It's most likely being sunset to usher in cash rewards for karma. https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-contributor-program-3343397/ as alluded to by the article. I don't frequent reddit...
I don't frequent reddit anymore, so this is only interesting in the periphery, but it appears to be another unpopular direction reddit is taking to try and make itself more valuable to investors.
It felt like with the amount of people on reddit, the reward system that was in place favored funny quips over insightful comments. I always kind of rolled my eyes at the comment rewards in general as you can already reward a comment with an upvote. To have more felt superfluous and simply a way to highlight a comment you felt that others should agree with, but c'est la vie.
If twitter has taught us anything, it's that users will endure a myriad of abuses by the operators to continue using a social media they are used to; and I don't feel like reddit has reached even a quarter of the things that I had assumed would be the death-knell of twitter.
There's an elegant idea in the awful implementation. Label's on this site help tag content in a way that encourages all users to interact with content they either like or think is inappropriate....
There's an elegant idea in the awful implementation. Label's on this site help tag content in a way that encourages all users to interact with content they either like or think is inappropriate. Adding some silly/mild features and throwing a price tag on "extra exemplary" isn't the worst way i've ever heard of to foot the infinitely growing server costs.
It probably doesn't work alone, but it can help if you don't want to bite the bullet and just make things subscription based.
I was going to link that myself.... I actually don't hate the idea as a concept. BUT, given the current state of reddit bots and spam that's the worst idea imaginable. They'd need a proper way to...
I was going to link that myself.... I actually don't hate the idea as a concept. BUT, given the current state of reddit bots and spam that's the worst idea imaginable. They'd need a proper way to curtail that and ensure there's a strong, obvious distinction between what a user is and what a bot is. Among a dozen other factors reddit has had years to address but ignore/haven't resolved.
To have more felt superfluous and simply a way to highlight a comment you felt that others should agree with, but c'est la vie.
Again, in concept it's not too different from our exemplary tag. The devil is more in the details and overall execution of how gold worked. It isn't limited like Tildes' tag (can only grant one "Exemplary" every 8 hours), zero barrier to entry, and ofc Reddit's culture uses it often to elevate jokes or whatever impassioned responses resonate with them.
But it's also something I thought was interesting to experiment with. Because one huge factor of internet forums is combatting Eternal September, and giving weight to certain votes based on various factors (account age, reputation, "award" count, contributions to a group, etc) can help tailor and preserve a culture to some extent.
I agree with you. The fact that reddit gold and tildes exemplary exists doesn't bother me. I just find them to be unnecessary and a bit silly. It doesn't anger me and I can appreciate that others...
Again, in concept it's not too different from our exemplary tag. The devil is more in the details and overall execution of how gold worked. It isn't limited like Tildes' tag (can only grant one "Exemplary" every 8 hours), zero barrier to entry, and ofc Reddit's culture uses it often to elevate jokes or whatever impassioned responses resonate with them.
I agree with you. The fact that reddit gold and tildes exemplary exists doesn't bother me. I just find them to be unnecessary and a bit silly. It doesn't anger me and I can appreciate that others do enjoy them though; so to me, it's not worth it to get upset about something I find to be at most a minor annoyance. Reading through the comment section in this thread alone points out that there are some people who do care.
I think that the idea is... okay? in an environment where it's understood that to upvote a comment because it is on-topic and well thought out and reward a comment that you really agree with are two different things. But upvotes and downvotes are purely weaponized on reddit and are used as "I reward this comment" already. I think it's hard to combat that kind of mentality, especially as a platform gets more popular.
Even in my earlier comment, I referred to a vote as a "reward" - which is inherently the wrong mentality when it comes to voting but that sort of habit is very hard to undo.
The culture won out. If you brought up reddiquette then you were downvoted to oblivion because you’re too uptight. I also, as a mod, used to use it to discourage spam accounts. They removed the...
The culture won out. If you brought up reddiquette then you were downvoted to oblivion because you’re too uptight.
I also, as a mod, used to use it to discourage spam accounts. They removed the guideline of 9 non-advertising interactions to every one advertising interaction. It made it so hard to manage accounts that were only created to push their own stuff rather than actually contribute to a community.
I saved that page as a favourite, and I still quote it to self-promoters (not the spam bots). I tell them that this is my personal definition of "spamming" in this subreddit, so I will require...
They removed the guideline of 9 non-advertising interactions to every one advertising interaction. It made it so hard to manage accounts that were only created to push their own stuff rather than actually contribute to a community.
