38 votes

Reddit announces "Predictions" - Allowing users to bet on the outcomes of polls with Coins (purchased with real money), where moderators are responsible for choosing which option wins

41 comments

  1. [8]
    Deimos
    (edited )
    Link
    I'm definitely cynical about Reddit's direction overall, but I think this is legitimately the worst idea they've ever tried. I don't understand how this managed to get approved by enough people to...

    I'm definitely cynical about Reddit's direction overall, but I think this is legitimately the worst idea they've ever tried. I don't understand how this managed to get approved by enough people to actually be implemented. There are so many things that can go wrong with this, and so much potential for abuse.

    Even if there's no way to "cash out", the legality of digital gambling like this is very questionable in general, and outright banned in some areas of the world. More and more legal cases are coming up related to similar apps/games/etc. too. For a couple of recent examples, Big Fish Games just had to pay out a $155M class-action settlement in Washington, and a class-action lawsuit was filed in Canada over loot boxes in EA games.

    47 votes
    1. [2]
      Omnicrola
      Link Parent
      I mean, they've made some questionable decisions along the way (chat), but this takes the cake so far. This is such a naked money grab it's laughable. Who the hell asked for this? What community...

      I mean, they've made some questionable decisions along the way (chat), but this takes the cake so far. This is such a naked money grab it's laughable. Who the hell asked for this? What community said they wanted this? I'm guessing none.

      18 votes
      1. Deimos
        Link Parent
        It could potentially be a fun concept for sports communities, ones based around reality-show competitions, and so on. But making it into real-money betting means it's not harmless fun any more.

        It could potentially be a fun concept for sports communities, ones based around reality-show competitions, and so on. But making it into real-money betting means it's not harmless fun any more.

        13 votes
    2. [4]
      Parliament
      Link Parent
      I can't decide whether this is dumber than redditmade. They're both up there.

      I think this is legitimately the worst idea they've ever tried.

      I can't decide whether this is dumber than redditmade. They're both up there.

      5 votes
      1. [2]
        whbboyd
        Link Parent
        Reddit Notes clearly wins, except for having been made by an apparently rogue employee, being announced before it was actually developed, and then quietly dumped, the creator sacked, and the whole...

        Reddit Notes clearly wins, except for having been made by an apparently rogue employee, being announced before it was actually developed, and then quietly dumped, the creator sacked, and the whole affair swept under the rug.

        Now, this probably-illegal financial boondoggle actually exists and was apparently approved at all levels and developed by a full team, which definitely makes it worse. For sheer stupidity of concept, though, it's got nothing on Reddit Notes.

        10 votes
        1. Erik
          Link Parent
          Man, how did I never hear about this until today? Seems like this probably had a lot of drama around it, but I don't know if I want to go around digging it up. Thanks for sharing this.

          Man, how did I never hear about this until today? Seems like this probably had a lot of drama around it, but I don't know if I want to go around digging it up. Thanks for sharing this.

          1 vote
    3. RapidEyeMovement
      Link Parent
      This sounds like an easy way to flood their "coin economy', but to what end? I am sure that internal reports show more engagement with content/comments that have coin flair attached. Other than a...

      This sounds like an easy way to flood their "coin economy', but to what end?

      I am sure that internal reports show more engagement with content/comments that have coin flair attached.

      Other than a monetary shot in the arm, what other effects are they hoping to see with this move?

      4 votes
  2. [24]
    tesseractcat
    Link
    Reading this article, my first thought was that it was some sort of bad April fools joke, like Reddit usually makes every year. But it isn't April. Honestly, to me, this hints that Reddit...

    Reading this article, my first thought was that it was some sort of bad April fools joke, like Reddit usually makes every year. But it isn't April. Honestly, to me, this hints that Reddit struggling to monetize their platform effectively, and this is some sort of desperate measure to get people to buy their currency.

    14 votes
    1. [23]
      RNG
      Link Parent
      Between the "awards" and copious advertising, how is Reddit not profitable?

