Can someone please give Reddit a bonk on the nose? It seems like everything to come out of that smug little Snoo’s face recently is designed to cause controversy, and of course, send a few extra bucks in the company’s direction. The latest idea, born from CEO Steve Huffman’s stream of consciousness during a recent earnings call, is to let users paywall a subreddit. Or at least, parts of a subreddit.
Imagine trying to gatekeep the chaos that is r/Silksong? Or whatever the hell r/okbuddychicanery is.
“TIFU by paywalling subreddits”
Let it be known that Reddit has no intention of killing off its current, free version we, er, all know. Huffman specifically spoke about his ideas that would build what we might call VIP areas inside a subreddit that would require an entry fee before gaining access to whatever bespoke content is hidden behind the veil.
“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,” before noting that these would not “cannibalize” the site as it stands.
While we don’t have an exact idea of what these might look like, a statement provided to The Verge gives us a vague idea. Reddit spokesperson, Tim Rathschmidt, likened the idea of gated communities to “premium community features in the past,” such as r/goldlounge [r/lounge] which saw the sites’s most devoted — the ones willing to drop $6/m (R110) — all locked in a room together. Virtually, of course. This isn’t a MrBeast video.
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We can assume that paywalled subreddits could look similar to r/lounge, requiring users to shell out for a Premium subscription.
But Huffman wasn’t finished. The CEO casually mentioned that the platform was also “beginning” to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into search to “enhance” its results. It’s doing so through a team effort made up of its own AI models, and other third-party models. This all begs the question: have we learned nothing?
He later said that Reddit would “begin testing” this new era of search later this year, which would then “summarize and recommend content, helping users dive deeper into products, shows, and games, and discover new communities on Reddit.” We’ve got a feeling the world will know when Reddit flips the on-switch.