I saved that page as a favourite, and I still quote it to self-promoters (not the spam bots). I tell them that this is my personal definition of "spamming" in this subreddit, so I will require them to make sure that 90% of their participation in the subreddit is not connected to their self-promotion. It has worked, to turn potential spammers into worthwhile contributors. It has also worked the other way, when I ban people who didn't pay attention to the lesson.
This, more than anything else on reddit, caused me to stop commenting. Healthy disagreements can happen. I dislike that you can effectively kill an opinion that you disagree with simply by a few...
This, more than anything else on reddit, caused me to stop commenting.
Healthy disagreements can happen. I dislike that you can effectively kill an opinion that you disagree with simply by a few people downvoting it.
Or a few of that person's other accounts. I have no doubt that some commenters employ a few alts to nudge the votes in their favor, and most of the time on Reddit that's all it takes for others to...
Or a few of that person's other accounts. I have no doubt that some commenters employ a few alts to nudge the votes in their favor, and most of the time on Reddit that's all it takes for others to pile on.
A popular Redditor, Unidan, got his account banned for doing that I have no idea how often bans for vote manipulation happen, though. I also can't believe that was 9 years ago.
In addition to the sorting effects mentioned by @daychilde, there's also a benefit for rewarding/reinforcing desired content beyond just upvote count. Personally, I often write longer, detailed...
The fact that reddit gold and tildes exemplary exists doesn't bother me. I just find them to be unnecessary and a bit silly.
In addition to the sorting effects mentioned by @daychilde, there's also a benefit for rewarding/reinforcing desired content beyond just upvote count.
Personally, I often write longer, detailed comments in places where I hope they'll be helpful. I've gotten a handful of "that was helpful"–type awards on Reddit over the years. While I wouldn't say that they necessarily motivated me directly—I'd probably continue trying to be helpful, regardless—they felt like a nice appreciation of my effort.
This was one of the major reason I had time engaging with reddit over the years. I would spend a lot of time crafting a well thought out response, editing my viewpoint to make it clearer, cleaning...
This was one of the major reason I had time engaging with reddit over the years. I would spend a lot of time crafting a well thought out response, editing my viewpoint to make it clearer, cleaning up spelling and so on. Then my post would get buried towards the bottom of the thread, my thoughts lost under an avalanche of quips and puns.
This feels like it was devised by Gallowboob and other power users/mods. How does this work on a website where a moderator can see a popular post, copy it, and then delete the original?
This feels like it was devised by Gallowboob and other power users/mods.
How does this work on a website where a moderator can see a popular post, copy it, and then delete the original?
I would argue that at least 50% of a post's chance of success is based on timing. Even if a moderator would try to do this, the timing wouldn't be the same as the original's and probably wouldn't...
How does this work on a website where a moderator can see a popular post, copy it, and then delete the original?
I would argue that at least 50% of a post's chance of success is based on timing. Even if a moderator would try to do this, the timing wouldn't be the same as the original's and probably wouldn't have a chance to take off.
It would only get to be popular of a lot of users have already seen and upvoted the post. This would be fishy when the same post reappears hours later, posted by another user who also happens to be a mod.
Mods don't actually delete posts; they only get removed from the subreddit's feeds (hot, new, etc.), but the post still exists. The original post would still be visible and accessible through the user's profile, even though it was removed, which means it would be obvious evidence that the mod did this. Which leads to...
Redditors love drama, so anyone attempting to do this would get huge backlash when uncovered, especially if they were one of these "contributor" users getting kickback for their posts.
Overall, the approach would be too risky and inconsistent enough to viably milk the contributor program. You'd have far better luck scowering other sites and social networks for content to repost onto reddit.
I doubt too that mods would execute such a scheme. Far more likely people just do what they're already doing: reposting from reddit itself. I've seen plenty of interesting images or links posted...
I doubt too that mods would execute such a scheme. Far more likely people just do what they're already doing: reposting from reddit itself. I've seen plenty of interesting images or links posted with little fanfare to small subs only to get reposted months later to great success by others who exclusive mine reddit itself for karma.
You make some pretty good points. It would be a lot of effort, you'd have to be quite dedicated, and the possibility of being found out is fairly high. Parts of your comment... ...helped me...
You make some pretty good points. It would be a lot of effort, you'd have to be quite dedicated, and the possibility of being found out is fairly high.
Parts of your comment...
the timing wouldn't be the same as the original's and probably wouldn't have a chance to take off.
Mods don't actually delete posts; they only get removed from the subreddit's feeds
Overall, the approach would be too risky and inconsistent enough to viably milk the contributor program.
