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> Reddit appears to be working on a “contributor program” that would let users cash out gold or karma (basically, points you get for posts, comments, or giving

by tw04 3y ago

> Reddit appears to be working on a “contributor program” that would let users cash out gold or karma (basically, points you get for posts, comments, or giving awards) they receive into real money. I can’t see that being anything but an unmitigated disaster. They already struggle to deal with repost bots. Now you’re going to add a monetary incentive?

saiojd 3y ago
I'm not the type to hate on capitalism but Reddit's management is truly capitalism gone wrong. Ruining a public service for the profits of a few. What a waste.
- treeman79 3y ago
  This is a prime example of why capitalism is good. If Reddit was state owned or equivalent with regulatory capture, then nothing could be done about it. Doesn’t matter how bad it is. Like the DMV. Now since Reddit is determined to shoot itself in the foot, new competitors can rise up and replace them. Reddit did the same to its predecessors. Capitalism punishes harshly companies that decide to be stupid.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    Purely anecdotal, but I’ve already started to see noticeably less activity in a few of the subs I follow. It’s still a long way from dying, but it’s a promising start.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Yes, like BP. Such punishment.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    > Like the DMV. Whens the last time you've been to the DMV? The second MD started doing appointments it was 100x better. Even before appointments for simple things like returning plates there were people with ipads you could just checkout with.
    - kjghkjghkjgh 3y ago
      The last time I was at the DMV, I waited 4 hours for a 10 minute appointment.
      - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
        DMV experiences vary wildly from state to state.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      Last year, I moved to Texas. Texas has a DMV, but most of its functions are semi-privatized so you can get your license plates from a private agency, which is super convenient. In contrast, I had to get my drivers license at the DPS, which was booked months out.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
        Same in MN. Typically I'm in and out in less than 10 minutes. Just don't go at the end of the month!
  - rainonmoon 3y ago
    "If x was state owned... nothing could be done about it." Is this fatalism or is the American disease truly that your democracy has inexorably evaporated? Theoretically you have much more input over state-owned functions than private ones. However that assumes you don't live in a dystopian oligarchy ruled by capital that has completely supplanted the function of your government. If that was the case though, surely that'd be a prime example of why capitalism is NOT good?
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      America has a huge problem with voter turnout.
  - saiojd 3y ago
    That's a fair point about allowing competition. But frankly, it just sucks that Reddit choses to purposefully hurt its service. With social media, there's also a strong moating effect that is fundamentally anti-competitive.
  - PhasmaFelis 3y ago
    If Reddit was state-owned, they wouldn't be desperately scrabbling for profitability and none of these problems would have happened in the first place. That's not to say they wouldn't have other problems, or that state-owned social media is a good idea at all, but this particular argument doesn't work.
- WatchDog 3y ago
  Apparently reddit isn’t profitable, so the current management aren’t exactly good capitalists.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Theyre not trying to be profitable, theyre trying to grow and earn a high company valuation. I agree that they have not done well on that front either, relative to the size of their user base.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      That is how they were operating, but with investors growing cold towards tech their old "Just secure another round of funding" they have leaned on has fallen short. Nobody is going to take a chance on a company that hasn't managed to reach that kind of growth after nearly 20 years when safe investments like CDs are paying 5%+. Long gone is the low interest rate environment where investing in places like Reddit was the only hope you had of seeing returns. The world has changed significantly in the last year or so. Today, Reddit is clamouring at anything to try and turn profitability around in order to keep the lights on. The runway only lasts so long.
- randomdata 3y ago
  I'm not sure that is the case. Reddit's problem is that they have consistently used up more value to run the service than they have been able to deliver in return. Now they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off desperately trying to find some way to increase the value provided/decrease the value needed to stave off certain death. A socially owned organization operated in the same manner would be suffering the same fate right now. The idea that exchanging parties expect trade of equal value is not a feature of capitalism. It is the basis of all economic systems; at least those which do not depend on an imagined post-scarcity world.