Reddit kills awards and coins
Hi all, I’m u/venkman01 from the Reddit product team, and I’m here to give everyone an early look at the future of how redditors award (and...
Gold originally was fine imo. Then it got out of control with so many different medals, some free, some cheap, etc. They made it so confusing and basically every post on the front page had some sort of award. They made it confusing and cluttered... At least they realized it was dumb.
I used RIF for 11 years. First I'm hearing about awards. Only ever knew about gold.. thought Reddit silver was a cutesy little joke for redditors.
I mean I did too but I saw actual Reddit other place a few times lol
Reddit silver started as a joke but was added as a free award once they expanded the system.
I remember at one point, Talklittle mentioned the addition of rewards, and how he was against them, which was convenient since Reddit didn't give third party apps access to them in the first place. I know at one point I was able to buy gold in RiF, but that was gone the moment that Reddit introduced all the other bullshit rewards.
So they’re getting rid of coins and awards, but don’t have any kind of replacement actually planned yet?
They should have held off until they knew what the replacement would be. As it is, they’re yanking something that made Reddit unique for…what, exactly?
The replacement is to pay people with actual money per upvotes awards etc according to some code that was spotted recently
Great huh? That's really going to improve the quality of their content and their profitability... 🙄
EDIT https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-contributor-program-3343397/
Last I checked, there were at least 3 subreddits where cryptocurrency is being handed out regularly to active participants.
They're called "Community Points", and get a custom name for each sub ("moons" in /r/cryptocurrency, "donuts" in /r/ethtrader, and "bricks" in /r/fortniteBR.)
I don't know how the other subs fared, but /r/cryptocurrency became noticeably gamed by actors attempting to maximize their financial gains.
So.. I guess it's gonna be awesome.
Reddit really is done. This will drive spam and discourage people posting original content as they will see it stolen and reposted by the karma farming parts of reddit. They already flood communities with crap; reddit seems to just be taking another giant crap on the moderators who will have to deal with the tide of people trying to manipulate the new system for financial gain.
The best content on Reddit is not by "top contributors" whoever they may be. It's the random helpful posts that you stumble across or find on Internet seaches, or the thought provoking posts and comments that push back against the hive mind. Generally I find most (not all but most) of the up voted and awarded content to be trash or low value. Moving to financially incentivise that show Reddit really don't understand their own site.
Applying gold and awards will hold posts on the frontpage even if they're downvoted to oblivion. They're likely getting rid of them as a way of manipulating the narrative.
Not sure why this is a top priority right now, but I look forward to hearing about whatever horrible idea they implement to replace awards and coins.
Yeah, just got an email from them stating that (I still have premium from being guilded). Great company management as always.
“Users are leaving? I have an idea! Let’s nuke their coins, that’ll bring them back!”
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
This seems like the dumbest decision imaginable. Users are flocking to alternatives, many of those who haven't don't trust you, and you're trying to become profitable … so you delete the stuff people paid for without any sort of replacement. What a genius ideaǃ Making the platform less unique and giving the middle finger to the people who give you money in one go!
There's no way a human adult is running this company. It has to be a council of toddlers run by a keyboard-smashing orangutan. At this point, they might as well start encouraging bots and karma farming. Maybe even pay people to do it!
Wait, what did you just say? They might actually do that?
The circus never ends.
Was anyone actually spending money on that crap?
Reddit used to fund all their servers with it and had a gold goal.
Yes haha. Constantly. I wouldn't be surprised if they're happy to be rid of the type of user who would move to the fediverse anyway. Maybe that was their plan all along.
Yep, and was proud to - let me support Reddit and good contributors.
I wonder if the exodus of people like myself brought this on - the drop in awards given may have been significant indicator or less engagement, so needed to muddy the waters?
Yeah, I bought gold a few times. I had no problem with "this content was so good it inspired me to give back a little to the free service we're all using."
I wouldn't mind some equivalent for the fediverse honestly. Let me donate to the home server of a user who's comment I thought was especially good.
I know you can donate directly, but I do think there was something about also making another user's day that felt good about the Gold system. The service gets some fuel in the tank and the comment author gets a little boost to their mood. It was nice.
I agree it got way too out of hand when they moved beyond Gold though.
Yeah the same that buy skins in games
But honestly, good. It’s those people that keep the stuff free for the others
To what end, I wonder?
I feel like it has to be financially motivated and the only thing I can think of is they want users paying for premium directly rather than having it gifted from a different accounting bucket. But that doesn't seem like strong enough motivation on the surface.
I have a feeling it’s definitely a blue checkmark in the making moment
Was there any indication something like this was coming?
Also, I only learned last 1-2 months during the API fiasco that Reddit had some weird NFT thing going on.. Are they just trying to find anything that will stick?
It's rumored that Reddit is about to launch a new "creator program" that will pay Redditors for high-karma activity on the site. This change is probably meant to accommodate this new feature.
Whelp, I never used those things anyway.
It hurt itself in its confusion
Reddit's self-destruction is quite impressive, I'm not going to lie
I wonder if this isn't a rev recognition play. If their accounting rules say they can't take the revenue until the award is issued....I bet there's a lot of money sitting on the table they can apply to their books with this play. It's basically the same play as expiring unused gift cards....
