“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.”

  • Chloyster [she/her]@beehaw.org
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    5 months ago

    Lol I was just about to post this. Yeah this is a decision for sure. Wouldn’t be surprised if this causes another big spike in Lemmy usage

  • tate@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 months ago

    “Unlock the door” is a really strange way to say “lock the door.” What a dolt.

      • MostlyBlindGamer@rblind.com
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        5 months ago

        Sure, but also the broader “join my Patreon to get access to my Discord server” market. It’s actually a pretty clever move, if there’s a market for it (there is) and if it replaces more insidious revenue streams (it won’t).

      • Gamma@beehaw.org
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        5 months ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised if this was exactly what he was referring to.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      5 months ago

      It’s the Conservative/Elon Musk version: censorship and lies is “Freedom of Speech”, Falsehoods are truth, everything is projection, etc.

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    5 months ago

    I’ve been waiting to see how they’re going to fuck up NSFW subs and I’m willing to bet that’s where this is going.

    I can only hope it affects the ones that focus on self-promotion, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just decide to charge users directly for access to NSFW subs entirely, since they already removed it entirely from the free API, which apps like RedReader use.(*)

    I know I’m not the only one who basically only has an account for that stuff, although a lot of those subs have turned to shit over the last year or so, anyway. AI generated nonsense, self-promotion even when it’s discouraged, bad moderation, some disappearing entirely because they were abandoned back last year…

    (*) Technically, you can still view that content without an account via Old Reddit (or at least you could a few months ago, haven’t checked recently), but that’s inevitably going to be killed as well, it’s just a matter of “when”.

    • vinniep@beehaw.org
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      5 months ago

      NSFW subs are exactly where my mind went as well, but monetizing some of that content could prove legally fraught. Instead, I’d wager the scope narrows a bit to a very specific OnlyFans type of model. Weren’t they already looking at paid awards that provide a cash reward to the recipient? Sure sounds like a tipping model to me 🤔

    • PenguinCoder@beehaw.org
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      5 months ago

      I find a lot of good content on Reddit, but its different now as opposed to the early days. The good content used to be on Reddit. Now its not, its on one of 6 other sites, and Reddit is just the ad service they’re posting on. I am sick of the in joke comments and inane comments like “this”. I want discussion.

      Reddit no longer has that.

      • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        It’s going back to the roots, just in an extremely twisted way - I’m old enough to remember when Reddit was just a link aggregator. You put your stuff on your own site/blog/forum (remember those?), and linked to that from reddit.
        People could then upvote and comment on it on reddit, but the idea of posting something there directly was ridiculous - how could anything be found later when it would get buried under the new stuff in a few hours, and bumping isn’t a thing at all?

        Fuck reddit and social media, I want my forums back :(
        Also my back hurts, music these days is terrible, and the 90s’ were just a decade ago or so.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 months ago

      Altruistic. ALTRUISTIC.

      Usually 1984 comparisons are whack, but this is some “Ministry of Love/Peace/Truth” shit where you coat all the terrible things you do with a glurgy layer of ultra-positivity.

  • CaptSatelliteJack@lemy.lol
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    5 months ago

    I remember a quote from spez a while ago where he basically said reddit isn’t profitable, so we’re not going to stop until it becomes profitable. Apparently that translates to “our platform isn’t profitable, so we’re not going to stop fucking it up until it becomes irrelevant.”

    • stardust@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      I like how companies not being profitable never stops people there from paying themselves millions of dollars.

  • anothermember@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    Reddit would surely have to ban users from creating new subreddits for certain (previously allowed) topics, or else users would just create an alternative “free” subreddit and everyone would post there, right? This can’t work like something like YouTube Premium originals or else they’re going to have to pay certain popular people to post to the paywalled subs - but nobody uses Reddit to follow individuals.

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    5 months ago

    Dude, what a bummer. Like, I’m glad we have lemmy but there’s certain subs and such that reddit had that aren’t available here.

    On one hand it has completely cured my reddit addiction, which is awesome. I’ve put a lot of time into more productive endeavors. But on the other hand, I do miss finding niche subs that had amazing communities.

    Aaron Swartz wouldn’t have wanted this

    • INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone
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      5 months ago

      Give me your trolls, your shitposters, your politically challenged yearning to breathe hate. The wretched refuse of society’s most failed. Send these, the angry and brain-tossed to me, I open the ports on the router to Lemmy!

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    5 months ago

    The language sorta implies existing subreddits won’t be paywalled, but I really don’t believe it. Reddit has no problem taking shit away from its community

    • key@lemmy.keychat.org
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      5 months ago

      I imagine they’d be eyeing things like having a partnership with patreon so patrons get access to an exclusive subreddit at a certain tier (with reddit getting some cut). Not saying patreon specifically would go for that but I imagine that type of monetization is what they’d be mostly considering. Or maybe a better example would be something in the realm of substack. Paying directly for access is hard to get people to go for without a third party with financial incentive to drive content.

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        5 months ago

        There are private/paywalled Discord servers and forums out there, too, so this could replace some of those. I think the Reddit format is better than a lot of alternatives, so I don’t actually hate this idea.

      • Gamma@beehaw.org
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        5 months ago

        It could also provide an alternative to patreon’s usual communities for patrons (aka discord lol)