...helped me remember an incident from half a decade ago that involved a moderator devising a method to hit r/all:
Not needing to compete with the previous day's top post got him to the top of his subreddit,
Wait for the new post to snowball after hitting r/all,
Restoring the previous day's top post.
It seemed like it was pretty consistent. I could imagine that such a scheme could make someone quite a pretty penny due to only really relying on upvotes from the majority of casual Reddit users that will be none the wiser.
I apologize for submitting yet another Reddit-related article here, but this is a pretty significant change. I don't understand why they would do so. Gold felt like such a novel way to monetize....
I apologize for submitting yet another Reddit-related article here, but this is a pretty significant change.
I don't understand why they would do so. Gold felt like such a novel way to monetize. There are people who cannot or will not pay for your service, so allowing another user to foot the bill seemed like a great way to cover your costs and retain those free but helpful contributors.
I'm very new here, in fact this is my first comment on the platform. I don't think it comes as any surprise that the majority of the people here came from Reddit and are looking for someplace new....
I'm very new here, in fact this is my first comment on the platform. I don't think it comes as any surprise that the majority of the people here came from Reddit and are looking for someplace new. New, as in better but the same. In other words, I don't believe an apology is necessary. In my opinion, I think we will see a lot of "looking back" content in the weeks and months to come.
Doing away with awards, especially awards that are issued by the community seems to be in lockstep with an overall push towards a more centralized control approach that Reddit looks to be creating. If RNG's link is correct (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), the push is to monetize more of the platform. If karma farming was bad before, it will only get worse with a move like that.
I think there is a strategy behind it, and it probably coincides with this announcement of getting rid of gold, I'm sure as they reveal more details and start seeing more of it in action it will...
I think there is a strategy behind it, and it probably coincides with this announcement of getting rid of gold, I'm sure as they reveal more details and start seeing more of it in action it will become more clear what the connections will be. I'd be surprised if reddit even cares about original content or unique posters or anything like that anymore, they couldn't care less if the whole front page is manufactured BS, fake advertising and reposts so long as they have millions and millions of users watching it all and they're finding a way to get paid from all those millions of users watching it. Legit seems like they're just trying to pull what Facebook had been doing for the past 5+ years and even drawing in similar crowds.
They will be fine with people karma farming the new payout system as well. Seems like some of these more established platforms don't want a bunch of people participating, they want a few key people participating in a more controlled channel where the content and money etc. are all far more controlled. If anything, the internet as a whole has been moving more and more towards this, the cable television of the past reincarnated, where you don't decide what is there, they decide for you with shit algorithms and payout systems that encourage the key contributors to make certain types of content.
This is incredibly typical because those who run companies tend to be out of touch with reality to just insane levels, to the point most people refuse to believe it until they meet these idiots...
It's like they haven't thought about this at all.
This is incredibly typical because those who run companies tend to be out of touch with reality to just insane levels, to the point most people refuse to believe it until they meet these idiots for themselves.
I'd actually be more surprised if they did something sensible.
This comment on /r/theoryofreddit is an interesting hypothesis for why this may be happening: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14yys4q/why_is_reddit_removing_awards/jrv49z5/
I think they're really misunderstanding what the IRS considers a virtual currency. Reddit's coins are really no different than any game that has an in-game currency (which is like 90% of all...
I think they're really misunderstanding what the IRS considers a virtual currency.
Reddit's coins are really no different than any game that has an in-game currency (which is like 90% of all mobile games) where you spend real money and get a set amount of in-game currency that can only be used to purchase things within the game.
You can't use reddit coins to buy anything tangible, or substitute reddit coins in the place of real currency. Maybe they'd have a point IF there was a way to convert reddit coins back to a real currency... but there isn't.
What you've written make a lot of sense, I think you're right. Another user here made a similar argument so I think on reflection that reddit is probably sunsetting coins in favor of an actual...
What you've written make a lot of sense, I think you're right. Another user here made a similar argument so I think on reflection that reddit is probably sunsetting coins in favor of an actual cryptocurrency.
I don’t think this is the case, otherwise we’d have much more stringent regulation around things like VBucks, Robux, and gift cards as a whole. Since you can’t cash them out to regular money,...
I don’t think this is the case, otherwise we’d have much more stringent regulation around things like VBucks, Robux, and gift cards as a whole. Since you can’t cash them out to regular money, there’s not really a tangible value to the coins.
