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Reddit releases more details about the upcoming changes to Reddit Gold
If you missed it, Reddit recently announced some major planned changes to Reddit Gold. It's pretty vague and confusing, but my summary was:
The current gold system is basically:
- When you have reddit gold, you can disable ads and have access to a few extra features.
- You can buy gold for $4/month or $30 if you buy 12 months at the same time. You can also buy "creddits" for the same prices, which are basically stored months of gold and can either be used on yourself or to give gold to other users.
- Giving gold to other users is called "gilding". You can gild individual posts on the site, which puts a gold icon on that post and gives the author a month of gold.
Now, from what I can understand, this is the new system:
- Reddit gold is now called "Reddit Premium". You can buy it for yourself for $6/month. There are no bulk discounts any more, so a year of Premium will cost $72. Existing subscribers can keep their current pricing as long as they're subscribed before the change.
- When you have Reddit Premium, at the beginning of each month you will be given some amount of "Gold Coins". These Coins can be used to give "awards" to other users' posts.
- You can give 3 different types of awards to a post, which each cost a different number of Coins:
- Silver Award - costs the fewest number of Coins; adds a silver icon on the post; the author receives no further benefits
- Gold Award - costs more Coins; adds a gold icon on the post (same as current icon); the author receives some small number of Coins (not Premium)
- Super Gold Award - costs the most Coins; adds a "spectacular" icon on the post; the author receives a month of Reddit Premium
- Gold Coins will be purchasable in bundles separately from Premium, pricing not announced.
Today they released more info in /r/lounge (here's the post if you have reddit gold to be able to view it). The summary of the new post is:
- "Super Gold" has been renamed "Platinum"
- If you have any creddits, you have the choice to convert them to months of Premium membership before Sept. 10. If you don't, they'll be converted to 2000 Coins per creddit.
- You get 700 coins per month for having Premium.
- The awards that you can give to posts have these coin costs/benefits:
| Award | Coin Cost | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | 100 Coins | Silver icon next to comment or post; a lingering sense of disappointment that you didn’t get Gold |
| Gold | 500 Coins | Gold icon next to comment or post; additionally, recipient receives 100 Coins |
| Platinum | 1,800 Coins | Platinum icon next to comment or post; recipient receives one month of Premium membership (which includes 700 Coins) |
And there will be the following "Coin Packs" available for purchase:
| Price Point | Coin Package | Discount % | What You Can Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1.99 | 500 Coins | N/A | 5 Silver Awards or 1 Gold Award |
| $3.99 | 1,100 Coins | 10% | 11 Silver Awards or 2 Gold Awards |
| $5.99 | 1,800 Coins | 20% | 18 Silver Awards, 3 Gold Awards, or 1 Platinum Award |
| $19.99 | 7,200 Coins | 43% | 72 Silver Awards, 14 Gold Awards, or 4 Platinum Awards |
| $99.99 | 40,000 Coins | 59% | 400 Silver Awards, 80 Gold Awards, or 22 Platinum Awards |
Also, (or should I say especially) advertising agencies, social media managers, major corporations, and astroturfers. Instead of trying to fight the obvious control schemes going on, they're leaning in. Loot crate gambling addicts are the least of the worries.
EDIT: Jeez autocorrect.
Loot crates serve a very different purpose - no one wants ads in a game they paid full price for. Loot crates are just a way for a game to continue making revenue.
Honestly it's the most analogous to the gold/premium service on Reddit - it's a way for people who enjoy the service to "give back" or pay into the service to some extent.
I think the intrustion of ads, astroturfing, etc. are much more worrisome in the grand scheme of things. And I absolutely hate lootboxes.
I know some folks who have, like, Gilding XI trophy, which means they've gilded a lot of users, and definitely paid more than $100 over time. some just like making other folks happy with a little virtual gift, for others it's a way to give back to the website they enjoy using.
Yeah, there are a lot of users that regularly pour hundreds or thousands of dollars into gilding others. From what I've seen, they're not very happy about these changes at all. They used to buy creddits for $2.50 each (12 for $30), and now the cheapest way you can possibly give someone "real gold" (which is now Platinum) will be $4.50 if they buy the $100 packs—almost double the price with over triple the required payment.
