this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
970 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

63009 readers
2410 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Reddit is planning to introduce a paywall this year, CEO Steve Huffman said during a videotaped Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Thursday.

Huffman previously showed interest in potentially introducing a new type of subreddit with "exclusive content or private areas" that Reddit users would pay to access.

When asked this week about plans for some Redditors to create "content that only paid members can see," Huffman said:

It’s a work in progress right now, so that one’s coming... We're working on it as we speak.

When asked about "new, key features that you plan to roll out for Reddit in 2025," Huffman responded, in part: “Paid subreddits, yes.”

Reddit's paywall would ostensibly only apply to certain new subreddit types, not any subreddits currently available.

Reddit executives also discussed how they might introduce more ads into the social media platform. The push for ads follows changes to Reddit’s API policy that, in part, led to the closing of most third-party apps used for accessing Reddit. Reddit makes most of its revenue from ads and can only show ads on its native apps and website.

Reddit started testing ads in comments last year, with COO Jen Wong saying during an AMA that such ads are in “about 3 percent of inventory.” The executive hinted at that percentage growing. Wong also shared hopes that contextual advertising, or ads being shown based on the content surrounding them, will be a “bigger part of” Reddit’s business by 2026.

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 days ago (5 children)

More ads? There's already a bunch of them mixed with posts and comments. What more, force people to watch an ad before loading pages?

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

r/spezholedesign

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Wave incoming

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

It does seem like a lot of ads for "3% of inventory". I can't ever see a reason to pay for a subreddit.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago (8 children)

I'm not on Reddit much these days but every time I am and I see threads with people discussing these Reddit policy changes Lemmy gets mentioned. Usually with people complaining they already tried or couldn't figure it out or that it isn't good enough...

I think as the enshittification marches on they'll be some more exodus from Reddit but generally I think everyone is just getting used to all online social media being a total corporate disaster.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's not that everyone's getting used to the current hellscape of the internet. Kids born today have never experienced a world without it. I watched my niece playing on my dad's phone, and she was just blasting through every single ad, interacting with every ad until it took her to the install page, and then she moved on to the next ad. People were upset about the tiktok ban cause they didnt care about their data. Shit like that is wild to me, coming from the early internet era.

Unless countries step up with better tech laws, I only see it getting worse from here.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I just joined yesterday because of this article. Honestly I feel like I’m using Apollo to access Reddit again. My Reddit account was 12 years old and I deleted it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

Oh god, you’ve out me down a rabbit hole. Thank you!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago

Kholer, American standard, and other toilet manufacturers are scrambling to match Toto's ad popularity in "the go" ad business.

If you've changed your extractor fan recently, you might have come out of the restroom humming something new or maybe something familiar like the McDonalds jingle. But such feats of advertising have never been part of the true #2!. Things like bidet splash modulation... Lara papa pa!!! Right in the butt! Or flush ads! A display banner integrated on to the flush tank, and if you open the lid you'll get ads around the bowl and in the back of the lid.

Clorox is coming up with a brad new cleaning chemical family. If you forget to clean you'll be presented with scum in the shape of the clorox logo and the proper code and link to Amazon.

Oh yes please! Enshittify the one and only sanctuary we believed we had!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

In order for lemmy (or any alternative) to really take off, efforts need to be made to mass migrate content. The biggest inhibitor of adoption is the lack of communities, and the user submitted info backing them. Not only would it be beneficial for alternatives to have this on their servers, efforts should be made to index and back up the mountain of how to and general hyper specific sub reddit information for the good of society. The world already lost so much during the last purge of users comments and posts, further enshitification of reddit will only lead to more getting lost. Are any groups working to scrape all (or the most important data) from reddit and break it out in a searchable format here?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

That is something that some tech savy Lemmy users could already easily do. I repost stuff from all over the web. But some systematic preservation of good old subreddits aught to be automated.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

It’s crazy how everything slowly turns into shit in the end

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›