Roblox for example, as far as I can tell, doesn’t require PII (beyond whatever’s necessary for card processing) to handle Robux until you, as a developer, try to cash it out to real money. Even if you’re buying or selling overpriced cosmetics, they don’t really care.
Yeah, on further considering, I think you're right. I think the more likely answer is that reddit wants to replace coins with an actual cryptocurrency like they've been experimenting with.
Yeah, on further considering, I think you're right. I think the more likely answer is that reddit wants to replace coins with an actual cryptocurrency like they've been experimenting with.
Interesting. If that's the case, I wonder what the chances are of seeing similar reactions within the video gaming markets. Because I could easily see user numbers decline when Roblox and CoD...
Interesting. If that's the case, I wonder what the chances are of seeing similar reactions within the video gaming markets.
Because I could easily see user numbers decline when Roblox and CoD starts asking for photo IDs and SSNs and whatnot.
You know, this is funny as I was just watching a podcast talking about Reddit, and as a positive it discussed how genius it was for Reddit to manage to monetize the act of upvoting. I guess it...
You know, this is funny as I was just watching a podcast talking about Reddit, and as a positive it discussed how genius it was for Reddit to manage to monetize the act of upvoting.
I guess it wasn't profitable enough, or perhaps in the process of enshittification they found something even more lucrative.
The fact that they are retroactively removing the visual award markers without having any alternative in place is really weird. I don't understand this decision, at all.
The fact that they are retroactively removing the visual award markers without having any alternative in place is really weird. I don't understand this decision, at all.
I found out because I still check BestofRedditorUpdates, and they sent the announcement to my inbox about an hour ago. I'm aware of the plan to monetize karma, but completely removing awards, even...
I found out because I still check BestofRedditorUpdates, and they sent the announcement to my inbox about an hour ago. I'm aware of the plan to monetize karma, but completely removing awards, even the gold, just... Astounds me, honestly. Worth noting that their official announcement on it makes no mention of the substitute, either.
The awards on reddit have lost some of their prestige and credibility since they expanded past just gold, or even silvers. Gilded posts used to stand out as a sign of serious quality, and I remember being so proud of my first gilded comment. But now posts tend to get inundated with awards. When I look at the front page of r/all, it's not rare to see the awards start a new line. There's just too many.
At the same time though, even those useless awards have become part of the culture there. I remember people on AITA awarding a post about a woman who canceled her stepson's birthday over him face-palming at her with... Well, the face-palm award. I also see so many dark jokes given the "wholesome" award as a joke. It's a unique part of reddit culture, a feature that isn't on other sites or platforms.
More than that, it baffles me because it's one of the direct sources of revenue. When explaining the situation to my parents, I pointed to the award system as one of the reasons reddit wasn't being hurt by third-party apps: people will pay for the awards no matter what app they use. It's normal to see people edit posts to ask people donate to good causes rather than spend money on awards.
Just... The fact they're removing even gold is just bizarre to me.
I seem to remember a lot of people being leery of the gold award when it was announced, and the admins assuring everyone that it was just for keeping the lights on, and not to worry, the site...
I seem to remember a lot of people being leery of the gold award when it was announced, and the admins assuring everyone that it was just for keeping the lights on, and not to worry, the site isn't slowing sliding into a monetization hellhole.
Goes to show you that the slippery slope argument isn't always invalid.
Reddit gold was originally a way for Reddit to earn money to pay for server costs. Now they’re using premium subscriptions and ads I suppose they don’t need to earn money through awards, although...
Reddit gold was originally a way for Reddit to earn money to pay for server costs. Now they’re using premium subscriptions and ads I suppose they don’t need to earn money through awards, although I’m not sure how removing coins and awards will affect existing subscription numbers.
If they are going with a way to cash out Karma for money as the article suggests, then reddit is going to become almost entirely corporate and unusable for me. Look at YouTube and how much algorithm manipulation there is in order to game the system and earn as much money as possible, expect the same for reddit as bots and content farms abuse every trick they can to squeeze as much money as they can out of reddit. You thought astroturfing and bots were a problem now? Imagine when there is a direct monetary benefit.
Premium is going from a subscription to gain benefits (coins, awards, snoos originally were only for gilded users), now premium is instead a way to remove negatives. (no ads), it doesn’t feel as good…. Create a problem, sell the solution
I also like how they mention users not liking the clutter of awards as a reason to remove all of them, they didn’t have to add so many different types of awards…
Yeah, a push to ad-free premium coupled with the "tipping" system will be the new model going forward. old.reddit/disablenewreddit was always on death row but now I believe we have the execution...
