Clout in a community they care about. I can’t relate to wanting it, but people buy clout all the time online and in games. This is basically a more personalized Twitter Blue.

In case anyone’s confused about what this is all about:

$5/month per community

It’s easy to miss, but they snuck in that Special Memberships (subreddit subscriptions, which unlock badges and emojis and stuff) cost $5 a month per subreddit, outside of Reddit Premium. You can also spend 1000 Community Points, but if you don’t have the balance and want the benefits, you’ll be giving reddit money.

It feels like reddit has come to understand how much closer redditors feel to their communities than reddit as a whole - reddit is hated, but users still cling to their communities. A sitewide Reddit Premium badge is irrelevant, even repugnant and a badge of shame, but special flairs and features in close knit communities are still desirable.

This is reddit exploiting their users’ relationships with their communities with a stackable 5 buck alternative to Reddit Premium.

How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn’t, really

$5/month per community

You may have missed it, but they snuck in that Special Memberships (subreddit subscriptions, which unlock badges and emojis and stuff) cost $5 a month per subreddit, outside of Reddit Premium. You can also spend 1000 Community Points, but if you don’t have the balance and want the benefits, you’ll be giving reddit money.

It feels like reddit has come to understand how much closer redditors feel to their communities than reddit as a whole - reddit is hated, but users still cling to their communities. A sitewide Reddit Premium badge is irrelevant, even repugnant and a badge of shame, but special flairs and features in close knit communities are still desirable.

This is reddit exploiting their users’ relationships with their communities with a stackable 5 buck alternative to Reddit Premium.

Don’t get ahead of yourself about sustainability. Let’s see how long free ad-free at scale lasts.

You want free. You want no ads. You want sustainable. You want a fairy tale.

That’s when The Verge (and Polygon) truly discredited themselves. But I’ll gladly take them as allies in the fight against reddit.