanted by a better upstart.

67 points by amichail 2y ago

Would this be a sort of "new type of subredit"? Because subs I like now ... nobody is interested in talking to a small subset of the sub. And content is so variable that I don't see a reason to pay money to see better cat memes. I just find a new free sub if needed.

EA-3167 2y ago
I suspect that this will end up applying to 18+ Reddit, it would make them compliant with the latest "ID up" hotness, and create a much-needed revenue stream. I don't think it will work well, in fact I can't imagine many people paying for access to what's left of Reddit at all, but they're a public company and have to at least try to generate an income now.
- duxup 2y ago
  Oh that would make sense. My subs are spammed by onlyfans type content ... a lot.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  It would really be the end of the amateur exhibitionist community there though. This is already under heavy pressure from all the OnlyFans teasers. But hopefully some of them will find their way to Lemmynsfw. Ps for what it's worth I used to actually subscribe to Reddit. When it was called Reddit gold. But at some point they more than doubled the price and gave you crap tokens to give away to other people. I didn't want to do that and didn't want to pay so much so I quit. I think they can get a lot more subscribers if they just lowered the price somewhat.
  - stevenicr 2y ago
    1st ddg result shows /post/151 and that page is a cloudflare 504 gateway timeout page. Maybe too many people have already discovered it.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      It's working fine, https://lemmynsfw.com/ https://lemmynsfw.com/ (note: obviously very NSFW!) Maybe they are blocking crawlers or something.
  - dannyphantom 2y ago
    Do you remember when buying Reddit gold gave you a coupon to buy beef jerky on that one website? It was a much better time on that website when it was still niche and felt (at least to me) like a "real community". There is a comment here that I regularly look back at as it remains evergreen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31363953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31363953 > My take is, if a community is constrained by quality (eg moderation, self-selecting invite-only etc) then the only way it grows is by lowering the threshold. Inevitably that means lower quality content. > To some extent, more people can make up for it. Eg if I go from 10 excellent artists to 1000 good ones, chances are that the top 10% artwork created actually gets better. > But eventually if you grow by lowering quality, then, well, quality drops. > I suppose for very small societies, they may be limited by discoverability/cliquiness and not quality, so their growth doesn’t mesh with quality and so they could also get better with size. > Note, “quality” doesn’t have to mean good/bad but also just “property”. When Facebook started, it was for kids from elite schools. It then gradually diluted that by lowering that particular bar. Then it was for kids from all schools. Then young people. Then their parents too. Clearly, it’s far from dying in absolute terms, but it’s certainly no longer what it initially was. To many initial users, it’s as good as dead though.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Uhh no I don't remember the jerky thing but I guess that was US only. We don't even have beef jerky in these parts (save for import stores) But yeah it was a better time.
- fullshark 2y ago
  That would make them explicitly pornographers would it not? I think that's not the business they want to be in.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    It's the business they've been in for quite a while, at least in part. If you run a site that's a quarter pornography, you're a pornographer right? Granted that's by number of subs, we don't know what percentage of traffic/engagement is driven by porn, but with a quarter of the site dedicated to the stuff it must be substantial. And frankly at this point I think Reddit would be happy to be in some kind of business that makes money, any kind of business.
    - fullshark 2y ago
      Yeah but it's different if you have an explicit porn income stream versus having a platform that has porn on it. I think Apple would have to ban their app for example if they did this. Advertisers would not want to advertise on the porn app either.
      - EA-3167 2y ago
        They could spin it as "protecting children" by "putting a paywall on explicit material" rather than "We are a porn app." "The vast majority of our content is suitable for all ages, but out of concern for the minority that isn't and the evolving legal landscape, we felt that the best thing to do was silo our 18+ content. After looking at ways to implement this, while still respecting user privacy, our team came to the conclusion that a paywall is by far the most reliable method." Sure it's bs, but that's standard for this world.

vaxman 2y ago

"What does lock the barn door after the cows have left mean?" <creepy autocorrect begins typing at the speed of a 300bps modem...>

pockmarked19 2y ago
That's a very baud joke.

yesfitz 2y ago

The announcements of paywalled subreddits and supporting intra-subreddit commerce seem like a recipe to compete with Patreon. If Reddit offered community management, payment processing, and content hosting, and undercut Patreon's 8% fee, I think it's a real winner. The benefit to Reddit is that they get a user in their ecosystem, looking at ads, subscribing to more subreddits, etc.

ch71r22 2y ago

What Reddit alternatives are people using now?

robotnikman 2y ago
Lemmy has been good for me, though the population is still small. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you are looking for.
gitprolinux 2y ago
Someday chatddit.com if I code it a bit.

p2detar 2y ago

I want Reddit to fail. I do visit it and use it, but being a mod for an year and seeing the sub I was in attacked by rival subs and their community (including mods) and eventually banned by reddit admins was just mind boggling to me. Never have I seen such unfairness and at the end of the day, Reddit admins don't care. If you mod a small sub (10k or so), you're irrelevant. I guess because of ads revenue and clicks they favor big subs even thou their community and mods can be openly aggressive. Reddit can go to hell. edit: sorry for the rant, I guess I needed to vent.

seasluggy 2y ago
[dead]
EA-3167 2y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what was the sub that you were a mod of?
- p2detar 2y ago
  I don't want to share it because it may connect this profile with it. I just wanna say - there was an active core in this rival sub that was googling people, searching for their real identities on any social network. A guy in our community (non-mod) had somebody call at their workplace and talk to their HR with the intent of getting them fired. Some people can be sick in their mind.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    That's very fair, in any case I'm sorry to hear that you were so mistreated, I wish I could say that it surprised me. People love to blame the various mods, but in my opinion it was always the admins that were the problem. Of course the buck ultimately rests with Spez, which is a sentence no one wants to type.
  - fullshark 2y ago
    I'm fairly convinced the vast majority of internet media / posts are made by people with severe mental issues. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

randombits0 2y ago

Reddit only exists because of Digg 4.0. Let them find out the hard way.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

rcbdev 2y ago

When 8chan (and think of it what you may) shut down, it marked the definite end of the user-created forum/board/sub model. This system cannot work in today's internet.

the_real_cher 2y ago
4chan now makes people wait 5 minutes before posting anything.
- _zagj 2y ago
  Only for the initial post.
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    Oh really? I just gave up posting there. Good to know.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      Looks like the filter worked as expected then.
      - the_real_cher 2y ago
        It only works because of its huge userbase from NOT having a filter for so many years lol

unsupp0rted 2y ago

It's a different time now- I wonder if Reddit could get away with paywalls. They've gotten away with everything else so far. Reddit is already unrecognizable to me compared to long ago, when the narwhal still bacon'd at midnight. I mean I still use "Old Reddit" for the UI, but the content and commenters are entirely the opposite of what Reddit once was. It's like in Mad Max when the kids pass on an oral history of the "before times" of Captain Walker, in broad strokes that are largely made-up. Their reality is a fabrication, and it's impossible for anybody to tell them so. And they like their reality and heck maybe they'll pay to keep liking it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thisislife2 2y ago

Redditors are laughing at the idea - https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ipe74t/reddit_plans_to_lock_some_content_behind_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ipe74t/reddit_... https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1ipfctm/reddit_plans_to_lock_some_content_behind_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1ipfctm/reddit...

waltercool 2y ago

Cool They already paywall people behind a VPN, so don't care. If you like Reddit but you complain about their decisions, I would recommend to use Lemmy instead.

rkagerer 2y ago

Good riddance. Shame to see another swath of the internet go to crap, but I'm looking forward to them being supplanted by a better upstart.