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. In August, Huffman said that even with paywalled content, free Reddit would “continue to exist and grow and thrive.”
A critical aspect of any potential plan to make Reddit users pay to access subreddit content is determining how related Reddit users will be compensated. Reddit may have a harder time getting volunteer moderators to wrangle discussions on paid-for subreddits—if it uses volunteer mods at all. Balancing paid and free content would also be necessary to avoid polarizing much of Reddit’s current user base.
That was the avatar NFTs: most people didn’t care, some jumped on the FOMO and paid through the nose to “catch them all”.
If they had opened that to 3rd party apps, even as a requirement to use the API, or better yet if they gave a cut to 3rd party apps, instead of blindly charging for the API, they could have got a great net to catch whales, while most people would just ignore it and keep contributing their time (mods) and content (comments).
Instead… well, this.