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >Now they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off desperately trying to find some way to increase the value provided/decrease the value needed to stave off certain death. Problem is who they are appealing to has different "value" than the actual users of the website. A classic problem of shareholder funded business. This is inevitable for stuff like ads but there are definitely ways to increase value that actual users would appreciate and at the very least shareholders would be neutral towards. Better moderation tools, for instance.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    > A socially owned organization operated in the same manner would be suffering the same fate right now. The thing is I don’t think a socially owned organization would have operated the same way. The core Reddit product of Reddit, text and links to images, is still valid today and what the long time users want. The expensive part: development/maintenance of new features like live streaming, mobile apps, recommendations algorithms, etc are all driven by profits and IPO hopes.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > are all driven by profits and IPO hopes. If that is all that drove them, why did they not dig random holes on the Reddit campus instead? I think you will find that there was a belief that these features would provide the missing value. It is likely fair to say that it failed, but such is life. The socially owned telephone company in my neck of the woods, of which I and the rest of my community are members, once spent big to enter the cell phone market. It too failed to deliver on the necessary value and we eventually had to back away from offering the service. The operations manager has said it was the biggest mistake the organization has ever made. Being socially owned doesn't mean value will magically present itself. After all, beneath it all is still humans and all of their faults. In a similar vein, the original Reddit, Usenet, may not be strictly socially owned but shares a lot in common with social ownership. It too has, for all intents and purposes, failed. The core product is there: Text, links, and images, but it seems that's not enough. Few are willing to give up anything for those things. They really don't hold much, if any, value. The humans that lie beneath to keep it all working want something in return. And that something in return is what Reddit is, now desperately, trying to find. They took to try and find it, but one can only hold out on giving back for so long and the clock is ticking. Again, this is not something of capitalism. People not wanting to keep giving to people who won't give back in return has been around since the dawn of mankind, long before capitalism was invented. The laggard who always sleeps all day, offering nothing to the community, while the rest of the tribe works tirelessly has never been welcome and no economic system can change that fundamental truth.
bloopernova 3y ago
It's even worse than that: Moderators can remove a post, then immediately repost it themselves to gain the currently-meaningless votes. If the money-for-votes scheme is implemented, those moderators will have a financial incentive to do that. Why would anyone who isn't a moderator want to participate in that? In my opinion these kinds of decisions are being made by people who have only interacted with the business side of reddit for a long time. It's ridiculous how out of touch the management of reddit appears to be! Why didn't they implement a per-user API key with reddit premium and provide a method for any 3rd party app to obtain and use said key? Do they really think they would make more money from advertising than through subscriptions? If they wanted to push their own mobile app, they could make its subscription cheaper than the 3rd party API key. Heck, they could have added a moderator or "extended use" API fee for those people that want to do extra stuff with the API, or more often, etc etc. I do wonder about the legality of paying people for posts. My ideal situation would be that mods and content creators get paid from the reddit awards something like this: 50% goes to reddit, 25% goes to a user-designated reddit-approved charity, and the final 25% goes to the user. Then again, I'd also implement comment signing via gnupg so I'm obviously not CEO material.
- richbell 3y ago
  > It's even worse than that: Moderators can remove a post, then immediately repost it themselves to gain the currently-meaningless votes. This is what GallowBoob, who IIRC worked for some sort of digital advertising company, did.
- dsir 3y ago
  > My ideal situation would be that mods and content creators get paid from the reddit awards I've been working on a community platform/Reddit alternative that has a business model exactly like this. It's like a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid taking the best features of each platform and combining them under one umbrella. One key aspect is we have non-intrusive monetization methods baked into each community where the revenue primarily goes to the community owners. The monetization stuff is completely optional and disabled by default, however it feels like the people curating the communities should have the option to be rewarded for the work that they do. https://sociables.com https://sociables.com
godshatter 3y ago
Reddit is enough of an echo chamber as it is. Now people will be posting or reposting things trying to hit that group think even harder than they are now since karma and awards won't just be for ego-boosting anymore.
WillAdams 3y ago
There's a new startup called "Pockerides" which has a similar idea: https://pocketrides.com https://pocketrides.com

by tw04 3y ago

saiojd 3y ago

I'm not the type to hate on capitalism but Reddit's management is truly capitalism gone wrong. Ruining a public service for the profits of a few. What a waste.