      Between the "awards" and copious advertising, how is Reddit not profitable?

      2 votes
      1. [10]
        jgb
        Link Parent
        They do image and video hosting now, which must be quite expensive.

        They do image and video hosting now, which must be quite expensive.

        9 votes
        1. [3]
          Deimos
          Link Parent
          And live-streaming now too through "RPAN", which is an extremely expensive thing to host.

          And live-streaming now too through "RPAN", which is an extremely expensive thing to host.

          10 votes
          1. [2]
            RNG
            Link Parent
            If Reddit is having issues being profitable, why would they implement something like RPAN? Anecdotally, I haven't talked to anyone who got much value out of the service outside of it being a neat...

            If Reddit is having issues being profitable, why would they implement something like RPAN? Anecdotally, I haven't talked to anyone who got much value out of the service outside of it being a neat gimmick. Same question could apply to why would Reddit self host images/videos instead of allowing Imgur or something else to host.

            2 votes
            1. Deimos
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              Continued traffic growth is more important than profit at this point, because social networks are valued almost entirely on how large their userbases are and how fast they're growing. They need to...

              Continued traffic growth is more important than profit at this point, because social networks are valued almost entirely on how large their userbases are and how fast they're growing. They need to still be showing strong growth as they look to IPO or potentially get acquired by someone.

              Image and video hosting makes sure that users aren't leaving Reddit as often, and also helps to bring in more traffic when users share content hosted on Reddit itself.

              RPAN and some of the other recent pushes like chat are aimed at bringing in (or keeping) different types of users. Streaming is very popular right now, and if they can get people—and their audiences—to do it on Reddit instead of other places like Twitch or Facebook, that's potentially a lot of users.

              8 votes
        2. [6]
          Diff
          Link Parent
          Then just drop both of those. Partner with someone who does. Return to being a link aggregator instead of a content host. Reddit's image hosting is fine, but deleting the post nukes the image....

          Then just drop both of those. Partner with someone who does. Return to being a link aggregator instead of a content host. Reddit's image hosting is fine, but deleting the post nukes the image. It's not reliable hosting. Reddit's image albums, at least on old.reddit, are bordering on unusable. Reddit's video hosting is awful universally and incredibly buggy. If I select HD, I still get lower quality. And on replays, whatever part was loaded in low quality stays in low quality. On mobile, I just straight up can't replay videos at all without reloading the entire page. Not to mention how slow it is. Reddit's burning a hole in their wallet to provide an inferior solution.

          7 votes
          1. [5]
            qwertz
            Link Parent
            It's almost like Imgur was a perfectly fine way to do things that Reddit did a good job of integrating with...

            It's almost like Imgur was a perfectly fine way to do things that Reddit did a good job of integrating with...

            1 vote
            1. [4]
              cfabbro
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              Sorry, but I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you. Imgur is far from "perfectly fine" these days, especially on mobile. It has basically been in pretty steady decline in terms of the...

              Sorry, but I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you. Imgur is far from "perfectly fine" these days, especially on mobile. It has basically been in pretty steady decline in terms of the quality of the services they offer ever since MrGrim started taking on a bunch of VC in 2014, which lead to them getting increasingly more obnoxious in their monetization and cost cutting efforts. E.g. by redirecting direct image links on mobile to the ad-filled embedded image page, adding heavy-handed image compression to uploads automatically with no way to disable it, adding all sorts of community nonsense to the site you can't opt out of, etc. And I say all this as a huge fan of Imgur, who even had an Imgur Pro account from the very first day it was available until the day they discontinued it several years later. Similar to reddit, it's been pretty disappointing to see the direction imgur has been heading over the last few years. :(

              Now that doesn't mean reddit image hosting is any better, but IMO it's really no surprise that reddit HQ decided to starting doing image hosting in-house and cut imgur out of the loop given how much content on reddit was dependent on imgur, the somewhat concerning changes imgur started making, and especially when they started adding community features that directly competed with reddit itself.

