Gold originally was fine imo. Then it got out of control with so many different medals, some free, some cheap, etc. They made it so confusing and basically every post on the front page had some sort of award. They made it confusing and cluttered… At least they realized it was dumb.
I used RIF for 11 years. First I’m hearing about awards. Only ever knew about gold… thought Reddit silver was a cutesy little joke for redditors.
I mean I did too but I saw actual Reddit other place a few times lol
Reddit silver started as a joke but was added as a free award once they expanded the system.
I remember at one point, Talklittle mentioned the addition of rewards, and how he was against them, which was convenient since Reddit didn’t give third party apps access to them in the first place. I know at one point I was able to buy gold in RiF, but that was gone the moment that Reddit introduced all the other bullshit rewards.
So they’re getting rid of coins and awards, but don’t have any kind of replacement actually planned yet?
They should have held off until they knew what the replacement would be. As it is, they’re yanking something that made Reddit unique for…what, exactly?
The replacement is to pay people with actual money per upvotes awards etc according to some code that was spotted recently
Great huh? That’s really going to improve the quality of their content and their profitability… 🙄
EDIT https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-contributor-program-3343397/
Because paying people to post worked so well for Quora…
Quora is an impeccable font of online knowledge and we should be grateful for bwahaha no I can’t even…
Basically the amount of karma farming that already happens on Reddit is going to quadruple. And yeah it’s going to be a) on the more ‘serious’ questions like Quora and b) on the more AITA or Confessions posts ‘oh you guys have helped me so much, of you can upvote me and give me some awards it’ll really help get my life on track’
Part of me couldn’t believe they’d actually introduce this but in light of everything this year, whatever. Because what else could benefit Reddit …oh yeah - grifters!
If they want to add fuel to the fire that’s burning down the house fine. I’m over at Kbin. I’m staying.
My only regret is there’s some really great health support communities there and I hope they can be allowed to live in peace because I don’t think they’ll feasibly migrate.
I’m only on reddit for a few select, very specific communities. If I ever find a replacement it’s over. Help with Immigration laws, teach practices, language learning ECT. I’m thinking maybe I’d like to start the teachers group over here.
That’s how this happens. The community is the value, not the platform. Once a critical mass crosses over, the same community can continue.
I definitely don’t have time to moderate, I barely have time to scan headlines.
Just curious, what happened there?
And oh look, it’s only available for people in the US! Because only Americans know things, amirite? 🙄
All they had to do was do nothing.
Is there a bin for usdefaultism yet?
For a minute I thought you meant trashbin.
😬😬
It’s certainly worth paying to hear American views over the rest of the worlds I would say. Reddit is on to a winner with that one for sure. American Reddit users like u/spez are so wise while we are so stupid.
They’re willing to pay idiots to ramble on but they aren’t willing to pay international lawyers to straighten out all the paperwork so they can do this outside the US.
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A company headquartered in the US but it’s a website that has a presence in many countries, including the EU.
Maybe not surprising, but they are probably shortchanging themselves by not allowing folks from abroad to contribute into the program. USians aren’t the only content creators.
but the mentality of the whole platform is very USian centric nevertheless.
Sure, and that’s a problem. r/politics was too US centric which eventually drove the creation of other subs like r/animie_titties
There are (or were) a lot of corners that were an exception to the rule, for example I don’t think that anyone would argue that r/de was very USian.
Last I checked, there were at least 3 subreddits where cryptocurrency is being handed out regularly to active participants.
They’re called “Community Points”, and get a custom name for each sub (“moons” in /r/cryptocurrency, “donuts” in /r/ethtrader, and “bricks” in /r/fortniteBR.)I don’t know how the other subs fared, but /r/cryptocurrency became noticeably gamed by actors attempting to maximize their financial gains.
So… I guess it’s gonna be awesome.
/r/cryptocurrency became noticeably gamed by actors attempting to maximize their financial gains.
I can’t tell if that’s life imitating art or vice versa but it made me giggle!
Reddit really is done. This will drive spam and discourage people posting original content as they will see it stolen and reposted by the karma farming parts of reddit. They already flood communities with crap; reddit seems to just be taking another giant crap on the moderators who will have to deal with the tide of people trying to manipulate the new system for financial gain.