treeman79 3y ago
This is a prime example of why capitalism is good. If Reddit was state owned or equivalent with regulatory capture, then nothing could be done about it. Doesn’t matter how bad it is. Like the DMV. Now since Reddit is determined to shoot itself in the foot, new competitors can rise up and replace them. Reddit did the same to its predecessors. Capitalism punishes harshly companies that decide to be stupid.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lockhouse 3y ago
  Purely anecdotal, but I’ve already started to see noticeably less activity in a few of the subs I follow. It’s still a long way from dying, but it’s a promising start.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  Yes, like BP. Such punishment.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  > Like the DMV. Whens the last time you've been to the DMV? The second MD started doing appointments it was 100x better. Even before appointments for simple things like returning plates there were people with ipads you could just checkout with.
  - kjghkjghkjgh 3y ago
    The last time I was at the DMV, I waited 4 hours for a 10 minute appointment.
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      DMV experiences vary wildly from state to state.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Last year, I moved to Texas. Texas has a DMV, but most of its functions are semi-privatized so you can get your license plates from a private agency, which is super convenient. In contrast, I had to get my drivers license at the DPS, which was booked months out.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      Same in MN. Typically I'm in and out in less than 10 minutes. Just don't go at the end of the month!
- rainonmoon 3y ago
  "If x was state owned... nothing could be done about it." Is this fatalism or is the American disease truly that your democracy has inexorably evaporated? Theoretically you have much more input over state-owned functions than private ones. However that assumes you don't live in a dystopian oligarchy ruled by capital that has completely supplanted the function of your government. If that was the case though, surely that'd be a prime example of why capitalism is NOT good?
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    America has a huge problem with voter turnout.
- saiojd 3y ago
  That's a fair point about allowing competition. But frankly, it just sucks that Reddit choses to purposefully hurt its service. With social media, there's also a strong moating effect that is fundamentally anti-competitive.
- PhasmaFelis 3y ago
  If Reddit was state-owned, they wouldn't be desperately scrabbling for profitability and none of these problems would have happened in the first place. That's not to say they wouldn't have other problems, or that state-owned social media is a good idea at all, but this particular argument doesn't work.
WatchDog 3y ago
Apparently reddit isn’t profitable, so the current management aren’t exactly good capitalists.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Theyre not trying to be profitable, theyre trying to grow and earn a high company valuation. I agree that they have not done well on that front either, relative to the size of their user base.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    That is how they were operating, but with investors growing cold towards tech their old "Just secure another round of funding" they have leaned on has fallen short. Nobody is going to take a chance on a company that hasn't managed to reach that kind of growth after nearly 20 years when safe investments like CDs are paying 5%+. Long gone is the low interest rate environment where investing in places like Reddit was the only hope you had of seeing returns. The world has changed significantly in the last year or so. Today, Reddit is clamouring at anything to try and turn profitability around in order to keep the lights on. The runway only lasts so long.
randomdata 3y ago
I'm not sure that is the case. Reddit's problem is that they have consistently used up more value to run the service than they have been able to deliver in return. Now they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off desperately trying to find some way to increase the value provided/decrease the value needed to stave off certain death. A socially owned organization operated in the same manner would be suffering the same fate right now. The idea that exchanging parties expect trade of equal value is not a feature of capitalism. It is the basis of all economic systems; at least those which do not depend on an imagined post-scarcity world.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Now they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off desperately trying to find some way to increase the value provided/decrease the value needed to stave off certain death. Problem is who they are appealing to has different "value" than the actual users of the website. A classic problem of shareholder funded business. This is inevitable for stuff like ads but there are definitely ways to increase value that actual users would appreciate and at the very least shareholders would be neutral towards. Better moderation tools, for instance.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  > A socially owned organization operated in the same manner would be suffering the same fate right now. The thing is I don’t think a socially owned organization would have operated the same way. The core Reddit product of Reddit, text and links to images, is still valid today and what the long time users want. The expensive part: development/maintenance of new features like live streaming, mobile apps, recommendations algorithms, etc are all driven by profits and IPO hopes.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > are all driven by profits and IPO hopes. If that is all that drove them, why did they not dig random holes on the Reddit campus instead? I think you will find that there was a belief that these features would provide the missing value. It is likely fair to say that it failed, but such is life. The socially owned telephone company in my neck of the woods, of which I and the rest of my community are members, once spent big to enter the cell phone market. It too failed to deliver on the necessary value and we eventually had to back away from offering the service. The operations manager has said it was the biggest mistake the organization has ever made. Being socially owned doesn't mean value will magically present itself. After all, beneath it all is still humans and all of their faults. In a similar vein, the original Reddit, Usenet, may not be strictly socially owned but shares a lot in common with social ownership. It too has, for all intents and purposes, failed. The core product is there: Text, links, and images, but it seems that's not enough. Few are willing to give up anything for those things. They really don't hold much, if any, value. The humans that lie beneath to keep it all working want something in return. And that something in return is what Reddit is, now desperately, trying to find. They took to try and find it, but one can only hold out on giving back for so long and the clock is ticking. Again, this is not something of capitalism. People not wanting to keep giving to people who won't give back in return has been around since the dawn of mankind, long before capitalism was invented. The laggard who always sleeps all day, offering nothing to the community, while the rest of the tribe works tirelessly has never been welcome and no economic system can change that fundamental truth.

