Looks like paywalls are coming soon to a subreddit near you

Redditors love a topic to gripe about, and this week the focus will likely be on CEO Steve Huffman's claim that paywalled content is coming to the so-called Front Page of the Internet. Huffman reiterated last year's statements about premium sections on Reddit during an AMA video alongside Reddit CFO Drew Vollero and COO Jen …

[TVU]

Frankly, I think it is an insane proposal that will backfire with, for example, Reddit members creating equivalent subreddits on the same topics as the paywalled ones. In addition, many administrators of subreddits that are compulsorily paywalled might very well resign en masse.

tl;dr This proposal really, really sucks.

[HereIAmJH]

Looks like paywalls are coming soon to a subreddit near you

It doesn't have to suck. And since there are no details, there is no way to tell at this point.

I avoided Reddit for a long time. Initially it competed with Slashdot and I didn't care for some of the advocacy. Then I just didn't see the point or it lost the competition for my time. In the last couple months I've become more active there and done more exploring. One of the barriers has been figuring out an easy way to explore. Who knew you could just google "reddit porn".

While I'm enjoying the subreddits I have been following, I'd drop them immediately if they suddenly went behind a paywall. I'd support a marketplace that was paid for with token payments on listings. I have browsed FB marketplace, but I don't have an account. They just feel creepy wanting my user data.

Talking paywalls raises a lot of questions though that haven't been addressed:

• Are they just monetizing user supplied content, or is Reddit supplying something beyond hosting?
• Is there revenue sharing with the organizers of the subreddit? hobby groups, charities, etc
• Will the organizers have a voice in any ads that are displayed in their subreddit?

[EricB123]

Re: Looks like paywalls are coming soon to a subreddit near you

Uh, Reddit porn? Let me check my calendar

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Monetization

So this means the shareholders/VCs will pay the users who create the content, right?

[ecofeco]

Re: Monetization

Huffpost has entered the chat: "LOL wut?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Monetization

(insert Padme and Anakin "Right?" meme here)

[beast666]

What could possibly go Wong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello petal.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Advertising?

Is that still a thing on the internet? Oh yeah – I forget that other people still see ads. Oddballs.

[chivo243]

Re: Advertising?

right guv, Pi-Hole 6 is out!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Advertising?

>right guv, Pi-Hole 6 is out!

Is it ? I haven't seen much online promotional material about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advertising?

Lol. I see what you did there.

[David 132]

Re: Advertising?

Thanks for the tip - just updated my installation.

Being on Linux Mint, I couldn't do pihole -up ; nooo, that would be too easy and bad for my moral fibre.

So sudo PIHOLE_SKIP_OS_CHECK=true pihole-r it was; mildly less convenient but worked perfectly.

[tfewster]

Re: Advertising?

Wong said. "In a lot of conversation pages people are looking for recommendations". If Wong is right, maybe you're missing out by not viewing ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advertising?

Work doesn't allow browser extensions on work PCs. Crazy how different most sites look there compared to home, even when running a basic Ublock setup.

[David 132]

Re: Advertising?

Wow. That's an odd restriction; understandable I suppose in that they don't want employees (inadvertently) installing some cryptomining "extension", but I would have thought that the reduced bandwidth consumption and increased safety of having a reputable ad-blocker would appeal to even the most curmudgeonly of BOFHs.

Can you run Pi-Hole locally and point your DNS to localhost?

Or lobby your IT dept to at least whitelist something like UBlock Origin?

I work for a large international tech company (no, not that one) and we're positively encouraged to use Firefox, with whatever extensions we want.

On that topic, I wrote myself a little Windows applet that registers as a handler for URLs, and gives me a pop-up dialog with the choice to open clicked links with either Edge (Sharepoint, some particularly crusty intranet stuff) or Firefox (everything else). Based on the domain it'll auto-select one browser or the other, e.g. links to (say) whoevermyemployeris.com can be configured to auto-open with Edge.

If anyone here would find such a tool handy, and promises not to laugh at my spaghetti C# code, I'm happy to share it.

[EricB123]

Re: Advertising?

'spaghetti C# code'

Is there any other kind of C# code?

[David 132]

Re: Advertising?

Touché! I walked into that one, didn’t I?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: spaghetti C# code

IME spaghetti code is the entire application in one long chunk of code that uses lots of gotos to jump around as necessary.

