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.
First of all, it’s Steve Huffman, don’t use his reddit username. By doing that you’re making it hard to tie the asshole to these shitty things he’s doing.
Second of all, he doesn’t have that kind of power. He’s just the CEO. He’s answerable to investors who would remove him if he were trying to tank the site. As CEO he also doesn’t get to make most of the changes, he’s just the guy who might have final say.
What’s happening with Reddit is what happens to startups when interest rates rise. Investors who used to be willing to wait to get paid now want their money right away. So, they risked long-term damage to get paid in the short term. They rushed an IPO so the VCs could get their money out. And, now that they’re public, they have to keep grinding out short-term profits for their shareholders even if it dooms their long-term prospects. At the moment network effects are keeping people there, and the enshittification of the service isn’t enough to chase them away. But, I only give it a few years until it’s gone.
Until recently, I would have expected that once it flames out, someone like Meta or Google would buy it. But, now that we’re actually starting to see robust anti-trust action, maybe that wouldn’t be allowed, and it will just flame out and die.
As for Twitter, that’s just a rich guy who thinks he’s a genius. Virtually all ultra-rich people own media properties. Because, as the saying goes, “Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel”. Jeff Bezos went the traditional route and bought the Washington Post. Musk thought he could do the same thing (and maybe turn a profit) with Twitter. He didn’t actually want to buy it though, but he’s such an idiot that he was forced to honor something he said as a joke. Once he bought it, he knew that it was a money-losing company, so he thought he could use his ruthlessness and “business genius” to fire most of the useless people and still keep it running. But, he didn’t understand the relationship advertisers had with Twitter.
Advertisers spent money on Twitter (not a lot, but a decent amount) because Twitter’s trust and safety team made it a relatively safe ad. You might appear next to something goofy, but it wasn’t going to be too awful. But, get rid of the trust and safety team and invite Nazis back to the platform and advertisers don’t want to be seen next to that content, so they’re going to leave. Even if he could credibly bring back the trust and safety team and allow them to do their jobs, it would take a while to re-establish that trust with the advertisers. But, bringing back the trust and safety team goes directly against his other reason for owning Twitter, which is to push a certain agenda that he likes and/or that generates money for him. He wants or needs the nazis on the site for political reasons, but they’re destroying the profitability of the site.
I don’t buy that Musk is being paid under the table because there’s literally nobody rich enough to do that. It would take, at a minimum tens of billions to bribe him. If you had tens of billions to spend, there are a lot more effective ways to use it than bribing musk. Buying a supreme court justice seems to take nothing more than tens of millions. Winning a congressional or senate seat is a similar price.
Now, if you thought Moscow had compromat on Musk, that would be different. I could see him spending half his fortune to make sure that didn’t come out. But, I still think that his ego explains what’s happening better than some kind of nefarious thing.