Thom Lambert

For over a decade, Reddit never missed an opportunity to preen about so-called “net neutrality.” It virtue-signaled that the company was “built on the premise of letting individuals decide what content they find interesting. We believe the same basic principle should apply to the internet as a whole.” It launched multiple “Days of Action,” trying to scaremonger people into believing that the internet as we knew it was about to end—obviously wrong then and now. Without utility-style internet regulation, Reddit warned that corporations would take actions solely “for their own profit.” How times have changed. Reddit is now making its own “open” platform a walled garden. Specifically, it’s unilaterally decided to block consumers from accessing Reddit content unless they log in—what it calls a “logged-in-only experience.” (So much for letting “individuals decide what content they find interesting.”) That’s because corporate-controlled access yields more consumer-specific information that benefits Reddit’s own advertising and data businesses. All this despite the company being enormously profitable already—it’s made over $740 million this year, a record by far. Far be it from me to suggest that Reddit must be regulated or prohibited from doing what they think is a key driver of “monetization on Reddit.” Assuming no violations of law or regulation, my views here are clear—and they don’t change, even when corporate leadership previously accused me of corruption and called repealing FCC regulations “un-American.” But when a company that has constantly and vitriolically demanded regulation of its perceived rivals—to prevent alleged harms to consumer from conduct that was purely hypothetical—now explicitly boasts about giving consumers a less-open Internet to benefit its bottom line, it should get the public scrutiny and mockery it richly deserves.