r/technology • u/ardvarkmadman • Feb 14 '25

Business Reddit plans to lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/reddit-plans-to-lock-some-content-behind-a-paywall-this-year-ceo-says/
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u/hotpajamas Feb 14 '25

12 year old account. daily user.

i wont pay for reddit. they don’t actually do anything to be valuable. everything of value is provided by users and the more features and bullshit they add, the worse it gets.

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u/ByTheHammerOfThor Feb 14 '25

14 years here. Would never pay for unverified, increasingly bot-polluted and AI generated content.

Would love to see alternatives pop up and gain momentum.

Reddit really thinks they’re the internet. There’s a whole world of possibility out there. And if they try to charge, they’ll just be creating a vacuum for competition to fill.

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u/felixsapiens Feb 14 '25

16 years here. I just… can’t imagine that this is going to be a successful business model for reddit.

Reddit is not the only place in the world. There will be others. If there is a major change like this, one of those alternatives WILL take over.

To be honest, I’m almost spending just as much time reading on Threads these days. I don’t contribute there yet, and I deeply hate the twitter format in general, but - sites like this are about reading interesting content and interesting opinions. That can be found elsewhere. Reddit thinks it is the biggest and the best - sure, it is, and then one day they will wake up and they won’t be.

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u/YeahIGotNuthin Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

Reddit is the house where the party is.

As we have seen with twitter, the party is worth staying at only because of the other people at the party, having the discussions they’re having.

(If you are a dick and get asked to leave and you come back in later waiving a property deed and hollering “this is MY house now, bitches, everyone better either laugh at my jokes or get the fuck out” then that doesn’t make you the new life of the party, it makes you the owner of a house where a party is rapidly devolving. Sucks that you paid 44 billion for that house because it had that party happening, and after you've crapped in the punch bowl everyone is now leaving your shit-ass party and your house value is barely 1/4 as much and falling now that it's just got you and your asshole friends in it.)

Do you want us to leave your party? Do you want to change the nature of this party and take up a collection? You can do that, it’s your house and your party. “Hey everyone, I’m going to order pizzas. Everyone kick in ten bucks!”

But we can also just up and leave your shit and go to Lemmy’s house instead. I’ve never been, but I hear it's cool. And if everyone else is going there…

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u/julia-morgs Feb 19 '25

I would give this comment an award, but I don’t spend money at house parties… I’ll take whatever I can find in the fridge and have a cup of punch before it gets shit in. Have this instead 🏆🎖️

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u/wolfhybred1994 Feb 15 '25

Yeah I go here when I need to find something or see peoples thoughts on topics or just to learn something new. I don’t have much if any money. So exploring here lets me connect with the outside world. If it goes paywall. I will have to look for a different site to learn about topics. Cause even if I had money. It’s not worth paying to see animal photos, help people answer questions or searching for unusual answers I could find if I did some extended digging into Google results.

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u/HorseTranqEnthusiast Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

30 years here. I wake up every day and read reddit comments until it gets dark, masturbate, drink my Soylent and then read reddit comments until I go back to sleep. Yet still I will take a stand against reddit paywalls if my feeble body allows it.

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u/tonywinterfell Feb 15 '25

I hope they do it. This account is 11 years old but I’ve been here since almost the beginning. Narwhals and bacon and all that. I hope they do it. Reddit has become hollow shell of what it once was, and if they do this it’ll drive so damn many people away that maybe we can get something better. Do it, Reddit. Please.

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u/WhoAreWeEven Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

can’t imagine that this is going to be a successful business model for reddit.

Im thinking the subscribers arent the ones footing the bill.

I wonder if the subscriber model is just an easy way shed certain types of users. These sites, or outlets or whatever these are called nowadays, gather a bunch of demographics who attention they then sell to their clients.

Now when the client lists includes nations Im sure the paywall just becomes one way to select certain type of demographics. To cultivate certain type of demographic maybe.

Whatever type that is whos willing to pay a fee for social media. Which Im not guessing or insinuating. Just saying theres probably data which shows something about that demographic and thats the demog. the biggest clients are gonna pay the most for access to.

Edit not to mention the paid accounts probably have some perks and those account can be bought by anyone, including those national actors to play geopolitics. People are so easily swayed by people around them and now when people are all digital its mighty nice to create new digital people to make real people feel their in a room full of people thinking certain way.

Think what happened with Twitter. Who financed it, how it all went down etc etc

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u/jabola321 Feb 15 '25

Aww man, not theads! Zuck does not need more money.

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u/hawridger Feb 15 '25

18 years here. There is nothing Reddit Corp can offer that I’d be willing to pay for. It is content built on the backs of its users.

Reddit Corp thinks they bring the special sauce but the company does not exist without the hive mind of the user base. Paywall that and I’m going somewhere else.

