They've already started! They're A/B testing the sign-up modal being uncloseable which of course means it'll pass because some marketing schmuck can say "See we get conversions!"
Can you elaborate on this test? Do you mean they are leaning towards not letting you browse Reddit without signing in? Or rather moving away from unverified accounts without an email attached?
The former, I'm a member of their beta and while I hadn't seen it since I've been logged in another user had posted in the /r/beta subreddit that when they were lurking and not logged in, the sign up modal came up but the close button had been removed. Users found that it was an A/B test.
Unfortunately, I see why they are leaning in this direction and some of the other trends and expect it to get worse.
Sam clearly sees the potential for Reddit to become another feed-based advertising platform. In order to make it even a fraction as valuable as FB or Twitter, he needs not only to drastically improve the ad interface, he needs to also get better audience data so as to allow advertisers better targeting, and ideally target specific users using their own audience data.
This is unfortunately at odds with what Reddit's community seems to want, so there seems to be a very obvious long-term trend toward slowly boiling the frog. They get rid of undesirable communities, ramp up ad placements and monetization, get profiles more prominent so users have a reason to give Reddit more audience data for free, and then this move which will likely lean towards them making users create an account (tied to a unique identifier). I'd guess the next step is making them verify with email which in turn lets advertisers and cookie onboarding partners map to cookie IDs for retargeting purposes. This can immediately add significantly to the CPMs they charge advertisers because the end performance of those impressions will likely be quite a bit higher.
As a Reddit user for over a decade, I'm really sad to see this slow, but somewhat inevitable decline. I just hope it doesn't lose all of its magic, or that something equally magical springs up in its place.
Can confirm. I got it as a non-beta user while lurking. It also looked slightly different from screenshots others posted. So definitely being A/B tested with a few bugs (got PMed by a mod asking for details since users like me aren't supposed to get it).
