You may soon have to include Reddit in the list of subscription-based platforms as well. On Tuesday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hinted that the company may release a type of subreddit, which will be classified as exclusive content or private areas. This means that to access these subreddits, users may have to pay. According to Huffman, the introduction of gated communities on the platform is unlikely to reduce its overall user base, which has actually seen significant growth recently. The site has experienced a 51 percent increase in daily active users, reaching 91.2 million, and a 54 percent increase in revenue, totaling $281.2 million, indicating a healthy and expanding user community.

The statement also indicates that these subreddits could be behind a paywall. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said that the platform has previously had versions of the premium community feature, such as r/goldlounge, and users loved it. Hence, the company is moving in that direction, The Verge reported.

In addition, the CEO also said, as reported by The Verge, Reddit is now leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) from both internal and external sources to improve and refine its search functionality, aiming to provide more accurate and relevant results to users. The platform made headlines in February due to its AI training deal with Google.

Recently, Reddit has blocked all other search engines except Google. The website has decided to block engines like DuckDuckGo, Bing and will streamline all users’ queries to Google. According to a recent report, Reddit has recently implemented a policy under which it prevents search engines from indexing and displaying its recent posts and comments unless the search engine agrees to a paid partnership, effectively putting its most up-to-date content behind a paywall for search engines.

It is being speculated that this move is possibly due to a deal between the two other companies. Google has paid Reddit US$60 million to use the data to train an AI model. Old results are still visible, but other search engines are no longer able to “crawl” Reddit for new content. This shows that Google is one step ahead of its competitors and is close to a monopoly.

This is a bold move on Reddit’s part, but not all that surprising. Reddit’s increased data security measures reflect its evolving business strategy, which prioritizes revenue growth and investor satisfaction by limiting access to its content and exploring alternative revenue sources.