              12 votes
              1. knocklessmonster
                Link Parent
                I think Imgur's biggest mistake happened early on: When they tried to turn it into an image board instead of an image host, right before they removed reddit's subreddit-style tagging. It led to...

                I think Imgur's biggest mistake happened early on: When they tried to turn it into an image board instead of an image host, right before they removed reddit's subreddit-style tagging.

                It led to going to basically view reddit content with people discussing it out of context.

                4 votes
              2. [2]
                petrichor
                Link Parent
                What are some good alternative image hosts? I've been using ibb.co recently, but there was also this really cool open source hosting software I stumbled upon and promptly lost that was oriented...

                What are some good alternative image hosts? I've been using ibb.co recently, but there was also this really cool open source hosting software I stumbled upon and promptly lost that was oriented around a curve-based timeout for images.

                2 votes
                1. cfabbro
                  (edited )
                  Link Parent
                  I haven't really experimented enough to know, and I still mostly use imgur even though I know it really sucks on mobile for people. But I will give ibb.co a try. Thanks. Whenever I am sharing an...

                  I haven't really experimented enough to know, and I still mostly use imgur even though I know it really sucks on mobile for people. But I will give ibb.co a try. Thanks.

                  Whenever I am sharing an image with just one person I use Onedrive though, and it works just fine.

      2. [7]
        cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        A posh HQ in the heart of the second most expensive city in the US (San Fran.), along with having ~400 employees (as of 2018, so it's likely even more now), is not cheap... especially since they...

        how is Reddit not profitable?

        A posh HQ in the heart of the second most expensive city in the US (San Fran.), along with having ~400 employees (as of 2018, so it's likely even more now), is not cheap... especially since they stopped allowing remote workers quite a few years ago (which I don't know if they ever reversed), and so have had to pay wages high enough to cover those SF employees incredibly high cost of living, as well as compete with other silicon valley employers.

        And when you also add in their likely insanely bloated infrastructure costs from them relying on cloud computing (AWS) and a content delivery network (Fastly) as their backbone, instead of operating or renting their own dedicated servers, along with now hosting user videos on top of images, and I think it's pretty obvious to see why they haven't yet managed to be profitable.

        Then factor in the several hundred million dollars of additional VC debt investment they have taken on in the last few years, which those investors expect to see a return on eventually, and all these increasingly desperate seeming monetization efforts make a lot more sense too. It was practically inevitable... which is precisely why Tildes was set up the way it is, as a non-profit with no advertisers or investors, and hosted on a dedicated server, so as to avoid being forced down the same destructive path.

        7 votes
        1. [4]
          Deimos
          (edited )
          Link Parent
          From this blog post one week ago. And still somewhere around 100 openings listed on their jobs page, some of which might be hiring multiple people for the position.

          Reddit, Inc. consists of over 600 employees working together to achieve this ambitious mission and continue to uphold its values in the process.

          From this blog post one week ago.

          And still somewhere around 100 openings listed on their jobs page, some of which might be hiring multiple people for the position.

          8 votes
          1. [3]
            cfabbro
            (edited )
            Link Parent
            600 employees now with 100 more openings? Jesus, that's insane. On the positive side, it's good to see they are looking to fill so many new engineering positions, although only one new community...

            600 employees now with 100 more openings? Jesus, that's insane. On the positive side, it's good to see they are looking to fill so many new engineering positions, although only one new community position is pretty pathetic considering the sad state of community relations and support on the site. :/

            3 votes
            1. [2]
              Deimos
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              And if you look at the actual listing, it's not even really something I'd consider a "real" community position: It's more like a communications job to tell the users about the new ways they're...