Having grown up in the 80's with various flavours of home computer basic the idea that you can write "spaghetti" code in C# seems laughable.

You have classes, you have scope, you have garbage collection. You have names for your functions, not line numbers.

Modern languages don't really allow for proper spaghetti code.

Thank fuck!

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: spaghetti C# code

I cut my teeth on BBC Basic. Good times.

>10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";

>20 GOTO 10

>RUN

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: Advertising?

"1 thumb down"

Google has joined the chat.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: Advertising?

"2 thumbs down"

Meta has joined the chat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advertising?

"what are adverts?? I use a pi-hole / ublock / something else" is a tired old line that is forever thrown out on this forum when a topic related to advertising comes up.

We get it, ok? We know about that. This is the registers comments section, not facebook.

And people obviously agree with me, because I've not (and will not) downvote any posts in this topic!

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: Advertising?

Someone clearly disagrees with you. I do enjoy a lively debate.

[cbrisuda]

I hope they paywall everything. Best way to be free of my Reddit addiction :).

[sarusa]

Has everyone already forgotten the last time Reddit corporate were complete assholes? Anyone still using it deserves what they get.

[Katelynn_Kulas67]

Reddit

Isn't it just corporate usenet?

[DS999]

Porn

Its obvious that's what this is for, and will primarily affect. No one is going to put a meme page or random discussions/questions behind a paywall.

[IGotOut]

It's already paywalled in a fashion..

It already blocked many search engines because one of the other leaders of enshitification,Google, slung them a huge wad of cash.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/non-google-search-engines-blocked-from-showing-recent-reddit-results/

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

"the so-called Front Page of the Internet"

That should be the self-described front page of the internet. Nobody calls it that.

[David 132]

Re: "the so-called Front Page of the Internet"

Correct. Zombo.com should sue them for falsely claiming that title.

[Whitter]

Re: "the so-called Front Page of the Internet"

Surely that would be ftp://aaa.aaaaaaaaaa.aaa ?

[ecofeco]

Meh

Paywall? Bye Felcia.

I don't "need" anything that is behind a paywall.

[may_i]

Can't we just bring back newsgroups?

I always thought that the whole idea behind people with similar interests gathering together was so that they could share their knowledge without someone trying to control that knowledge or make money from collecting it.

Just stop using all these centralised systems. Use distributed, resilient systems instead.

[David 132]

Re: Can't we just bring back newsgroups?

alt.fan.reddit.die.die.die?

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Can't we just bring back newsgroups?

They seem to be still going in some form. A mob called Eternal September appear to offer a free nntp service. Whether anyone uses these groups is another question.

One of my earliest BoFH PFY tasks was to build and get running CNEWS on a Pyramid minicomputer (OSX a BSD/System V UNIX chimera) using dial-up connection with a brain dead terminal server at the other end to negotiate a connection with a uucp type software peculiar to Oz (MHSnet or ACSnet.)

Once going the rapid rise in popularity of the service in a time when RS232 terminals (Visual VT102) still ruled was a warning I suppose.

[Zonker Zoggs]

wtaf

Reddit are doing very well indeed selling access to this data. Why on God's green earth would you limit the amount of posts and content by paywalling access.

Irrespective of how you feel about your Reddit interactions being sold, this makes almost no business sense.

I can see this being that melt u/spez saying anything that sounds like recurring predictable revenue to analysts on an earnings call.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: wtaf

Reddit are doing very well indeed selling access to this data. Why on God's green earth would you limit the amount of posts and content by paywalling access.

Because $$. So access to my Antisocial Barstewards subreddit is currently free. Soon, I can paywall that and charge $9,999.95 hopefully with built in currency conversion to keep the sub to less than any country specific transaction reporting amount. Then Reddit takes $9,999.90 for providing this exciting new feature. If this limits the amount of posts and content, that isn't really Reddit's problem, is it? As long as they're taking an as yet unspecified amount from each subscription, they win.

Meanwhile, everyone else gets to sit back to watch the bunfights break out over who 'owns' subreddits, and who gets to trouser whatever money Reddit lets them keep.

[Ian Johnston]

This will probably go down as well as their move into NFTs did.

[lglethal]

"In a lot of conversation pages people are looking for recommendations – it's a naturally commercial environment."

