Technology

57997 readers

2851 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

1286

Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO (9to5mac.com)

submitted 1 month ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

457 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise new sources of income.

He suggested that the company might experiment with paywalled subreddits as it looks to monetize new features. “I think the existing, altruistic, free version of Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just the way it has,” Huffman said. “But now we will unlock the door for new use cases, new types of subreddits that can be built that may have exclusive content or private areas, things of that nature.”

This is another move likely to anger Redditors. While the platform is a commercial enterprise, its value derives almost entirely from freely offered user content. That means Redditors feel at least some sense of ownership in a community endeavour, so the company needs to tread carefully when it comes to monetization at user expense.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 62 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (19 children)

I think this comes down to what the intentions are

Paywall /r/videos? Fuck off.

But create a system like Patreon where a content creator can put their own content and interact with their own users and there's a revenue share between reddit/creator that doesn't sound terrible.

If they're gonna do it on Patreon, why not try and lure them to reddit?

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Just had some more thoughts on this as well.

If Reddit can lure Patreon users, they could also likely protect that content creators data from being shared on the platform. The creator uploads a commissioned drawing for it's paid users, and then someone tries to copy it and show it in /r/pics. But since reddit has the source image, they could be scanning for identical images by hash, or matching images via AI and then prevent it from being posted outside the community.

It definitely isn't THAT easy, but it opens up the potential, and being able to tell your potential customers you have tools to help prevent unauthorized sharing on a prolific platform probably has some merit.

[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Optimistic on reddit project management abilities considering their app and website is so fucking broken

[–] FixedFun@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Don't make me dream....

[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

tools to help prevent unauthorized sharing

Back in the day, we called them subreddit mods. /j

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

How is a mod from /r/pics going to know that some random picture happened to be from a private paid subreddit?

edit: I missed the /j

load more comments (15 replies)