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.

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Welcome! We can definitely still use a few more people, especially if they’re willing to contribute to content.

      • Nailbar@sopuli.xyz
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        7 days ago

        What’s to migrate other than your name? My reddit usage was limited to lurking so I genuinely don’t know.

          • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            How do you even migrate history? Would people even want that

            Reputation definitely not. Also who even cares about reputation

            Subreddits you can migrate in some apps at least

            • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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              4 days ago

              If you can’t do these things then users and communities will remain locked to server instances and dominated by server owners and their moderation delegates just as they are on reddit. This is repeating the problem is not enacting the any of the promises of federation. It is federation for prisoners.

  • CastorSulMush@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    More ads? There’s already a bunch of them mixed with posts and comments. What more, force people to watch an ad before loading pages?

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    7 days ago

    I’m not on Reddit much these days but every time I am and I see threads with people discussing these Reddit policy changes Lemmy gets mentioned. Usually with people complaining they already tried or couldn’t figure it out or that it isn’t good enough…

    I think as the enshittification marches on they’ll be some more exodus from Reddit but generally I think everyone is just getting used to all online social media being a total corporate disaster.

    • scaryvicar@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      I just joined yesterday because of this article. Honestly I feel like I’m using Apollo to access Reddit again. My Reddit account was 12 years old and I deleted it.

    • Butterpaderp@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      It’s not that everyone’s getting used to the current hellscape of the internet. Kids born today have never experienced a world without it. I watched my niece playing on my dad’s phone, and she was just blasting through every single ad, interacting with every ad until it took her to the install page, and then she moved on to the next ad. People were upset about the tiktok ban cause they didnt care about their data. Shit like that is wild to me, coming from the early internet era.

      Unless countries step up with better tech laws, I only see it getting worse from here.

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        the internet was better when it was anonymous, where you were explicitly and forcefully told that no one should know anything about you but your handle.

        • Memoria@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          I’m not particularly tech savvy and I found it confusing and hard to parse at first. It was worth it to figure out, because fuck Reddit, but I can understand people struggling with it, especially at first.

          • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Been here 2 years. Its just as easy to use as its always been.

            I dont know where this sudden anti-lemmy “OMG ITS TOO HARD TO USE CAUSE WORDS ARE HARD I PREFER (insert site with same exact fucking usability” misinformation/propaganda has come from in the past few weeks, but its patently absurd and obviously fake.

    • EcoByte@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Honestly, I was just giving up going here, lemmy is very complicated, also I miss my beautiful snoo :(

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find it?

      There are reports of Reddit banning Lemmy mentions, and Google searches floating “Lemmy is bad” Reddit threads to the top.

      • return2ozma@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I came over to Lemmy during the Great API third party disaster. The exodus had commenters saying to come over to Lemmy.

      • wirebeads@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        I googled Reddit alternatives. I see Reddit as turning into just the next Twitter cesspool. There’s no longer any constructive conversation.

        The problem is you can’t have real conversations that stoke any flames because they’re a public company and answer to the shareholders, so they, reddit, deem what is appropriate to be posted.

      • wabasso@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        It was word of mouth for me. But now you’ve got me curious about occurrences of the term Lemmy on Reddit.

    • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      The more they do shit like this the more they will

      I mean, honestly Reddit is a dead site walking. At this point is not if it will “die” but how fast and I guess more importantly where will its users go. Hopefully here but who knows

  • Bonskreeskreeskree@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    In order for lemmy (or any alternative) to really take off, efforts need to be made to mass migrate content. The biggest inhibitor of adoption is the lack of communities, and the user submitted info backing them. Not only would it be beneficial for alternatives to have this on their servers, efforts should be made to index and back up the mountain of how to and general hyper specific sub reddit information for the good of society. The world already lost so much during the last purge of users comments and posts, further enshitification of reddit will only lead to more getting lost. Are any groups working to scrape all (or the most important data) from reddit and break it out in a searchable format here?

    • merari42@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      That is something that some tech savy Lemmy users could already easily do. I repost stuff from all over the web. But some systematic preservation of good old subreddits aught to be automated.

    • reiterationstation@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Well Reddit started off with a bunch of sock puppet accounts to make the site look larger than it was. Now they have bots doing that so when you refresh Reddit it’s always new. Back when it was good there was a point where you’d just run out of Reddit. It was a meme. They figured out how to stop that feeling.

      But that feeling is good! We will have to get used to the fact that real human sites don’t constantly update if we want nice things.

  • odelik@lemmy.today
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    6 days ago

    What I find hilarious is all these companies doing this shit after all the advancements in programming languages and paradigms in the last few years.

    Thanks to tools like Node.js, React, Flask, Reflex, OpenAPI Gen, GoLang, and more, people that are fed-up and have the know-how can stand up competing technology in record time.

    I look forward to see what comes out of this corporate power grab. Hopefully there’s not a lot of pain and suffering alkng the way.

  • andxz@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    By far one of the easiest decisions was jumping on over here - and I barely understand it half the time.

    Second best was ditching Facebook like it was cancer.