This was a rumour some years back and I just remember after that I started noticing a bunch of repost bots. They even copy paste the top comment just to double dip that sweet karma sauce
Fuck you Spez, we ain't going back. Beside, I'm getting used to this new federation thing. I use Kbin and it's wonderful. Just waiting on a real mobile App and my scrolling addiction will be satisfied
Kbin is tolerable in a mobile browser, but it actually becomes quite good once you decide to use Firefox on mobile and install the Tampermonkey addon along with some community userscripts to improve the functionality. Kbin is much younger than Lemmy, so it's just playing catch-up right now.
On PC, I very much prefer Kbin's user interface (but still with custom userscripts and a few minor changes to the theme I use).
It'll be just like YouTube, where people are huddled on the floor praying to "the algorithm" with each bit of "content" they post, hoping to make it big as a "professional Redditor".
I can't wait to see the per-user algorithmic feeds. One post from r/conspiracy or r/conservative scrolls past your screen, and suddenly it's all you see.
I see senior management written all over you! I promise ya - keep working hard n showing up early and that’s you in the corner office in 5 years. Ya just gotta stick around.
Just gonna hijack your comment for visibility. 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.
I wonder if that was born of the Dogecoin tipping system that was around for a while in... 2017/2018? I forget.
I'm pretty sure they thought the awards/gilding was going to be their best bet to Moneyville after Premium flopped. It's basically just a rebranding with the ability to gift it.
As a content creator who posted to Reddit since it began, the API blackout did more than drive me away from Reddit - it led me to discover the Fediverse. And it's just so... much.... better. No concerns about power tripping mods, endless pun threads, shadowbanning or obtuse rules. You interact with real people interested in what you post, not just bots and karma whores - even in the most popular threads. If a community turns sour, you just block them, and then follow the same themed community on another instance.
Reddit relied on the thrill of contributing to a large audience to drive the desire to participate. This worked as long as it was the only and best game in town. Now they've broken that thrill by making it clear that any community that doesn't contribute to Spez's wallet isn't welcome on Reddit. If this program had been in place, it might have blunted the exodus of content creators from Reddit, but trying to implement it now smacks of desperation.
Besides, Reddit isn't profitable when their mods and contributors work for free. Expecting a power-tripping broke motherfucker to possibly pay me in the future for work I previously did for free for them is like expecting the rapture - it's a nice thought in theory, but even if it does happen, you're probably not gonna like how it turns out.
I don't think this is aimed at winning us over. It's really just them doubling down on the type of users they want to see going forward (and it's not us).
Users must be over 18 years old and reside in the United States. Additionally, contributions must adhere to the "Safe for Work" guidelines set by Reddit.
Quora tried something like this and it absolutely destroyed the site. I was on there when basically all content was unpaid, and I think it mostly worked pretty well and you could get some high quality answers. After they went paid (the Quora partner program, I think it was called), it basically turned into Yahoo! Answers both in question and answer quality. Every time I've visited Quora since, it kinda has the same effect as looking at those pictures of people as they use meth for longer and longer; the site just keeps getting more and more unusable in both interface and content.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was done through cryptocurrency like Reddit's done before.
A few years ago Reddit started to give community specific cryptocurrencies depending on how much karma the user got. I think it was only launched on the Fortnite and Cryptocurrency subreddits, and I'd say giving cryptocurrency to a community of mostly young Fortnite fans seems immoral, but not surprising for Reddit.
I've made like 150$ off of r/cryptocurrency moons from the few comments I've left there but it wasn't a great move by reddit. The quality of the entire subreddit took a nosedive and there were different meta strategies to earn moons like sob-stories à la "I'm living in a third world country and make money farming moons".
If they expanded this experiment to the entire platform, the entire site will become truly unusable.I hope they do it lol.
... letting top contributors earn real-world money that they can spend on exclusive badges & exchange it for one week of FREE trial of amazing Reddit premium gold app
So real world money that I can't actually take into the real world. This just feels like calling they're premium currency dollars and pretending it's not locked into their system.
The karma store has been a long-running joke on reddit. And much like reddit silver, it looks like, for some reason, they're taking the jokes and thinking they're good ideas.
If people really want to keep reddit protests going how about developing an open source repost bot which embeds your own adverts into the top comments.
Start taking control of how the "content creators" are rewarded.