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·
      3 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·
      3 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·
        3 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·
          1 day ago

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

        • Dogsoftulkas@lemm.ee
          5·
          3 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·
      3 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·
    3 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.

  • FackCurs@lemmy.world
    49·
    3 days ago

    I hope all the lemmy instances are ready for a surge of users. Let’s encourage redditors to join Lemmy and learn the kinks and quirks by trial and error. Let’s be kind to the newcomers.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
    35·
    3 days ago

    service that owes its popularity largely to its low barrier to entry signals higher barriers to entry

    cool! please do.

    • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      The whole reason reddit became as popular as it is now is because of bots in the beginning. The founders admitted as much.

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        and bot is the reason its still active, i think i read a reddit post about how most of the bots on the site are from places like RUSSIA, sowing dissent with thier troll farms. it make sense since reddit isnt doing much to removing much of those bots, instead targeting people like us and OF FANs. as soon as they did thier usual purges of bots, which include some from RU, reddit because eerily quiet and non-engaged(nobodies raging about what the other party did in alrge numbers), and the well known conservative subs, are silent. until the troll farms reorient thier trolls to come back. its easier for them to evade bans, because of thier resources. on some posts that were discussing it, reddit doesnt do enough against them.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
        10·
        3 days ago

        In the great reddit to lemmy migration of 2023, a lot of users complained about the lack of content and engagement on lemmy. A number of lemmy moderators who came from reddit basically said the same thing and that they were working on deploying bots over here.

        It looks like they did make some progress as there is a lot more content than there was 2 years ago. However, SOOOOO many niche subs just do not exist over here yet. Including most of my favs.

        I am not that interested in linux or computers anymore.

        • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          i was looking at subs on here that were some of the ones i frequent on reddit, yea its a deadzones in some of the niches, no content for a year, i think alot of them went back to reddit. the ones that stay are usually the ones that get banned from reddit. the ones that are currently evading bans are on another forum(not associated with lemmy or reddit, im in one of those sites)

        • enzo@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
          5·
          3 days ago

          However, SOOOOO many niche subs just do not exist over here yet. Including most of my favs.

          That is actually the only reason I come back to reddit from time to time.

      • propofool@lemmy.world
        1·
        3 days ago

        Over moderation is also an issue. See the digg to reddit move in 2010 or 2011. Corporatize, moderate, lose engagement

    • Nebula_Express_93462@lemmy.world
      11·
      3 days ago

      Same, fresh refugee here. I’ve tried mastodon before and I didn’t feel good with Fediverse, but only because I never really used Twitter. Surprisingly I only discover Reddit few weeks ago (to properly spend some time there… where was I all these years lol) I’m starting to like this fediverse though 😁

      • vonbaronhans@midwest.social
        11·
        3 days ago

        Honestly, same. Mastodon is fine if you like the Twitter format, but I never did. Lemmy works for me, largely cuz Reddit also worked for me, until the API debacle.

    • icmpecho@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      same! just hopped on today, for both that reason and because friends are here now as well :)

    • FackCurs@lemmy.world
      9·
      3 days ago

      Welcome! Hope you like it here. I’m happy to see people are jumping ship despite the “it’s too complex to switch to Lemmy” false narrative.

        • FackCurs@lemmy.world
          5·
          3 days ago

          I personally don’t really like that analogy. With email, you can send and email to anyone who has an email address. You can only see emails you have received after creating your email account. It’s simple and clear. With the fediverse, for past posts, you can see some: only if it was posted on your instance or if someone on your instance was following them when it was originally posted or has interacted with it since, meaning there is some technicality that prevents you from seeing everything you think you should be able to see.

          In terms of account creation, I agree. Just pick a provider (instance), if you don’t like it you can create a new account somewhere else later.

          • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
            2·
            3 days ago

            I think the analogy will hold only because the problems you’ve presented should get worked out over time. I feel the same with how fediverse links work and how it interacts with your Lemmy account (like it’s super easy to link a fediverse comment/post, just a little harder to get from your account instance to that link where you can interact with it).

            My first Lemmy account was on a little instance where I had to go through subscribing, like you said, for those instance feeds to pop up. I also see that as just another wrinkle that will be ironed out over time, as the setting up and hosting of instances becomes more mainstream (well from at least it’s current state).

    • ClarkGrizwald@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 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·
      1 day 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·
    3 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.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    228·
    5 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!”

    • IndescribablySad@threads.net@sh.itjust.works
      98·
      5 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·
        4 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·
      5 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?

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
        36·
        5 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·
        4 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·
          3 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·
        4 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.

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

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

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      3 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.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
    123·
    4 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·
        3 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·
          3 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·
            3 days ago

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

        • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
          2·
          3 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·
        4 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·
          4 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·
            4 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·
          4 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

    • Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml
      3·
      3 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·
        3 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·
      3 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·
      3 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·
      3 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·
      3 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.