Reddit set to allow exclusive subreddits that are behind paywall: Report

Reddit might allow new kinds of subreddits which will require users to pay to access it. The company is also starting to use AI to generate summaries of content in search results

Reddit is reportedly planning on asking users to pay for accessing some subreddits on the platform. According to The Verge, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman during an earnings call hinted at allowing “new types of subreddits that can be built that may have exclusive content or private areas.” 

Reports suggest that the American social news aggregation, content rating, and forum social network will allow creation of specific subreddits which will be categorised as exclusive or private content and could go behind paywall. 

“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.” according to The Verge.

Huffman also mentioned during the call that Reddit is starting to use first-party and third-party AI models to “enhance” its search results. Reddit will start testing AI generated summaries for content which will appear at the top of the search results. This feature will present summaries of the content searched by the user and also offer recommendations. 

Reports of Reddit using AI for search first emerged in February this year in light of its AI training deal with Google. The deal also includes Reddit’s access to Google’s vertex AI tool which is helpful in improving search results. 

Recently, there were reports of Reddit results not showing up in many search engines, except Google. Reddit has also entered into a partnership with OpenAI to employ OpenAI’s large language models to bring AI powered features to Reddit.