Reddit will lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says
arstechnica.com
How will Reddit generate content for paid-for subreddits?
    • major_jellyfish@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      6 days ago

      Can confirm. That’s why im here. Figured I’d just jump earlier with the whole avoiding US companies vibe too.

    • Dogsoftulkas@lemm.ee
      7·
      6 days ago

      Yep, hi, here am I. Usually I think news like these are fearmongering for clickbait, like those old “Facebook is going to be paiiidd!” (As if “being free” wasn’t at the very core of its appeal and selling point) but reading the room this day and age I don’t think I’d be that surprise if a change like that did happen to Reddit. The only good think about this shitstorm of an age is that it made me find the fediverse and I will never forgive myself for not caring enough to find it earlier.

      • shneancy@lemmy.world
        6·
        6 days ago

        a few days ago i saw how r/redditalternatives has only “lemmy bad!” posts and i know for a fact folks here have been spreading the word about lemmy in a positive way so don’t blame yourself, reddit has been actively censoring any good thing said about lemmy or the fediverse in general

        i looked marginally deeper into this and it’s apparently all the way to shadow bans :) link

        • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          seems like its posted around the same time reddit started banning people in large numbers.

        • Dogsoftulkas@lemm.ee
          5·
          6 days ago

          Oh, so that’s why I saw some post about reddit alternatives and the person replying had to mask lemmy. Oh wow.

    • sudo@lemdro.idEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Same, just got fed up about all this bullshit and degoogled every device in my life, as time passes we get more and more exploited by these giant companies.

  • SilentKettle@lemmy.wtf
    17·
    6 days ago

    Seems like a bad time to be introducing such a thing in the immediate future when European users are already seeking out alternatives to US tech giants and US users are losing their jobs and facing rising grocery prices.

    • ClarkGrizwald@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 days ago

      I deleted my history on reddit (10+ years) and am moving over here. Still figuring out how to find the communities I want but I’ll get it.

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      i think they will have a youtube/patreon type thing going on, free content on youtube, while thier patreon gets"exclusive content"

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
    6·
    6 days ago

    To be honest, this is actually a genius move when it comes to NSFW content.

    Almost every pornographic sub has already been astroturfed by e-girls plugging their OnlyFans and Fansly links. Giving them the ability to paywall their content directly on Reddit effectively cuts out the middle-man and allows Reddit to undercut the likes of OF and Fansly with lower transaction fees.

    • Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml
      3·
      6 days ago

      Maybe yes, but realistically no. It’s open source, so anyone could make their own clone of it with whatever monetization methods they want. If you ran an instance, you could also charge people to post on it. That said, with the way Lemmy is organized, people would just leave the offending instance for a different one.

      • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Reddit’s mechanics are not the whole story about why it became the juggernaut it is, the platform of people making their own forums isn’t new. What happened was a few major sites like Digg, Somethingawful, Fark, 4chan and a lot of old-school staples on the internet from the 90’s on through the 2010’s suddenly lost popularity as their user base matured at the same time reddit moved in. There were other factors, sure I was around during it all but it’s all quite complicated, but I’m pretty sure if reddit broadly started returning 404’s tomorrow, Lemmy would see a slight jump in users but people are just going to want the next new thing and it would be some entirely new thing that captures the world’s online browsing.

        I’ve never seen a website replace another by copying it’s layout and mechanics. I’ve seen a lot of popular platforms die, but never resurrect in the same form, people always want something novel and they want to feel like they’re getting in ground-floor on something special. Reddit still offers that by giving users a chance to contribute early to conversations about current events, but if there were a new system that gave people a similar system and found some other way to give users a little serotonin boost like the votes do, then it would slay reddit pretty handedly.

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 days ago

      there’s probably a way to monetise everything but with the numbers of Linux people (yes we know you use arch shush) and anti-capitalists, i think we’re safe?

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      This site isn’t going to get popular enough to worry about. It’s large, sure, but people go to reddit because the sheer volume of users means your chances of catching breaking stories or real contributions by witnesses to events, is just much higher, there’s more of everything, and this is why they want to bleed it dry.

    • Kaput@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 days ago

      Just don’t get too attached, Reddit was Digg’s liferaft… Once Thing go to shit, move on.

    • Rawdogthatexe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      That would probably depend on the instance creators. Donations are paying the way so far, but maybe someone will test out an instance with a registration fee or something. I don’t see that working out unless every other instance is in dire straits and super unstable because they’re running out of money.

  • Etterra@discuss.onlineEnglish
    83·
    6 days ago

    Just remember, when the barrier to entry is low then the quality of participants declines.

    Edit: I just realized that I should have specified an intellectual barrier. In the case of Lemmy that’s the minuscule technical understanding or research ability needed to sign up and get on an instance. It’s amazing how just that tiny obstructions helps keep out the dumbest of Reddit users.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    227·
    8 days ago

    Some subreddits, like r/Watchexchange, where Redditors “buy, sell or trade watches,” according to the subreddit’s description, are centered on transactions. Huffman said the fact that users are already “transacting on Reddit kind of opens the door” for such monetization.