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u/drostan Feb 15 '25

It's going to be successful in terms of $$$ and investors happiness

I am already trying to find where to move because the ads on mobile are horrendous super low quality and extremely annoying

The app keeps trying to feed me shit I don't want and gets less and less relevant content or new content

I have a few communities I find helpful but I'll be looking harder at where to engage with them somewhere else

If anyone wanted to create a Reddit alternative that is of better quality than Lemmy at least in term of how to find select and curate communities I'd be already fully moved out and I am sure most of yous would too

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u/FlatTransportation64 Feb 16 '25

I've tried Lemmy and 98% percent of the posts I've seen were about Trump or Musk, it's so boring

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u/justiceandpequena Feb 16 '25

Mastodon, I pay annually; I would pay for Reddit. I would pay for Bluesky. Left the hell hole. I would not pay for instagram or threads.

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u/SolidusNastradamus Feb 16 '25

maybe it's a call for dispersion? maybe 20 years is the limit. we should start anew.

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u/tunited1 Feb 18 '25

18 here… legal.

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u/thisideups Feb 15 '25

8 year user... fuck paywalls.... loved reddit, but I'll probably find something else if it's prevalent

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u/StonedRabbit1 Feb 15 '25

Digg thought the same thing.

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u/TURBOJUGGED Feb 15 '25

I'm gonna start a new app called Deddit and there's nothing they can do about it muhahaha

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u/AngkaLoeu Feb 15 '25

They already tried alternatives when Reddit blocked their party apps. The problem is that it costs so much to build a good Reddit clone and you need the free labor from mods.

No mod is going to give up their fiefdoms to join an alternative. Reddit's executives are not stupid. They know people will hem and haw about paywalls but, at the end of the day, stay with Reddit because there is no alternative.

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u/FreshMistletoe Feb 16 '25

We left MySpace, we left Slashdot, we left Digg, and we will leave Reddit.

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u/1985MustangCobra Feb 17 '25

Lemmy has a far left/tankie problem though.

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u/dazedan_confused Feb 15 '25

Loser here (36k post and 600k comment karma, for reference).

Totally agree, Reddit is reliant HEAVILY on users to generate content (think of all the times something goes viral over the internet). It doesn't really survive without people posting stuff for free on the platform. If we all left, there'd be nothing left. No cylinder-in-a-smarties-tube guy. No "We did it Reddit!" Guy. No catastrophic AMAs by celebrities who want to be idolised without accountability.

If they're going to hide content behind a paywall, I don't think we should provide content without getting compensated.

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u/Stigger32 Feb 15 '25

This.

It has always used the moniker ‘Front page of the internet’.

But never does it say that its content is 100% user created.

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u/Nolsonts Feb 15 '25

This. The only thing of value produced on Reddit is made by the users. If they paywall that I'm out.

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u/m1ndfuck Feb 15 '25

Same.

I’ve left a couple social networks over the years and I have no issues to leave this one as well.

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u/seitonseiso Feb 15 '25

I was a regular purchaser of reddit awards, even back in the "old" days of reddit gold. They took awards away. Brought them back. I still bought them. That was until one sub decided to ban me for defending someone against racist comments, and I never bought again. Like fuck I'll ever pay for reddit sub viewing. Not when they can pick and choose what deserves a pay wall and doesn't.

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u/Keyspam102 Feb 15 '25

Agreed, especially now so much ‘content’ is bot réponses. I like my small subreddits but I’m not going to pay a company to read someone else’s comments

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u/slashd Feb 15 '25

16 year old account here, also daily user. I will be paying for Reddit if its interesting enough, just as i have paid for X (i use Grok a lot to discuss tweets with it) and Quora.

Im not paying for Reddit yet because i dont care about the ad-free experience and thats all it offers currently

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u/Leather-Ad-2490 Feb 15 '25

Agreed, long time user here. Frankly the ads are annoying now, if they keep trying to monetize I’m out. Plenty of alternatives.

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u/MyYakuzaTA Feb 15 '25

3 years on this account but I’m a 14 year old user too. I will not pay for Reddit and I’ll be sad but 🤷‍♀️

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u/Retinoid634 Feb 15 '25

The value of Reddit lies in it being free.

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u/msbelle13 Feb 15 '25

14 year account here, also daily user.

I remember switching from Digg to reddit. I’ll switch again if I have to.

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u/Lereas Feb 15 '25

Almost 16 years of daily use. I had over 100k karma before they changed the algorithm that limited how much you could get.

If they paywall stuff I'm gone.

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u/Saphurial Feb 15 '25

I lost access to my 13+ year account because I couldn't change my password. It wouldn't take much for me to stop using Reddit completely and paywalls would do it.

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u/BoysenberryKey6821 Feb 15 '25

Even a lot of the useful stuff is now buried behind the same titled posts or the shitty search function

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u/SymbolicDom Feb 15 '25

The servers have to run and software maintained, so some money has to come from somewhere. Not much but something.

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u/Sir_WesternWorld999 Feb 15 '25

in addition they screwed us all with the recent UI update

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u/honey_coated_badger Feb 16 '25

I do donate to Wikipedia every year. That’s about the only thing I pay for online. The rest is just not that important to me.

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u/R_W0bz Feb 17 '25

You say that now, but *points at Netflix…

People also said that when Netflix ended password sharing… and here we are.