Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO - 9to5Mac
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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has hinted that in future some subreddits could be paywalled, as the company seeks to devise...

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.

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    These problem should all be resolved client side by mutually curated block lists, boost lists, aliases list and many other methods and it should happen with the users final say. They must always be the one to choose which ideological blinders they want to put on. And when posting to any /c/books the default visibility should be the same assuming a neutral reputation server and a neutral reputation user.

    Anything else will lead to the one big community controlled by a small caste of moderator-kings forever as has happened on reddit.

    To me escaping the filter bubble through decentralisation is the winning promise for Lemmy and it currently falls far short of that. And every day that this remains the case, the lemmy elites are becoming more entrenched and better able to steer the narrative in their favor.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      See also https://slrpnk.net/comment/10312933

      What you’re suggesting can’t work

      I sympathize with some of it, but you’re going too far

      Content addressable posts like what Bluesky’s atproto does and cryptographic identity allows for portable posts and identities, and it even allows forkable communities as you can import and move entire conversations, and even mirror conversations that one team of mods may not like into another community (I made my first blog post about content addressable forums literally a whole decade ago)

      And when posting to any /c/books the default visibility should be the same assuming a neutral reputation server and a neutral reputation user.

      Literally impossible according to the CAP theorem (database terminology) in a decentralized network where not all servers federate with all (often because they just never have interacted and thus don’t know of each other)

      You have to push the communities to participate in multiple parallel communities, that’s much more reliable. Together with a credible threat that the community can depose bad mod teams by forking, you have a much better chance of preventing bad mod behavior