Yeah, a push to ad-free premium coupled with the "tipping" system will be the new model going forward.
old.reddit/disablenewreddit was always on death row but now I believe we have the execution date. I never used 3rd party apps but looks like I'll be leaving that place for good after they do that.
I wonder if this announcement got dragged out of Reddit, before they were ready, because of yesterday's news about what people found in the Reddit app code. The timing is suspicious. I suspect we...
I suspect we weren't supposed to be told about this until a bit later in the process.
Also, I've received my own private personal message about this (totally not from an automated bot!):
Hello from Reddit,
We’re reaching out because you have Reddit Premium and/or Reddit Coins on your account.
[...]
You'll still be able to use your Reddit Coins until September 12, after which they'll be removed from your account.
[...]
(People have given me gold/coins/awards in the past. I don't use them. Honestly, I'm not even sure how to use them, because I gave up tracking Reddit's features a few years ago, and definitely stopped paying any money to Reddit. But those coins exist, so Reddit saw fit to tell me I won't be able to use them any more.)
In a dozen years on reddit, I had reddit gold a few times or more. I got to access a "lounge" that couldn't be less memorable. Other than that, I never saw the appeal.
In a dozen years on reddit, I had reddit gold a few times or more.
I got to access a "lounge" that couldn't be less memorable. Other than that, I never saw the appeal.
I had quite a few posts and comments gilded over the years, and there was one useful feature locked behind it: new replies since your last visit to a thread were only highlighted if you had gold....
I had quite a few posts and comments gilded over the years, and there was one useful feature locked behind it: new replies since your last visit to a thread were only highlighted if you had gold. Otherwise everything was mixed together and there was no indicator of what was new since your last visit. It's something tildes does by default and I've always wondered why RES and third party apps didn't replicate it for free, aside from fear of reddit going after them.
I've given out well about 120 awards in my time on reddit with the majority of those being gold. I'm utterly disappointed in them for removing this system as it was a fun part of the culture. I...
I've given out well about 120 awards in my time on reddit with the majority of those being gold. I'm utterly disappointed in them for removing this system as it was a fun part of the culture. I already cancelled reddit premium over the API fiasco, but I got over 6 months left -- will we be compensated in any way for the loss of coins and the reduced value of premium? Doubt it one iota.
The levels of irony are astounding. But this is a sad end to a part of the culture of the site. They are going to try and make it resemble other social media sites because Wall Street investors...
The levels of irony are astounding. But this is a sad end to a part of the culture of the site. They are going to try and make it resemble other social media sites because Wall Street investors are too stupid to understand the differences between the sites. They want one clean bundle of sites to make sector investing easier, regardless if it destroys what we like.
It's most likely being sunset to usher in cash rewards for karma. https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-contributor-program-3343397/ as alluded to by the article.
I don't frequent reddit anymore, so this is only interesting in the periphery, but it appears to be another unpopular direction reddit is taking to try and make itself more valuable to investors.
It felt like with the amount of people on reddit, the reward system that was in place favored funny quips over insightful comments. I always kind of rolled my eyes at the comment rewards in general as you can already reward a comment with an upvote. To have more felt superfluous and simply a way to highlight a comment you felt that others should agree with, but c'est la vie.
If twitter has taught us anything, it's that users will endure a myriad of abuses by the operators to continue using a social media they are used to; and I don't feel like reddit has reached even a quarter of the things that I had assumed would be the death-knell of twitter.
There's an elegant idea in the awful implementation. Label's on this site help tag content in a way that encourages all users to interact with content they either like or think is inappropriate. Adding some silly/mild features and throwing a price tag on "extra exemplary" isn't the worst way i've ever heard of to foot the infinitely growing server costs.
It probably doesn't work alone, but it can help if you don't want to bite the bullet and just make things subscription based.
I was going to link that myself.... I actually don't hate the idea as a concept. BUT, given the current state of reddit bots and spam that's the worst idea imaginable. They'd need a proper way to curtail that and ensure there's a strong, obvious distinction between what a user is and what a bot is. Among a dozen other factors reddit has had years to address but ignore/haven't resolved.
Again, in concept it's not too different from our exemplary tag. The devil is more in the details and overall execution of how gold worked. It isn't limited like Tildes' tag (can only grant one "Exemplary" every 8 hours), zero barrier to entry, and ofc Reddit's culture uses it often to elevate jokes or whatever impassioned responses resonate with them.
But it's also something I thought was interesting to experiment with. Because one huge factor of internet forums is combatting Eternal September, and giving weight to certain votes based on various factors (account age, reputation, "award" count, contributions to a group, etc) can help tailor and preserve a culture to some extent.
