The new system to replace Reddit coins and awards is here. You got out at the right time.

Community Points are the first step towards a better future for online communities. In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away. With the advent of blockchain technology, we now have a way to establish this freedom in a decentralized and secure way.

The way to be independent of Reddit is by having a token on a blockchain maintained by Reddit?

Today's online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms, where they do not have independence or control anything of value.

That's hilarious, when they literally just trapped users in their app and killed 3rd party apps.

In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away.

Is this a fucking joke

Glanced over it. Complete word salad. Corporate nonsense: baffle them with bullshit.

You get points from communities. These points are stored on the block chain, because why not? The points themselves come from reddit, but the communities distribute them. Since they're on the block chain, reddit can't take back your magic bean points or whatever once you get them. Nevermind that they're worthless and that reddit controls the only platform that they're even remotely useful on.

For now, Reddit will cover gas costs for distributing Points to users and allowing them to spend Points on features such as Special Memberships.

Emphasis mine. Someone has to pay for it, because that's how the block chain works. For now it's Reddit. In the future? Who knows!

How does this benefit the consumer? It doesn't, really. Potentially it gives posters more control over a subreddit, but looks like mods will still hold essentially all the power when it comes to a subreddit, which is how it works now.

How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn't, really. They're handing out magic beans with the selling point being that they can't take them away from you once you get them. It costs them money to do this, because it's on the block chain as opposed to some in-house database. This replaced coins, right? They killed an income stream and replaced it with an expense.

They get to tell investors that they're into the block chain when they launch their IPO, I guess. All I can say is buyer beware. Chances are high the powers that be unload their stock options in the IPO hype and then get the hell out of dodge. They might have waited too long, though. The tech bubble deflated, and I don't know if the books are impressive enough to draw in the big bucks from investors.

If you want genuine control over your community, start one on the Fediverse and self-host an instance. No admins will kick you off since you're your own admin and head mod rolled into one.

As blockchain tokens

Thanks I read enough.

" In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away"

WTF???!?! They literally just took communities away from the members because they were protesting Reddit intentionally degrading their site....

Nice to see that reddit started to advertise for lemmy / kbin. 🤣

Guaranteed that people smarter than the reddit staff will exploit their processes or code to cause mayhem and chaos.

100% guaranteed.

Is this old, or just something that has been in the works for a long time? No one is talking about it on Reddit, so I'm pretty sure that it is old information. This is a post about it from three years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CommunityPointsHelp/comments/gj779g/reddit_community_points_faq_guides_multiple/

So you get points for posting and for moderating. It's this literally being "paid in exposure"? Don't we joke about this all the time how worthless it is?

So it's basically Reddit NFTs. Let's just call it as it is.

It is time for them to take back ownership and control. It is time for a change.

Lol. You're still on Reddit. You're not controlling shit.

As blockchain tokens that are owned and controlled by communities themselves — not by any app or platform — Community Points represent a way for Redditors to own a piece of their favorite communities.

You don't own it, it's made by Reddit, distributed by Reddit, and only useful on Reddit and not anywhere else. What's the meaning of decentralization and ownership if it's only useful in one place?

It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens

Lmao how can they say that with a straight face

Lmao

Today's online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms, where they do not have independence

Trapped in apps like the official Reddit app? Because they ruined 3rd party apps? What are they sniffing over there, the trapping of communities is their own doing.

I'm done with reddit, so either way I don't really care. Tbh I don't think this will necessarily be a dumpster fire. It might even be interesting, depending on the specifics of this implementation. It's probably fueled by higher ups hearing hype words like blockchain. My expectation is that things will mostly just continue as normal, but now the management and CEO's etc can masturbate to the idea of having a blockchain application.

A crypto scam? All this was building to a crypto scam? They burned Reddit to the ground to pump some shitty Redditcoin going into the IPO?

I expect nothing and I'm still let down.

Today's online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms,

How ironic... Reddit trying to lock me in was the exact reason why I stopped being active there....

My god, that copy makes me want to vomit. It reads like it was written by an executive in a coke bender.

Community Points are the first step towards a better future for online communities. In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away. With the advent of blockchain technology, we now have a way to establish this freedom in a decentralized and secure way.

I can almost hear the zoom call they brainstormed this shit in. This is some PragerU level slime. “Crypto Currency will grant users autonomy that they would otherwise never possess!” Right, anything that can’t be bought has no value. Oh THANK YOU for creating this system where everything is tied to crypto, so we can experience real community again! Finally my voice can be heard. Not like that horrible, communistic, voting system that counts every user equally.

It's time for communities to take back ownership and control says company that just took away ownership and control from communities.

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blockchain social credit scores 😭😭😭

In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away.

Oh, fuck off.

Community Points represent a way for Redditors to own a piece of their favorite communities. [...] They can even be used in custom tools outside of Reddit and on other platforms.

How the fuck would this work, I wonder? I tried to read through some but it makes little sense to me. It sounds like putting karma on blockchain and making it into a currency acting as reddit gold.

