Reddit, a platform founded in part on the premise of openly and widely sharing information, is ready to put up some paywalls. In a video Ask Me Anything (AMA) session hosted by CEO Steve Huffman following the company’s quarterly earnings report (which went poorly), the founder and exec said Reddit is actively testing ways to make some content require payment to access and plans to roll out a “paid subreddit” feature later this year.
That might actually work.
I have a feeling they’ll have a way to fuck it up tho
My first thought is their MO that they own whatever’s uploaded.
No, they just want to control the distribution. If they do, they can insert their ads and monetize directly.
And it’s not just Patreon, it’s onlyfans too. We all know reddit has plenty of porn, and by that I mean onlyfans spammers. So, since reddit already has the content creators and the content consumer userbase, why not cut out the middleman and monetize it themselves?
I believe they’ve already updated their TOS that they own whatever’s uploaded. They want to train AI and own search results and all that. That will conflict with being like onlyfans where people want legal control of their content.
I recall their TOS having a clause like that years and years ago. And usually it’s not a problem for the users or the creators, since everyone gets a cut.
I don’t think the creators mind too much. Even if reddit takes a cut, the net profit is still much greater due to the size of the audience.
Seriously? It’s a problem if you want LEGAL ownership over your content.
Most creators are willing to let that go to get access to the audience. It’s not an exclusive license.
Have you ever met creators? No most aren’t so happy to give up their LEGAL ownership. Plus, that’s why I said if you want. This is especially true for certain sexual content. And, exclusive or not is an entirely different concept than ownership. You just want to be a stick in the mud, I’m out of this conversation.
But why would they do this through Reddit and not Patreon?
You can already make private subreddits.
Probably because Reddit is massive.
That’s why porn (which Reddit calls „NSFW content” not to scare advertisers) is not accessible over API at all. We should refer to Reddit as „that porn website” now because that’s what they’re going to make money on.