I agree with you. The fact that reddit gold and tildes exemplary exists doesn't bother me. I just find them to be unnecessary and a bit silly. It doesn't anger me and I can appreciate that others do enjoy them though; so to me, it's not worth it to get upset about something I find to be at most a minor annoyance. Reading through the comment section in this thread alone points out that there are some people who do care.
I think that the idea is... okay? in an environment where it's understood that to upvote a comment because it is on-topic and well thought out and reward a comment that you really agree with are two different things. But upvotes and downvotes are purely weaponized on reddit and are used as "I reward this comment" already. I think it's hard to combat that kind of mentality, especially as a platform gets more popular.
Even in my earlier comment, I referred to a vote as a "reward" - which is inherently the wrong mentality when it comes to voting but that sort of habit is very hard to undo.
I remember years ago, when I first joined Reddit, the phrase "reddiquette" was common. In the last few years it seems to be basically dead.
The culture won out. If you brought up reddiquette then you were downvoted to oblivion because you’re too uptight.
I also, as a mod, used to use it to discourage spam accounts. They removed the guideline of 9 non-advertising interactions to every one advertising interaction. It made it so hard to manage accounts that were only created to push their own stuff rather than actually contribute to a community.
I saved that page as a favourite, and I still quote it to self-promoters (not the spam bots). I tell them that this is my personal definition of "spamming" in this subreddit, so I will require them to make sure that 90% of their participation in the subreddit is not connected to their self-promotion. It has worked, to turn potential spammers into worthwhile contributors. It has also worked the other way, when I ban people who didn't pay attention to the lesson.
This, more than anything else on reddit, caused me to stop commenting.
Healthy disagreements can happen. I dislike that you can effectively kill an opinion that you disagree with simply by a few people downvoting it.
Or a few of that person's other accounts. I have no doubt that some commenters employ a few alts to nudge the votes in their favor, and most of the time on Reddit that's all it takes for others to pile on.
A popular Redditor, Unidan, got his account banned for doing that
I have no idea how often bans for vote manipulation happen, though.
I also can't believe that was 9 years ago.
In addition to the sorting effects mentioned by @daychilde, there's also a benefit for rewarding/reinforcing desired content beyond just upvote count.
Personally, I often write longer, detailed comments in places where I hope they'll be helpful. I've gotten a handful of "that was helpful"–type awards on Reddit over the years. While I wouldn't say that they necessarily motivated me directly—I'd probably continue trying to be helpful, regardless—they felt like a nice appreciation of my effort.
This was one of the major reason I had time engaging with reddit over the years. I would spend a lot of time crafting a well thought out response, editing my viewpoint to make it clearer, cleaning up spelling and so on. Then my post would get buried towards the bottom of the thread, my thoughts lost under an avalanche of quips and puns.
This feels like it was devised by Gallowboob and other power users/mods.
How does this work on a website where a moderator can see a popular post, copy it, and then delete the original?
I would argue that at least 50% of a post's chance of success is based on timing. Even if a moderator would try to do this, the timing wouldn't be the same as the original's and probably wouldn't have a chance to take off.
It would only get to be popular of a lot of users have already seen and upvoted the post. This would be fishy when the same post reappears hours later, posted by another user who also happens to be a mod.
Mods don't actually delete posts; they only get removed from the subreddit's feeds (hot, new, etc.), but the post still exists. The original post would still be visible and accessible through the user's profile, even though it was removed, which means it would be obvious evidence that the mod did this. Which leads to...
Redditors love drama, so anyone attempting to do this would get huge backlash when uncovered, especially if they were one of these "contributor" users getting kickback for their posts.
Overall, the approach would be too risky and inconsistent enough to viably milk the contributor program. You'd have far better luck scowering other sites and social networks for content to repost onto reddit.
I doubt too that mods would execute such a scheme. Far more likely people just do what they're already doing: reposting from reddit itself. I've seen plenty of interesting images or links posted with little fanfare to small subs only to get reposted months later to great success by others who exclusive mine reddit itself for karma.
You make some pretty good points. It would be a lot of effort, you'd have to be quite dedicated, and the possibility of being found out is fairly high.
Parts of your comment...
...helped me remember an incident from half a decade ago that involved a moderator devising a method to hit r/all:
It seemed like it was pretty consistent. I could imagine that such a scheme could make someone quite a pretty penny due to only really relying on upvotes from the majority of casual Reddit users that will be none the wiser.