Hmmm. Conspiracy theory intensifies...
That's actually an excellent point, but it has the chance to backfire spectacularly if they can't IPO or come up with a more higher earning replacement before the end of the next fiscal year. So I totally expect them to fuck it up
So first they alienate the people who are working for them for free and then they go ahead and alienate the people who are giving them money for free.
Well, the site's mascot is an alien, so ....
(50+ awards right now, but who’s counting?)
Apparently you are, Reddit.
I think part of it is about retention .... retaining all those users, especially those with high karma levels (or at least users who believe they have high karma) from abandoning the site and ending their accounts.
I'm currently in the process of ending my four accounts I have on reddit. Two of them are over 100,000 in karma and when I read this post, the very first thing that popped into my mind was .... HOW MUCH WILL MY ACCOUNTS BE WORTH?
So it's now making me think ... if I can just keep up my account for another while, maybe I can cash in on all that karma I accumulated.
I am sure that many other redditors are thinking the same. The way this reddit admin posted the info is really weird too ... it sounded like some salesman just enticing people into an idea but not fully being able to say much about it and instead making vague suggestions that something big is coming in the future.
I know a sales job when I see one .... and this is a sales job. Many people will fall for it ... if not just to hang on to see if they can at least cash in our something ... anything when the announcement happens.
Say or think what you want about me ... but I'm ending this relationship and deleting my accounts ... I don't trust big corporations to say or do anything that might give me a chance at anything. Any action they elicit from me or any user will be gamed to only benefit them. If not enough people figure that out ... reddit will make bank in the short term and that is all they are counting on.
I think part of it is about retention … retaining all those users, especially those with high karma levels (or at least users who believe they have high karma) from abandoning the site and ending their accounts.>
If they were actually serious about retention of high karma users they could at least consider not suspending/ banning such users without a very good reason. My previous account on there was nuked for reasons I dont understand to this day, I would have happily stayed on otherwise. I have a temporary account there now which I had no intention of putting any money into - well now the one reason i might have been tempted to do so is going away anyway.
The award/ coin system was great, and I spent a bit of money on it, it was also a very good way to pay for or be paid for small international transactions - I assisted a few people with minor things and they paid my costs such as they were with reddit coin, saving them and me international bank transaction fees. I also liked rewarding intelligent and incisive comments that needed recognition as such.
Reddit really is going down the shitter
It's surprising to hear this; given reddit's current mass-enshittification I don't expect to see a change that both improves user experience and reduces the money they're making. Clearly they've got something more sinister planned, but awards were a blight on the reddit experience and had I not already left I'd appreciate this change (for now!)
Makes sense to me.
Reddit's new userbase (Bots) don't buy gold.
You don't want to IPO and have to document that one of your 3 revenue streams is decreasing month-to-month.
The strategy is to keep pumping the fake traffic and keep selling the bogus impressions to ad buyers.
The Snoo Platform gone mad with their own userbase...
I never bought coins or whatever, but I had inherited a bunch somehow. I jumped on reddit just now to find an old thread I'd saved and found this in my inbox:
Hello from Reddit,
We’re reaching out because you have Reddit Premium and/or Reddit Coins on your account.
TL;DR: We're making updates to awards and coins on Reddit that we'll complete by September 12, 2023. As part of this, we made a decision to move away from Reddit coins and awards. This includes the 700 monthly coins and Premium Awards, which are currently part of the Reddit Premium experience.
You'll still be able to use your Reddit Coins until September 12, after which they'll be removed from your account.
Note: all other current Premium perks will still continue to exist, including the ad-free experience.
As we looked at our current awarding system, there was consistent feedback from redditors that stood out – particularly around the clutter from awards and all the steps involved with awarding content. We also learned that redditors want awarded content to be more valuable. With that, we are reworking how great content and contributions are rewarded on Reddit. We will have more updates to share soon.
If you have further questions please check out our announcement post to read more about the update.
- This perk is part of the paid Reddit Premium experience.
Thought it was kind of funny considering I never once cared about coins in the first place. Just checked and apparently I have "13325 coins to spend." I'm just going to let them go unless someone has a more maliciously compliant suggestion.
I can't think of anything too maliciously compliant. Maybe give Reddit Gold to posts describing how to join Lemmy or something? Awards should boost visibility. It's at least a little ironic to use Reddit 's own awards to help people escape.
This is not a bad idea at all. I’ll do a search for “lemmy” and “kbin” at some point tomorrow and throw coins at any of the useful posts I find.
A suggestion I've seen is to use them to give platinum coins to people, because that gives them some time of Reddit Premium (platinum gives more than gold), which is the only thing you can do with them that will outlast the awards being phased out and it's the closest thing to using them for something that has monetary value.
Award a bunch of posts and memes making fun of r/spez
Reddit is a dumpster fire!
I know, right? And u/spez threw the match! I'm still in shock over how swiftly it just went from amazing to garbage. Fortunately, Kbin and the fediverse is already superior for me even if the community isn't as robust. The growth and enthusiasm is here.
The Snoopocalypse continues.
Oh for want of a kind stranger.