It's exactly half the previous price ($1.25) to give people "new gold", but that doesn't actually give them anything except an icon on their post (and the ability to give someone else an even worse icon on theirs). They also said that giving both Gold and Platinum will contribute to the Gilding trophies, so that also effectively makes it cost it half as much for new people to level up their trophies.
I don't know, none of this is really important in the end, but it's kind of a shitty way to treat people that have been basically donating massive amounts of money to you for years for almost nothing in return.
Basically the new Reddit motto.
“Remember the human” flipped over to “Exploit the human”
"Remember the human has money they could be giving you"
the folks I have in mind gild people in subs that they don't moderate, so I'm fairly sure they pay for at least some of it.
I think you're severely underestimating the number of gildings @najodleglejszy is talking about. Reddit hasn't officially revealed the thresholds for each Gilding trophy as far as I know, but people in the lounge estimate that it takes about 2000 gildings to get the Gilding XI trophy.
Reddit might give mods a few dozen credits here and there, but certainly not thousands. Anyone with that trophy (and there were at least 5 people as of that post a year ago) has spent somewhere around $5000 (and potentially a lot more) on gilding people.
Sounds to me like they are using money to directly influence discussion. When comments are gilded they tend to rise to the top far quicker than simply being a high quality post.
I have about $300 in Gold given out over the years. Though I stopped buying it in 2016 for reasons which should be pretty obvious.
This is a bit off-topic, but it's nice seeing you here, fellow Polish speaker! I remember seeing your name on Reddit a few times, I hope you're enjoying it here!
mom, I'm famous!
I had reddit gold a few times. It never once gave me anything of value.
I hate microtransactions in games, but I gotta say, any alternative to ad-supported media is welcome to me. Not that they have any intention of dropping the ads (or it making nearly enough money to work otherwise).
This isn't nearly as bad as the redesign, but taken together it paints a picture of reddit really flailing around to monetize / show profitability.
Yup, that's what they're doing.
They're trying to make money, and they want to change the brand to attract advertisers.
That was the entire reason for the redesign; not to "refresh" the UI, and not to help users in any way. It was done so that they could introduce inline ads. Plain and simple. Every other gaudy/ugly/awkward design choice didn't matter one lick. It's intended to keep you on reddit—that's the reason clicking the post links (or did; I haven't seen the redesign in quite a while now) directly to comments. More time on the page, and not off doing something meaningless to reddit like, you know, actually reading the content the original post links to.
Yeah, I think they've hit the stage where investors want to see a return on their money. I just wish they'd be upfront about that and say "Hey everyone, we need to make an actual profit. This is our plan to do so and this is why we think it will work" instead of hiding behind "it's good for the community!".
This sucks. Reddit silver is an actual thing now? I would much rather reddit mold, honestly. At least the coin packages are in while values of items, so you don’t by 600 coins for a 500 coin item.
Given the levels of vitriol there lately, I think bringing back Reddit Mold would make them a hell of a lot more money than gold does. Why pay to highlight good stuff when you can pay to make someone else's posting experience into a mockery of the language?
That's what I'm saying. I don't understand why they are so resistant to the idea of anti-gold. Especially since reddit seems super keen to find ways to profit from the culture wars they encourage - giving people the opportunity to battle over flair with real cash would make them hundreds of dollars off a single controversial post.
Like, double the price to gild/ungild the post each time the status changes. Don't actually remove the privileges from a gilded user, just the flair.
Probably the same reason Facebook never implemented Dislike buttons—it's not advertiser friendly. Can you imagine paying $x for ads on a site and then find that people have (theoretically) spent money or effort to visibly and publicly shit on your ad?
So complicated and so stupid. Reddit gold has become a cultural staple to the site over the years the way it is and I think they’re misguided if they think an overhaul will turn it into anymore of a revenue stream than it already was. It’s going to take more creativity if that site will ever become profitable. And my outstanding gold better carry over or I’m suing for a million karma points.