              And if you look at the actual listing, it's not even really something I'd consider a "real" community position:

              • Work with the Economy Product Team to influence strategy and inform product roadmap to ensure we're building products and features that add the most value to the consumer while strengthening our community
              • Collaborate closely with product and design teams to ensure the voice of the customer is factored into new product development plans and designs
              • Act as the two-way communication conduit between moderators/users and the Economy Team

              It's more like a communications job to tell the users about the new ways they're going to be monetized and then write internal summaries about how unhappy they were about it.

              I'm pretty sure they've been outsourcing the majority of their "normal" community-management work for a while now.

              9 votes
              1. cfabbro
                Link Parent
                Fun hypothetical question for you... If you suddenly had the resources to hire 100 new employees for Tildes, what sort of breakdown do you think you would lean towards regarding their roles (i.e....

                Fun hypothetical question for you... If you suddenly had the resources to hire 100 new employees for Tildes, what sort of breakdown do you think you would lean towards regarding their roles (i.e. how many designers, engineers, community team, anti-evil, etc.)? And what sort of things would you have them focus on?

                9 votes
        2. [2]
          skullkid2424
          Link Parent
          To be fair, theres something to be said for only needing to deal with taxes, health insurance, and labor laws for one city/state rather than figuring it out for multiple states or even countries.

          A posh HQ in the heart of the second most expensive city in the US (San Fran.), along with having ~400 employees (as of 2018, so it's likely even more now), is not cheap... especially since they stopped allowing remote workers quite a few years ago (which I don't know if they ever reversed), and so have had to pay wages high enough to cover those SF employees incredibly high cost of living, as well as compete with other silicon valley employers.

          To be fair, theres something to be said for only needing to deal with taxes, health insurance, and labor laws for one city/state rather than figuring it out for multiple states or even countries.

          2 votes
          1. Deimos
            (edited )
            Link Parent
            That definitely wasn't the motivation for everyone needing to be in SF, but they switched back away from it quite a while ago anyway. Now they also have operations/offices in NYC, Los Angeles,...

            That definitely wasn't the motivation for everyone needing to be in SF, but they switched back away from it quite a while ago anyway.

            Now they also have operations/offices in NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Dublin (Ireland), and (as of last month) London (UK).

            9 votes
      3. [4]
        tesseractcat
        Link Parent
        I don't know, I feel like not as many people buy awards as we might think (since top posts are rare, and non-top posts don't get awarded all that often). And targeted advertising might be harder...

        I don't know, I feel like not as many people buy awards as we might think (since top posts are rare, and non-top posts don't get awarded all that often). And targeted advertising might be harder on a site where most people are passive content consumers, or it just might be that it doesn't make enough to pay the bills. Either way I can't imagine them doing something like this without being at least a little worried.

        3 votes
        1. [3]
          Diff
          Link Parent
          Pretty much every AskReddit thread has a thick layer of awards coating every top comment. Browsing through a thread on new.reddit is actually quite distracting because of the silly award...

          Pretty much every AskReddit thread has a thick layer of awards coating every top comment. Browsing through a thread on new.reddit is actually quite distracting because of the silly award animations playing out every time you scroll another inch.

          5 votes
          1. [2]
            Deimos
            Link Parent
            They've been giving out a ton of free coins through all sorts of convoluted methods to encourage people to use awards though, so it's impossible to tell how many of those were actually paid for....

            They've been giving out a ton of free coins through all sorts of convoluted methods to encourage people to use awards though, so it's impossible to tell how many of those were actually paid for.

            /r/help and other similar subreddits have been full of posts about free coins for months, random example from a few hours ago: How does the party train award work exactly?

            6 votes
            1. Wes
              Link Parent
              Anecdotally in /r/GameDeals we used to get an award once every week or two. Now there's multiple per day, sometimes in rapid succession. In the last three months or so they've really exploded. We...

              Anecdotally in /r/GameDeals we used to get an award once every week or two. Now there's multiple per day, sometimes in rapid succession. In the last three months or so they've really exploded.

              We wrote a bot to detect and remove them. The admins probably won't be happy about it, but they were really making the subreddit look garish. Silver/gold rewards are left up as an alternative way of funding the site.