    “Hey! How dare you exchange things with each other without giving us a cut!”

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      thats why they have been aggressively going after OF subs/bots this month, they arnt getting a slice from the profit they are earning externally. from another forum,(where people flee after getting banned this way) alot of them lost tons of accts recently. yup one of my accts was temp ban for using the report button, how many is too much? it depends on the mod and the sub, if they dont like that you are reporting are reporting a person that should be reported, or the comment, you get banned for report abuse. these bans seems much severe than a subreddit ban.

    • [email protected]@sh.itjust.works
      98·
      8 days ago

      Whole lot of “Reddit, what are you going to do about the scammers now that we’re paying you?” posts are coming. The answer is nothing. They’ll do nothing.

      Actually, they’ll write their lack of culpability more explicitly into the ToS, and then do nothing.

      • finder@lemmy.world
        6·
        7 days ago

        Actually, they’ll write their lack of culpability more explicitly into the ToS, and then do nothing.

        Ugh, aCtUaLly the almighty Reddit Admins and janitors Moderators will act decisively to ban anyone who dares use the report button.

    • CluckN@lemmy.world
      40·
      8 days ago

      I’m wondering how they would charge people. Who would pay for a subreddit they’ve never been to? Could a non-paying user view the subreddit but be unable to post/comment?

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        could be something like a private sub, where only approved members can enter.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
        36·
        8 days ago

        Could a non-paying user view the subreddit but be unable to post/comment?

        Doubtful. If I remember the statistic correctly, 95% of social media users are lurkers. Greedy Little Pigboy wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to milk the remaining 19/20 users.

      • Obelix@feddit.org
        16·
        8 days ago

        Let’s be honest - this will kill many subreddits. Of course some mods will start a paid subreddit next to an existing one and try to bring their users to subscribe. So expect those subs to become like those YouTubers who are constantly trying to push you to their Patreon.

        • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          7 days ago

          or they allowed subs, but with immense amount of ads: require to watch video, or watch this ad for a certain of time to use it for free. just basing it off how aggressively youtube, facebook does it.

      • Yppm@lemy.lolEnglish
        8·
        8 days ago

        Could easily see certain subreddits being like OF or Patreon. Pay for access to content. Pretty tried and true business model and it will probably work well enough to keep it around.

        Even YouTube has “memberships” to channels now where you get bonus content and stuff.

        The people that are interested will pay and those that aren’t won’t.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
    123·
    8 days ago

    Yes let’s put a site that consists pretty much entirely of user-created content behind a paywall, what could possibly go wrong?

      • icmpecho@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        was Quora ever good? I joined the internet in like 2019 and it’s always been garbage to me, did I miss its golden age?

        • d00ery@lemmy.world
          3·
          6 days ago

          Anecdotally, I remember using it for answers to things about probably business, government, and certain how-to’s. I also remember when the pop-over banner started covering up half the answers and that’s around the time I stopped.

          Here’s a post discussing quora from Dec 2018.

          all philosophical views aside, there are some really core issues that got me to stop using Quora and unfortunately the case to stop using it is made by the site itself:

          • The content quality has deteriorated significantly since the site’s inception. The content is far cheaper than before and far less interesting in very obvious ways.

          • Moderation systems have not done a good job of growing the site as a community. The site has lost the character that drew many people to it in the first place.

          • The machine learning models terribly over-fit to user signals, creating a frustrating experience.

          These 3 core issues with the site are what got me to gradually stop using it as someone who was initially an early adopter.

          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644489

          • icmpecho@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            6 days ago

            thank you for the explainer, this is very interesting. seems reddit is following along this path lol

        • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
          2·
          6 days ago

          Once upon a time, Quora was okay, before they started paying people to generate a bunch of yahoo answers questions / AI slop questions, and then fucked with the UI and made their site into a virtually unusable mess.

      • vegantomato@lemmy.world
        18·
        8 days ago

        Don’t lie. When 70% of your search results are Quora, you are going to click, you are going to encounter the login banner, you are going to rage, and you are going to click away.

        • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
          14·
          8 days ago

          Nope, those “answers” didn’t help even once, so now they’re filtered out of search results, and DNS banned. Quora does not appear on my devices.

          • RobotsLeftHand@lemmy.world
            6·
            8 days ago

            I’ve had some help from Quora, but overall I feel it wastes my time a lot more than not. And I’ve never had an instance where only Quora had the answer.

        • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
          7·
          8 days ago

          Even when the login banner doesn’t appear, lately all the answers are “Hm, it appears that you are trying to do [question title]. To do [question title], [basic bitch advice]. Hope this helps!” Style AI slop.
          When it isn’t the built-in AI helper doing it, it’s the users blatantly copying from different chatbots