Reddit could be working on a Contributor program, letting top contributors earn real-world money from the gold and karma they receive.
“Site I only still care about to laugh at thinks I am going to give it my tax information.” I’ll have to think real hard about that one.
Investors should themselves have a good think about how the CEO that self-reported making zero profit in over a decade as one of the most popular social media sites — a site whose ad revenue has stuttered in the face of what is officially a month long protest — can afford to be handing out money to shitposting bot farms now.
I don’t know, while I won’t be going back there, I can see it help make reddit more mainstream, by attracting influencers. Imagine IG Influencers or Youtubers encouraging people to engage with them personally on reddit. I can see it actually working out alright for Reddit and possibly a small number of already successful influencers and celebrities. I don’t see it making the experience any better for the average redditor, though
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There definitely were personalities on Reddit, like poem_for_your_sprog, who gained a following. I could see sprog making appreciable money with the proposed system.
Teah but it’s not like the predominant mode of the website and it’s not the same kind of like cult of personality you get with youtube creators. Poem for your sprog is like a novel little thing you randomly run into on the site and are like, ah cute. But if that kinda gimmicky shit was all the site revolved around it would for sure not be the same place anymore and I think it would lose a lot of people.
u/SchnoodleDoodleDo in the r/aww community (known for their cute animal perspective poems) was another. I could see all their upvotes being worth something.
I can see it help make reddit more mainstream, by attracting influencers. Imagine IG Influencers or Youtubers encouraging people to engage with them personally on reddit.
…please like this post and friend me, and ring that bell. Oh man, you’re right, they’re going to go the tickytocky YouTube route.
And here I was, making insightful comments and poop jokes for free, like a chump.
So the incentive to make the best spambots won’t just be some project for influence, but an actual financial reward? Truly, reddit will be at the forefront of innovation.
Musk did the same stupid thing just now, rewarding accounts with many retweets/views with money (of course Fascists), making sure bots will bot the shit out of other bots to make a dime, of course Musk-lover Spez follows suit.
Why do I suspect that, even if one were to spend 8 hours a day on Reddit, making comments that all were gilded, you’d still earn less than minimum wage?
Zero chance this would pay better than even something like Mturk.
And yet, content quality on Reddit will tank even further because people will shitpost for pennies.
because bots will shitpost for pennies
The site will literally be run over with chatgpt bots farming for pennies overnight.
I’d be surprised if it was any better than that.
it could be worth it for people in poorer countries
It is reserved to people living in the USA.
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Literally couldn’t pay me to go back
They won’t be paying you or me. They will be paying influencers and celebrities who already have a following, and bot creators.
We’re in a better place now.
Copying my comment from the other threads:
reddit started trialing a “Community Points” program in 2019 in /r/ethtrader, /r/cryptocurrency and /r/fortnite , where posters and commenters could earn “Community Points” that were supposedly backed up with crypto that you could eventually cash out. They announced an expansion of the program in December 2021 but, afaik, they never actually did so. Which might have something to do with the fact that one of the /r/cryptocurrency mods made $10,000 by selling community points. I don’t know if the program has actively continued since then; maybe someone who was in the three trial communities can say.
My point is that reddit has been working on something similar to this program for at least five years now. And this article isn’t based on any announcement by reddit, but by someone examining their source code. It’s possible that this code has been present for a while and reddit has leaked it’s existence to try to attract back some of their lost contributors. Or even that it hasn’t been present but they included the old code in the newest app release and then pointed it out for the same reason.
In any case, this article isn’t based on any official announcement, and reddit has been “trialing” a similar program for over four years. I wouldn’t hold out any hope that this actually sees daylight anytime soon, or that it’ll work well if it’s actually released.
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Won’t this just cause a ton of spam and meaningless discussions?
Pretty sure that’s exactly what they want. Those are way more neutral/marketable qualities to advertisers than “Sometimes your ad will be shown next to a 10-page, expletive-ridden tirade about poop-knives, and no, they won’t explain what it is”.
In the short term, yes. And in the context of them trying for an IPO, that’s probably what they want. But it absolutely will kill the site in the end because no one actually wants to hang out in an ad riddled wasteland.
I’m still on Facebook because of that’s how I keep up with friends I no longer live near, but you know what Facebook has been loath to show me recently? Posts from my friends. Easily 75% of my feed is sponsored or “recommended” content. If they’re not going to show me the one and only thing I come to the site to see, I might as well not come to the site.
And unfortunately half the shit from my friends are shit reposts.
Maybe they are trying to improve engagement with India.
Food for the AI. This is where the money is.
Look at a big sub of reddit: today it’s made of one liners that we collapsed. This is worthless to an AI.
Would you ask questions to an AI if it gave you a reddit like answer? No.
They want the content creators, and the content is in the comments.
AI: This.
They’ll make everyone work like slaves and when payment time comes, they could easily change the rules to avoid paying out too much. They’ll change rules and blame the content creators for it.
Shows how desperate they’ve become for content creators after the fiasco that was the third party app protest. Like, they’re not profitable yet, and they want to give money away? C’mon already.
Twitter literally just started paying people who tweet, so spez really is just copying Elon.
I just saw someone mentioning that on mastodon maybe ten minutes ago, and then it instantly made sense. How innovative he is. Even when he can see the fallout before engaging in it
It tells you exactly the kind of bubble he’s living in. He likely thinks it’s going great for Elon and Twitter.
I mean, someone has to win the enshittification race, right?
So revolutionary
The real story is they’re getting rid of coins and awards. It’s confirmed by a reddit admin, whereas the cash for karma thing is speculation.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794403/reddit-gold-awards-coins-sunset
So killing a feature before any replacement is ready; cool. I’m sure those who pay for premium and will stop receiving a stock of coins will see a commensurate price reduction. Right?
Oooh boy, that’s not gonna sit well with the kind strangers
🏆 such a good comment, have my free gold!
I stopped my premium membership, but I’ve still got 35800 coins. I don’t know what I’ll do with them.
Search for comments from people saying they’re leaving to go to kbin, Lemmy, whatever and shower them with coins.
Or find the post from the reddit admin breaking the news that coins were going away, drop gold on the salty comments. There are already a ton of people doing that; comment after comment with a dozen-plus useless trophies each.
So reddit will pay memelords but not mods?
And the fact that they still can’t see the value of good moderation after all the protests is just beyond moronic.
It’s a war for content. If you have ever written a comment of more than five coherent lines then you have been working for free all this time.
We are the value, we fill the websites, we create the distraction between two ads and we teach the AI.
The irony is that the comments that got me the most karma weren’t the ones I considered of highest value. A detailed, genuinely helpful response in a small subreddit might only garner a half-dozen upvotes while a snarky one-liner in a big sub can boost karma by thousands.
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We are the value, we fill the websites, we create the distraction between two ads and we teach the AI. <
and we are the musicmakers and we are the dreamers of dreams.