              So far nobody has complained, despite both award giver and recipient being notified when an award is hidden.

              5 votes
      4. Greg
        Link Parent
        Because they're not trying to cover server costs and a few sysadmins, they're trying to justify a $3billion valuation.

        Because they're not trying to cover server costs and a few sysadmins, they're trying to justify a $3billion valuation.

        3 votes
  3. [2]
    wakamex
    Link
    I flipped through the front page logged out today and they have broadcasts now? It's unrecognisable from what it used to be. Can't see much hope for the remaining quality niche subreddits except...

    I flipped through the front page logged out today and they have broadcasts now? It's unrecognisable from what it used to be. Can't see much hope for the remaining quality niche subreddits except to die a slow death.

    7 votes
    1. Omnicrola
      Link Parent
      I had no idea about the broadcast thing until a few months ago when my wife asked I'd seen one particular one and I said "a what now?". If they ever take away old.reddit.com I will fully abandon it.

      I had no idea about the broadcast thing until a few months ago when my wife asked I'd seen one particular one and I said "a what now?". If they ever take away old.reddit.com I will fully abandon it.

      15 votes
  4. [5]
    Kuromantis
    Link
    Offtopic but how are the invites going? I feel like this is often the kind of stuff that drives people to here, whether by them just deciding they've had enough of reddit's management or just...

    Offtopic but how are the invites going? I feel like this is often the kind of stuff that drives people to here, whether by them just deciding they've had enough of reddit's management or just liking the concept of Tildes. That's how I got here.

    4 votes
    1. [4]
      Deimos
      Link Parent
      There's only ever a burst of invite requests if Tildes gets a prominent mention somewhere, but that hasn't happened with this feature or some of the other recent changes. I think the only...

      There's only ever a burst of invite requests if Tildes gets a prominent mention somewhere, but that hasn't happened with this feature or some of the other recent changes. I think the only significant thread about Predictions is the official one the topic links to, but it's in one of the smallest official subreddits and also got downvoted below zero, so hardly anyone will even see it.

      4 votes
      1. [3]
        Apos
        Link Parent
        There's been a lot of Reddit threads in the recent past where mentioning Tildes would have made sense, but I didn't do it. Do you notice any downsides to those big bursts? I've been mostly giving...

        There's been a lot of Reddit threads in the recent past where mentioning Tildes would have made sense, but I didn't do it. Do you notice any downsides to those big bursts? I've been mostly giving invites 1 by 1 over months so far.

        1 vote
        1. [2]
          Deimos
          Link Parent
          The main downside is probably that it can take a fair amount of time for me and some of the people that handle invites on Reddit (mostly @cfabbro and @suspended) to respond to all the requests,...

          The main downside is probably that it can take a fair amount of time for me and some of the people that handle invites on Reddit (mostly @cfabbro and @suspended) to respond to all the requests, but a lot of the users don't end up sticking around, or in some cases don't even register.

          There's not really any better thing to do at this point though, until we get away from the invite system. That definitely needs to happen eventually.

          3 votes
          1. cfabbro
            (edited )
            Link Parent
            Some of the bigger waves of invites in the early days tended to bring a lot of drama with them too, but that has pretty much stopped happening now that people can actually see the site before...

            Some of the bigger waves of invites in the early days tended to bring a lot of drama with them too, but that has pretty much stopped happening now that people can actually see the site before registering. So IMO @Apos (and anyone else) is absolutely free to mention Tildes (and /r/tildes) on reddit whenever appropriate at this point. I definitely don't mind having to send out invites, especially now that @suspended is lending a hand.

            3 votes
  5. Good_Apollo
    Link
    Lol wow holy fuck how is this not satire? We really are in a weird timeline, man. Ever glad I discovered Tildes.

    Lol wow holy fuck how is this not satire? We really are in a weird timeline, man. Ever glad I discovered Tildes.

    3 votes