I apologize for submitting yet another Reddit-related article here, but this is a pretty significant change.
I don't understand why they would do so. Gold felt like such a novel way to monetize. There are people who cannot or will not pay for your service, so allowing another user to foot the bill seemed like a great way to cover your costs and retain those free but helpful contributors.
I'm very new here, in fact this is my first comment on the platform. I don't think it comes as any surprise that the majority of the people here came from Reddit and are looking for someplace new. New, as in better but the same. In other words, I don't believe an apology is necessary. In my opinion, I think we will see a lot of "looking back" content in the weeks and months to come.
Doing away with awards, especially awards that are issued by the community seems to be in lockstep with an overall push towards a more centralized control approach that Reddit looks to be creating. If RNG's link is correct (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), the push is to monetize more of the platform. If karma farming was bad before, it will only get worse with a move like that.
See: https://tildes.net/~tech/1816/us_redditors_to_earn_real_money_for_gold_karma#comments
It's so weird. It's like they haven't thought about this at all.
I figured it was obvious that you shouldn't kill the golden goose.
I think there is a strategy behind it, and it probably coincides with this announcement of getting rid of gold, I'm sure as they reveal more details and start seeing more of it in action it will become more clear what the connections will be. I'd be surprised if reddit even cares about original content or unique posters or anything like that anymore, they couldn't care less if the whole front page is manufactured BS, fake advertising and reposts so long as they have millions and millions of users watching it all and they're finding a way to get paid from all those millions of users watching it. Legit seems like they're just trying to pull what Facebook had been doing for the past 5+ years and even drawing in similar crowds.
They will be fine with people karma farming the new payout system as well. Seems like some of these more established platforms don't want a bunch of people participating, they want a few key people participating in a more controlled channel where the content and money etc. are all far more controlled. If anything, the internet as a whole has been moving more and more towards this, the cable television of the past reincarnated, where you don't decide what is there, they decide for you with shit algorithms and payout systems that encourage the key contributors to make certain types of content.
This is incredibly typical because those who run companies tend to be out of touch with reality to just insane levels, to the point most people refuse to believe it until they meet these idiots for themselves.
I'd actually be more surprised if they did something sensible.
This comment on /r/theoryofreddit is an interesting hypothesis for why this may be happening: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14yys4q/why_is_reddit_removing_awards/jrv49z5/
I think they're really misunderstanding what the IRS considers a virtual currency.
Reddit's coins are really no different than any game that has an in-game currency (which is like 90% of all mobile games) where you spend real money and get a set amount of in-game currency that can only be used to purchase things within the game.
You can't use reddit coins to buy anything tangible, or substitute reddit coins in the place of real currency. Maybe they'd have a point IF there was a way to convert reddit coins back to a real currency... but there isn't.
What you've written make a lot of sense, I think you're right. Another user here made a similar argument so I think on reflection that reddit is probably sunsetting coins in favor of an actual cryptocurrency.
I don’t think this is the case, otherwise we’d have much more stringent regulation around things like VBucks, Robux, and gift cards as a whole. Since you can’t cash them out to regular money, there’s not really a tangible value to the coins.
Roblox for example, as far as I can tell, doesn’t require PII (beyond whatever’s necessary for card processing) to handle Robux until you, as a developer, try to cash it out to real money. Even if you’re buying or selling overpriced cosmetics, they don’t really care.
Yeah, on further considering, I think you're right. I think the more likely answer is that reddit wants to replace coins with an actual cryptocurrency like they've been experimenting with.
Interesting. If that's the case, I wonder what the chances are of seeing similar reactions within the video gaming markets.
Because I could easily see user numbers decline when Roblox and CoD starts asking for photo IDs and SSNs and whatnot.
I see these posts as therapy. It helps remind me why I left and shouldn't go back.
You know, this is funny as I was just watching a podcast talking about Reddit, and as a positive it discussed how genius it was for Reddit to manage to monetize the act of upvoting.
I guess it wasn't profitable enough, or perhaps in the process of enshittification they found something even more lucrative.
It would have probably benefited them more had they kept the ability to downvote; capturing the downvote as an additional data point to sell.
The fact that they are retroactively removing the visual award markers without having any alternative in place is really weird. I don't understand this decision, at all.
I found out because I still check BestofRedditorUpdates, and they sent the announcement to my inbox about an hour ago. I'm aware of the plan to monetize karma, but completely removing awards, even the gold, just... Astounds me, honestly. Worth noting that their official announcement on it makes no mention of the substitute, either.