bloopernova 3y ago

It's even worse than that: Moderators can remove a post, then immediately repost it themselves to gain the currently-meaningless votes. If the money-for-votes scheme is implemented, those moderators will have a financial incentive to do that. Why would anyone who isn't a moderator want to participate in that? In my opinion these kinds of decisions are being made by people who have only interacted with the business side of reddit for a long time. It's ridiculous how out of touch the management of reddit appears to be! Why didn't they implement a per-user API key with reddit premium and provide a method for any 3rd party app to obtain and use said key? Do they really think they would make more money from advertising than through subscriptions? If they wanted to push their own mobile app, they could make its subscription cheaper than the 3rd party API key. Heck, they could have added a moderator or "extended use" API fee for those people that want to do extra stuff with the API, or more often, etc etc. I do wonder about the legality of paying people for posts. My ideal situation would be that mods and content creators get paid from the reddit awards something like this: 50% goes to reddit, 25% goes to a user-designated reddit-approved charity, and the final 25% goes to the user. Then again, I'd also implement comment signing via gnupg so I'm obviously not CEO material.

richbell 3y ago
> It's even worse than that: Moderators can remove a post, then immediately repost it themselves to gain the currently-meaningless votes. This is what GallowBoob, who IIRC worked for some sort of digital advertising company, did.
dsir 3y ago
> My ideal situation would be that mods and content creators get paid from the reddit awards I've been working on a community platform/Reddit alternative that has a business model exactly like this. It's like a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid taking the best features of each platform and combining them under one umbrella. One key aspect is we have non-intrusive monetization methods baked into each community where the revenue primarily goes to the community owners. The monetization stuff is completely optional and disabled by default, however it feels like the people curating the communities should have the option to be rewarded for the work that they do. https://sociables.com https://sociables.com

godshatter 3y ago

Reddit is enough of an echo chamber as it is. Now people will be posting or reposting things trying to hit that group think even harder than they are now since karma and awards won't just be for ego-boosting anymore.

WillAdams 3y ago

There's a new startup called "Pockerides" which has a similar idea: https://pocketrides.com https://pocketrides.com