The best content on Reddit is not by “top contributors” whoever they may be. It’s the random helpful posts that you stumble across or find on Internet seaches, or the thought provoking posts and comments that push back against the hive mind. Generally I find most (not all but most) of the up voted and awarded content to be trash or low value. Moving to financially incentivise that show Reddit really don’t understand their own site.
I actually improved my reddit experience back in the day by blocking the top creators and checking that top list every few months to make sure it was current. Instantly better!
Applying gold and awards will hold posts on the frontpage even if they’re downvoted to oblivion. They’re likely getting rid of them as a way of manipulating the narrative.
Not sure why this is a top priority right now, but I look forward to hearing about whatever horrible idea they implement to replace awards and coins.
One thing I’ve seen a lot of is comments wishing that Lemmy/Kbin had support for some sort of gilding. So it’s obviously a feature that people enjoyed using which means Reddit just has to enshittify it. This is the way.
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Absolutely! Server donations are good for a single instance but I think a service that allows users to purchase gold/awards and awards the particular instance (with funds) that they get used on would help fund the Fediverse as a whole. I imagine implementing something like that would not be simple but anything is better than injecting ads.
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I think it should be totally anonymous though because otherwise you go down the road of users with special avatars and good knows what
implementing something like that would not be simple
Especially with the idea that an instance a user calls home/registered on would have to be ok with allowing a donation link to go to the instance that the user you’re “gilding” is on
let’s inventing banking again! the bitcoin people are having so much fun doing that.
Precisely. They were a fun thing to give out, and directly helped to pay for server time. I even liked how Reddit would tell you how much server time your awards gave to Reddit (which I think they’ve removed?).
Kbin already has this covered. We can pay monthly to keep servers running via
@Ernest has transferred the existing Buy Me A Coffee money over to the server fund and from this point on we really can buy him a beer via Buy Me A Coffee which is cool!
any particular reason why there are 2 monthly payment options?
Well there are 49 subscribed people on patreon totaling $170/month. Lots of people probably already have accounts set up which makes it a very low threshold to join.
Meanwhile on librepay, arguably more philosophically suitable, there are 11 subscribers totaling $13/month.
Man, considering how many people I have seen saying how great it is to be able to pay, and asserting they are making donations, those are very low numbers.
Could be because it is less circulated. I had seen the coffee option previously but didn’t realise the other 2 options had been setup until I came across this comment.
I think @neshient is likely to be right. IIRC something like 800 people have been donating via Buy Me A Coffee.
I’m not Ernest but my guess is it gives us greater flexibility?
Like, some of us are already active on one or the other of those platforms, plus between them there are lots of different options for amount. I’d never heard of Liberapay but I like how it’s a non-profit.
Do not imagine for an instant that if Lemmy/Kbin becomes like Reddit and embraces enshitification that the community will not walk again.
100%, but the Federated nature would make this difficult, I’d imagine.
I’d love a way to simultaneously:
-
show someone I appreciate their comment
-
Help support an instance
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Help support KBin development
But, outside of crypto, I don’t see an easy way to make that happen and doing it through crypto would bring out the crypto bros and mega-anti crypto joe’s in about equal numbers, which would suck (plus, who’s to say that an instance admin even wants to deal with crypto to collect a few bucks).
-
That was the original pitch for gold on Reddit.
Yeah, just got an email from them stating that (I still have premium from being guilded). Great company management as always.
“Users are leaving? I have an idea! Let’s nuke their coins, that’ll bring them back!”
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
This seems like the dumbest decision imaginable. Users are flocking to alternatives, many of those who haven’t don’t trust you, and you’re trying to become profitable … so you delete the stuff people paid for without any sort of replacement. What a genius ideaǃ Making the platform less unique and giving the middle finger to the people who give you money in one go!
There’s no way a human adult is running this company. It has to be a council of toddlers run by a keyboard-smashing orangutan. At this point, they might as well start encouraging bots and karma farming. Maybe even pay people to do it!
Wait, what did you just say? They might actually do that?
The circus never ends.
Whelp, I never used those things anyway.
To what end, I wonder?
I feel like it has to be financially motivated and the only thing I can think of is they want users paying for premium directly rather than having it gifted from a different accounting bucket. But that doesn’t seem like strong enough motivation on the surface.
I have a feeling it’s definitely a blue checkmark in the making moment
Was there any indication something like this was coming?