I think they are missing the rather ovbvious discrepancy here (deliberately, no doubt). People are looking for RECOMMENDATIONS. People are not looking for ADVERTISEMENTS.

Start piling in advertisements, and people will go elsewhere for recommendations. Seems obvious.

I really dont get why Reddit keeps messing with it's user base (well apart from the fact it's due to greed and shareholders of course), Reddit is not particularly unique, or offer anything that is particularly different or hard to produce. The pages are simple, the comment system easy. The only thing it has going for it is that it has a large user base. If something came along that was even remotely better or simply missing the entshitification, people would jump ship instantly. This is not the likes of Facebook, with friend networks and direct messaging systems, which it can be hard to get people to disconnect from.

Considering the low bandwidth each page needs from Reddit, it probably stands as the easiest of the Tech sites to abandon. So deliberately pi$$ing off your users, in the names of entshitification seems like a kind of dumb idea. But then by the time the chickens come home to roost, this CEO will be out the door with his massive pay packet and golden parachute, so it's fine...

[GBE]

Reddit completely lacking altruistics?

The existing altruistic-free version of Reddit...

Stating that the current Reddit is free of altruistics seems a little harsh, but it was the CEO of Reddit that said it, not me.

[Naich]

Lemmy

Lemmy is shaping up to be a good decentralised replacement for Reddit.

[steviebuk]

So this is my take

"You can't read this take on this subject unless you pay for the monthly subscription".

[Valeyard]

Re: So this is my take

there'll be no takes because no one's going to pay to post a comment either, they'll all move to another subreddit

[xyz123]

So basically r/funny r/AskReddit r/gaming r/worldnews r/todayilearned r/aww r/Music r/memes r/movies r/Showerthoughts r/science r/pics r/Jokes r/news r/space r/videos r/DIY r/askscience r/books r/nottheonion

are all going paywelled. i.e. 95% of Reddit itself. Along with restrictions to making 'alternative/rival' subreddits that aren't paywalled.

And so Reddit DIGGS it's own grave. People will find an alternative site.

[Ian Johnston]

I like r/AmITheAsshole because it offers so many opportunities to laugh at stupid people making terrible life decisions. See also: Mumsnet's "Am I Being Unreasonable".

All AITA questions:

I behaved in a stupid and immature way, my phone blew up and I screamed at my mother

All AITA comments:

You need therapy.

Also r/Buttcoin (which an comment here put me onto) can be good, though it has less of interest now that cryptocurrency is s twitching corpse.

[xyz123]

In what way is crypto a corpse? because it went UP 50k then down 3k?

I really wanna see you design a rollercoaster. it'd be for insomniacs that can't sleep.

Welcome to ScaryCoaster....it goes upwards 200 foot in the air then down 1 foot before gliding to a stop and I declare the ride over!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how the crypto market works. It's nothing more that a pump 'n dump.

However, that aside, your analogy is still weak. Your rollercoaster goes up, and never down.

*THAT* would be for the insomniacs - it's the "down" that provides the thrills.

And what sort of rollercoaster has the exit to the ride 199 feet above the entrance?

[Ian Johnston]

Nobody's buying crypto, except a little low volume trading with USDT to pump the price. Every single use case which was being touted three or four years ago has collapsed and now all that's left is gambling. That's just not very interesting.

Actually, think about it, there is one use case: most of the money which went into $TRUMP came from China, so it does seem like a useful if convoluted way to bribe the US President.

[HereIAmJH]

subreddits

Hmm, I haven't seen any of those. My feed seems to be filled with r/DIY, electrician jokes, Amazon and Spark Drivers, and r/NiceGirls "I think I dodged a bullet".

[CAPS LOCK]

Reddit? Reddit is dead to me...

...since i was abused by a mod. Die in a fire Reddit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reddit? Reddit is dead to me...

Reddit mods are in general power mad psychopaths. They make wikipedians look sane.

[LucreLout]

I really tried with Reddit, but it's entire offering seemed to be one of

Low quality porn

Kids moaning about house prices or how uniquely hard their generation has it

Student common room politics

Or news about some celebrity that could be a celebrity, an energy drink, or a social disease, based on their name.

I can't say I'll miss it when it's gone. If there's any signal in the noise it's imperceptible.

[JWLong]

Reddit

0.0.0.0 www.reddit.com