Reddit, a platform founded in part on the premise of openly and widely sharing information, is ready to put up some paywalls. In a video Ask Me Anything (AMA) session hosted by CEO Steve Huffman following the company’s quarterly earnings report (which went poorly), the founder and exec said Reddit is actively testing ways to make some content require payment to access and plans to roll out a “paid subreddit” feature later this year.
Huffman described the paid content model as a “work in progress” but mentioned it would be one of the “new, key features” that the company intends to introduce in 2025. It marks a continuation of Huffman’s focus on requiring payment to access certain areas on Reddit. Last year, the CEO said the company was looking into building a new type of subreddit that would include “exclusive content or private areas” hidden behind a paywall.
Reddit has been scraping up as many monetization efforts as possible since going public, as the company has sought to continue producing returns for its shareholders—user experience be damned. A constant complaint of the Reddit userbase is the sheer number of ads they are exposed to, particularly on the platform’s first-party mobile app. It’s also notably entered licensing agreements with both Google and OpenAI, allowing the companies to use Reddit content to train AI models.
And paid subreddits wouldn’t necessarily be the first time that Reddit has gotten into the paid premium feature business. The company has sold a subscription called Reddit Gold since 2010, which offers users features including an ad-free scrolling experience. Having gold also grants access to the r/Lounge subreddit, which can only be seen by Gold subscribers. But Gold has never been a huge revenue generator for Reddit.
There are a lot of complications that Reddit likely needs to think through for this paid subreddit experience, too. First and foremost is the simple fact that most of Reddit’s content is aggregation. The company has certainly invested in trying to get more original content on the platform, including the Reddit Contributor Program that pays users for contributions across the site based on how much karma they accrue. Then there’s the fact that paid subreddits may require a different model for moderation, as you’d imagine it would be difficult to ask volunteer moderators to watch over content that is generating money they won’t get their hands on.
Reddit might have some room to eat into Patreon’s model, allowing creators to put certain content behind paywalls. Lots of creators have their own subreddits already meant to facilitate community conversation in a way that comments on Patreon posts don’t totally allow for. So perhaps there’s some room for Reddit to sneak into that space.
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