The "coins" stuff is a microcosm of how capitalism pushes to transactionalize each and every human interaction. It's hated of this kind of alienation that's shaped my political views more than anything else. Feels weird to be "politically opposed" to reddit itself as opposed to its content.
The medium is the message.
Oh yay a McLuhan reference in the wild!
For anyone curious about this saying or it's author, I recommend watching this YouTube video titled "Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 1 v 3"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw
I didn't know this existed. Thanks for sharing.
McLuhan's book is also very lightweight and super common, can probably be picked up for pennies at most used bookstores. I was lucky enough to take a media ecology class and spent a good half a semester just talking about McLuhan.
I wonder if they’ll bring back the reddit shops next. That way everyone can know that you know when the narwhal bacons with a super cool t-shirt that totally isn’t over priced.
All of these are in 100 lots. Why not divide all the values by 100 so shit makes sense?
People like big numbers.
Behavioral economics trickery.
$1.99 for 500 coins "feels" like you're getting more than if it were $1.99 for 5 coins.
They've posted this publicly in /r/changelog now too: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/99rcii/hi_rchangelog_were_back_to_talk_about_creddits/
Nothing new in the post itself, but this is a new detail:
So this isn't restricted only to gilding, they're going to start selling "things or experiences" for Coins as well, whatever that means.
So Reddit now has microtransactions? All this time and I didn't realize it was a mobile game and not a social media site. Everything makes so much more sense now.
Honestly, I hope they're not thinking will solve any of their problems. Handing out good boi coins will not fix the issues it has with hate and misinformation - it'll just stratify users and communities based on how much money is circulating within them. It'll probably also embolden posts that have deliberate misinformation - since those are usually circulated out of passion and emotion, and anything that evokes emotion will always get more of a response than reasonable posts.
Someone in the changelog thread asked if the app was going to start giving out Coins as a "daily login reward". I honestly won't be surprised if they start doing something like that.
Blech, if there's one thing I can't stand about the digital economy, it's the inflated value assigned to "engagement." Your website's considered unmarketable if you can't capture eyeballs for as long as possible.
Oh, man I could totally see that. "Comment every day this week and get 10 coins!"
Oh my god... that would be awful. People already use the website all day, imagine how creating an economy based around how much somebody uses the site will affect people.
This is some bullshit. Reddit Gold was first introduced when reddit still had a feeling of community (back when reddit was still an underdog website, ha). People who feel part of a community understand the admins need to pay their bills. So, make it convenient for people to chip in a couple bucks here and there. The admins added in a few benefits (like the lounge) to make it more fun, but everybody knows we're not buying gold for the benefits: we're buying it to pay the bills. No problems. Everybody understands what's going on.
Now, of course, reddit is not a community. The admins are antagonistic with the users. The users are antagonistic with each other.
The problem with the new Premium Membership is it's designed to ensure the users don't understand what's going on. It takes advantage of the fact that we are less morally invested in things that are abstract (see Ted Ariely's TED talk on cheating for great examples of this). I can understand giving someone $4. I can't understand (unless I think about it really hard and work through the math on pencil-and-paper) giving someone 100 "coins". It's designed to make us not fully appreciate what money is going where.
I can't say it's the worst thing or most antagonistic thing reddit's done, but it seems a clear signal to me that the era of reddit being a community with users influencing the direction of the site is over.
Freemium models are horrible. Inevitably, the free version of the product will be made worse and worse, all the better to push the user to purchase. I wouldn't be surprised if reddit made gold/silver an in-app purchase -- get the mobile users to spend more money to boost their own posts to the top, watch more ads.
The whole thing reminds me way to much of gameloft.
Whenever I get Reddit Gold, I'm like "Guys! Why are you wasting your money! I don't care for the Gold status. Go donate your money at a better place."
I'm confused, are features like no ads and more comments loading staying on as part of the premium benefits?
It sounds like the features aren't changing. Ad-free will definitely stay as part of gold, I think that's part of why they're raising the price so much - they think $2.50/month is too cheap for people to be able to hide ads.
That makes some sense but then why not communicate that in clear terms?