The awards on reddit have lost some of their prestige and credibility since they expanded past just gold, or even silvers. Gilded posts used to stand out as a sign of serious quality, and I remember being so proud of my first gilded comment. But now posts tend to get inundated with awards. When I look at the front page of r/all, it's not rare to see the awards start a new line. There's just too many.
At the same time though, even those useless awards have become part of the culture there. I remember people on AITA awarding a post about a woman who canceled her stepson's birthday over him face-palming at her with... Well, the face-palm award. I also see so many dark jokes given the "wholesome" award as a joke. It's a unique part of reddit culture, a feature that isn't on other sites or platforms.
More than that, it baffles me because it's one of the direct sources of revenue. When explaining the situation to my parents, I pointed to the award system as one of the reasons reddit wasn't being hurt by third-party apps: people will pay for the awards no matter what app they use. It's normal to see people edit posts to ask people donate to good causes rather than spend money on awards.
Just... The fact they're removing even gold is just bizarre to me.
I seem to remember a lot of people being leery of the gold award when it was announced, and the admins assuring everyone that it was just for keeping the lights on, and not to worry, the site isn't slowing sliding into a monetization hellhole.
Goes to show you that the slippery slope argument isn't always invalid.
Basically normalizing all the post (their data) giving them various options on how to promote what they want a user to see.
Reddit gold was originally a way for Reddit to earn money to pay for server costs. Now they’re using premium subscriptions and ads I suppose they don’t need to earn money through awards, although I’m not sure how removing coins and awards will affect existing subscription numbers.
If they are going with a way to cash out Karma for money as the article suggests, then reddit is going to become almost entirely corporate and unusable for me. Look at YouTube and how much algorithm manipulation there is in order to game the system and earn as much money as possible, expect the same for reddit as bots and content farms abuse every trick they can to squeeze as much money as they can out of reddit. You thought astroturfing and bots were a problem now? Imagine when there is a direct monetary benefit.
Premium is going from a subscription to gain benefits (coins, awards, snoos originally were only for gilded users), now premium is instead a way to remove negatives. (no ads), it doesn’t feel as good…. Create a problem, sell the solution
I also like how they mention users not liking the clutter of awards as a reason to remove all of them, they didn’t have to add so many different types of awards…
Yeah, a push to ad-free premium coupled with the "tipping" system will be the new model going forward.
old.reddit/disablenewreddit was always on death row but now I believe we have the execution date. I never used 3rd party apps but looks like I'll be leaving that place for good after they do that.
Totally agree, I can only look at it on desktop now with old.reddit, the API changes basically sliced my reddit usage by 90%
I wonder if this announcement got dragged out of Reddit, before they were ready, because of yesterday's news about what people found in the Reddit app code. The timing is suspicious.
I suspect we weren't supposed to be told about this until a bit later in the process.
Also, I've received my own private personal message about this (totally not from an automated bot!):
(People have given me gold/coins/awards in the past. I don't use them. Honestly, I'm not even sure how to use them, because I gave up tracking Reddit's features a few years ago, and definitely stopped paying any money to Reddit. But those coins exist, so Reddit saw fit to tell me I won't be able to use them any more.)
This message then directs me to Reddit's announcement post.
In a dozen years on reddit, I had reddit gold a few times or more.
I got to access a "lounge" that couldn't be less memorable. Other than that, I never saw the appeal.
I had quite a few posts and comments gilded over the years, and there was one useful feature locked behind it: new replies since your last visit to a thread were only highlighted if you had gold. Otherwise everything was mixed together and there was no indicator of what was new since your last visit. It's something tildes does by default and I've always wondered why RES and third party apps didn't replicate it for free, aside from fear of reddit going after them.
Wow, I guess I never noticed that on reddit! That would have been nice, I do really enjoy the feature here on Tildes.
I've given out well about 120 awards in my time on reddit with the majority of those being gold. I'm utterly disappointed in them for removing this system as it was a fun part of the culture. I already cancelled reddit premium over the API fiasco, but I got over 6 months left -- will we be compensated in any way for the loss of coins and the reduced value of premium? Doubt it one iota.
Just awful decision making.
The levels of irony are astounding. But this is a sad end to a part of the culture of the site. They are going to try and make it resemble other social media sites because Wall Street investors are too stupid to understand the differences between the sites. They want one clean bundle of sites to make sector investing easier, regardless if it destroys what we like.
Reddit content creators. Imagine that, never would've thought we'd see the day.
Reddit is dying
I guess this video's joke will now be over :(.
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.