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.
The internet feels post-apocalyptic now. I no longer have any social media accounts (does lemmy count?) . Places that I spent over a decade on now feel so hostile and foreign. I joined reddit as a teenager wanting to read f7u12 comics, and now reddit feels like a total outrage machine. I mean the ads are crap but the algorithm doesn’t show me content I WANT to see anymore. It just shows me videos of car accidents and street fights and other things that get my cortisol levels up. Blocking subreddits straight up doesnt work. I like that on lemmy I can just filter only by the communities I subscribe to
I’ve been online since the late 80s and the Internet, generally speaking, has gone to shit. I’ve been on Reddit for 16 years and it’s been going down the tubes for a while now. Too many people, overzealous mods and now a soft paywall? Yeah, I’m done.
Yes same. I don’t want to be stressed out by the internet anymore. I want internet for millennials back.
Nice to meet you, everyone’s been so lovely thus far.
Same thing here… I only just discovered Lemmy. I don’t know how I managed to only discover it now. But so far so good. It’s not quite as active but that’s okay, Reddit used to be the same way and was actually better then.
I do feel like the old parts of the internet were decentralized and based on protocols, not single websites. So this is very refreshing and feels like getting back to the roots.