does that need a /s. I don't feel like it should need one. Anyway I don't care what reddit does or does not do and I would think they would epically fail but twitter is still around sooo...
I’m reading this as a play to allow communities to have their own paid for areas and Reddit takes a cut in exchange for hosting this.
I recall a while back they were looking at a way to financially compensate major contributors and moderators, so possibly this idea is being revisited in a way.
Right now though, most people contribute to communities to share their knowledge or creativity and to connect with others- and monetisation might be there in the background but isn’t a first class feature of the platform. It makes business sense to make this play, even though it’ll make the site worse.
To conclude: Reddit becomes an only fans competitor. Calling it now.
Which ones would they paywall?
The ones which would be the hardest sell for them would be the big meme subreddits, given how many other sites can be searched for memes.
I could potentially see them having some success paywalling all of the sub's where technical questions are asked looking for solutions to particular problems (think r/DIY). But then again you wouldn't pay just to have 1 question answered, and would generally just try a different forum if it could be answered elsewhere.