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.

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Reddit might have some room to eat into Patreon’s model, allowing creators to put certain content behind paywalls. Lots of creators have their own subreddits already meant to facilitate community conversation in a way that comments on Patreon posts don’t totally allow for. So perhaps there’s some room for Reddit to sneak into that space.

    That might actually work.

    • Arbiter@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      But why would they do this through Reddit and not Patreon?

      You can already make private subreddits.

    • misk@sopuli.xyz
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      6 days ago

      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.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Welcome aboard! If you still have a reddit account, I’d encourage you to spread the love to other frustrated redditors - best way to do that that I’m aware of it to edit as much of your comment history as possibly to replace it with a how-to on getting started with the fediverse. Idk if it’s smoother now, but it was kinda overwhelming when I bounced over here a couple years ago.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      Isn’t it great? I would suggest switching to all with hot, top 6 hours and scaled to get the best experience here. Active is the default, and it seems the least active ironically. I have it set as hot in my settings. When you get to know more communities (subreddits), your subscribed will be nice too.

  • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I bet they figure paywalled areas will produce more consistent, high quality comments for selling to LLMs too.

    It’s probally partly a data farming move.

    • Godort@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      It’s probably the other way around. I can see him saying that paywalled subreddits won’t have their data mined for LLMs so if you want to keep your content out of that mill, you better pay up.

      • Whitebrow@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I’d have to be delusional to believe that they won’t sell that data to LLMs despite what they may claim.

      • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 days ago

        They’ll probably paywall NSFW subreddit because they can’t monetize those with ad revenue, and I doubt they’re selling that content for LLMs anyway.

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    surely the people posting in the paid communities will get some kind of remuneration for their posts, right? they wouldn’t just try to sell other people’s stuff without giving them anything in return? surely they don’t think that little of their userbase.