Also, I only learned last 1-2 months during the API fiasco that Reddit had some weird NFT thing going on… Are they just trying to find anything that will stick?
It’s rumored that Reddit is about to launch a new “creator program” that will pay Redditors for high-karma activity on the site. This change is probably meant to accommodate this new feature.
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All for the “engagement rate” to be presented during IPO.
Instead what they’ll get is a metric shitton of bots trying to game the system, further tanking the site
how is paying people going to “keep them profit oriented til profits arrive”?
how could they even have the cashflow to support that? money isn’t free anymore
how could they even have the cashflow to support that?
I’m guessing new deals with advertisers. These changes will incentivize more neutral, advertiser-friendly comments on their platform. I imagine that’s going to make them more lucrative to advertisers going forward, so that their ads are shown next to harmless memes instead of bad-faith political arguments in cat pic subreddits.
Was anyone actually spending money on that crap?
Reddit used to fund all their servers with it and had a gold goal.
Yes haha. Constantly. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re happy to be rid of the type of user who would move to the fediverse anyway. Maybe that was their plan all along.
Yep, and was proud to - let me support Reddit and good contributors.
I wonder if the exodus of people like myself brought this on - the drop in awards given may have been significant indicator or less engagement, so needed to muddy the waters?
Yeah, I bought gold a few times. I had no problem with “this content was so good it inspired me to give back a little to the free service we’re all using.”
I wouldn’t mind some equivalent for the fediverse honestly. Let me donate to the home server of a user who’s comment I thought was especially good.
I know you can donate directly, but I do think there was something about also making another user’s day that felt good about the Gold system. The service gets some fuel in the tank and the comment author gets a little boost to their mood. It was nice.
I agree it got way too out of hand when they moved beyond Gold though.
Yeah the same that buy skins in games
But honestly, good. It’s those people that keep the stuff free for the others
It hurt itself in its confusion
I think part of it is about retention … retaining all those users, especially those with high karma levels (or at least users who believe they have high karma) from abandoning the site and ending their accounts.
I’m currently in the process of ending my four accounts I have on reddit. Two of them are over 100,000 in karma and when I read this post, the very first thing that popped into my mind was … HOW MUCH WILL MY ACCOUNTS BE WORTH?
So it’s now making me think … if I can just keep up my account for another while, maybe I can cash in on all that karma I accumulated.
I am sure that many other redditors are thinking the same. The way this reddit admin posted the info is really weird too … it sounded like some salesman just enticing people into an idea but not fully being able to say much about it and instead making vague suggestions that something big is coming in the future.
I know a sales job when I see one … and this is a sales job. Many people will fall for it … if not just to hang on to see if they can at least cash in our something … anything when the announcement happens.
Say or think what you want about me … but I’m ending this relationship and deleting my accounts … I don’t trust big corporations to say or do anything that might give me a chance at anything. Any action they elicit from me or any user will be gamed to only benefit them. If not enough people figure that out … reddit will make bank in the short term and that is all they are counting on.
I think part of it is about retention … retaining all those users, especially those with high karma levels (or at least users who believe they have high karma) from abandoning the site and ending their accounts.>
If they were actually serious about retention of high karma users they could at least consider not suspending/ banning such users without a very good reason. My previous account on there was nuked for reasons I dont understand to this day, I would have happily stayed on otherwise. I have a temporary account there now which I had no intention of putting any money into - well now the one reason i might have been tempted to do so is going away anyway.
The award/ coin system was great, and I spent a bit of money on it, it was also a very good way to pay for or be paid for small international transactions - I assisted a few people with minor things and they paid my costs such as they were with reddit coin, saving them and me international bank transaction fees. I also liked rewarding intelligent and incisive comments that needed recognition as such.
Reddit really is going down the shitter
(50+ awards right now, but who’s counting?)
Apparently you are, Reddit.
Reddit’s self-destruction is quite impressive, I’m not going to lie
I wonder if this isn’t a rev recognition play. If their accounting rules say they can’t take the revenue until the award is issued…I bet there’s a lot of money sitting on the table they can apply to their books with this play. It’s basically the same play as expiring unused gift cards…
Hmmm. Conspiracy theory intensifies…
That’s actually an excellent point, but it has the chance to backfire spectacularly if they can’t IPO or come up with a more higher earning replacement before the end of the next fiscal year. So I totally expect them to fuck it up
