Reddit is suspending its plans to allow people to create subreddits with content that is not subject to payment, CEO Steve Huffman said during Thursday’s earnings report. The company is doing this as part of a shift in priorities in the allocation of its resources.
Last year, Huffman said that the company was looking for a way for users to create subreddits with “exclusive content or private areas” and hinted at the possibility that these subreddits would be paid for. Earlier this year, he said that this feature would appear in 2025.
But now, “to focus on what matters most, we’re reallocating resources from several areas, such as work on the user economy,” Huffman (who goes by spez on Reddit) said in a post. “This includes what some have called paid sub-loans. We still believe in this opportunity, but right now we’re focused on strengthening our core product, making Reddit the best place to find things, and accelerating international growth.”
In another post, he added that the team working on the user economy will join “our efforts” to improve the core Reddit app, including working on things like adaptation and personalization. “This is in line with our most important need today – growing the number of registered core users.”