Rest is just regular cryptobro talk formulated so that Reddit looks like it cares about communities - or am I missing something?

Can crypto fucking die already?

I like how they stripped communities from their members during the protest but now they are all like "Oh yea... members should own their communities!"

It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens

That's what I did when I came to Lemmy after you killed 3rd party apps you troglodytes. Do you fucktards not even know what a walled garden is?

"It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens and take ownership of their existence online."

So, literally the fediverse ?

Earn points through generating content and moderation? Okay, sure, why not?

Use those points to weigh votes in community governance? Suuuure, okay I can see how that could be cool.

The points are on the blockchain? Uh… so what’s stopping rich assholes from buying up points and using their capital to take over communities?

If the points are non-transferable then I can see the merit of a points system… but then why would you need a blockchain at all? It’s all still a closed off walled garden despite what they are pitching.

Yeah... It's about "freeing yourself from Reddit's control"

Reddit is talking about decentralization and stuff like that like they aren't a centralized platform themselves. Giving control to the community, but remember if we don't like what you're doing with your communities we'll threaten your moderation team!!!

LMAO ITS BLOCKCHAIN

we called it, reddit goes fucking crypto bro

Too much text to just say that they are doing their own NFTs

communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away.

uuuuh

Okay but "In order for contributors to claim the Points they have earned, they need to create a Vault within the Reddit mobile app. When a user creates their Vault, they will receive the Points that they have earned up to 24 weeks (~6 months) before. Points earned but not claimed within 24 weeks will expire." So... Yes, it definitely was about getting everyone to use the shitty app. This is their second wave of that. And also "Moderators receive their Community Points at the beginning of the following distribution cycle. The actual amount of Points they receive depends on how many Points were distributed to users' Vaults in the previous cycle." They are trying to rope in the mods to convince people to join the app.

Wonder what kind of wild exploitation someone is going to come up with, because rest assured this is going to happen.

This reads like the propaganda of a MLM church.

Yes, get the internet back to the people, with money, but we don't call it money. Also you were free to go and do what you want but we took this away, see you're restricted, but now we give this option back, well ...only partly because now it's soaked with money, we mean community NFTs. Isn't this fucking exciting!!!!?? We make a shit ton of money, I mean... You will make money! Yeah! Get into the group!

I'm not clicking that shady link.

Instant eyeroll when I got to 'blockchain'.

I don't even understand the problem they are trying to solve? The only way we are 'second-class citizens' is how the reddit admins treat their users.

Can someone copy/paste it? I refuse to visit Reddit and give them views.

"It is time for them to take back ownership and control." Funny that this is coming from Reddit. Actually more like ironic.

Apparently, this has been around for ages:

May 28 2020: https://consensys.net/blog/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-reddits-new-blockchain-based-community-points/

May 15 2020: https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/gk0x6g/could_the_admins_please_explain_this_community/

IA History: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.reddit.com/community-points

Discussions of proliferating it and fantasies about the resulting weird exploitation it will enable have occurred as well:

March 17 2023: https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/11tv5vz/when_community_points_are_introduced_to_other/

July 16 2023: https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/151fg8h/which_subreddits_need_to_be_the_next_to_get/

Apparently, they also tried to do this before, almost 9 years ago:

https://www.engadget.com/2014-12-19-reddit-notes.html

https://techcrunch.com/2014/12/19/reddit-announces-redditnotes-a-way-to-share-equity-with-readers/

https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/20/7427491/reddit-notes-announced-give-5-million-dollars-to-users

https://slate.com/business/2014/12/what-reddit-notes-are-their-history-and-future.html

https://old.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2pt25f/announcing_reddit_notes/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/5fyaec/what_happened_to_reddit_notes/

https://www.fortune.com/2015/01/30/reddit-notes-is-not-going-to-happen/

Kinda puts things in a new light. Ruining the site has always been the plan.

That is absolutely hilarious. Yeah Reddit, I totally buy that you want internet communities to not depend on platforms like Reddit. This would be totally monetizeable for you, not that you care about monetization and not that monetization has proven to work at cross-purposes with making good internet websites/communities. And once you mentioned blockchain, well that's when I recognized the subliminal cues suggesting a well-thought-out proposal that positively impacts the world.

EDIT: Ugh just saw that again, they just linked an old post, this one apparently from 2021. I don't think it changes things much insofar as they're presumably planning to replace awards with something and this proposal presumably describes it. But I already didn't see them successfully implementing the thing as written, and knowing now that it's from 2021 it just makes me more certain that whatever they roll out is unlikely to be exactly what's described here.

I'd say knowing this was written two years ago makes the text less hilariously on-the-nose but that depends on whether they'd write something different today doesn't it, I'm not sure they wouldn't.

It says you get them by contributing, so like 10 people are going to own 80% of all the coins on Reddit.

3 questions:

1. Does reddit think their users are complete morons?
2. Are they right?
3. Where can I get checked if I have accidentally consumed at least ten times the daily recommended dose of buzzwords?

I'm pretty happy not going to any Reddit links, I'll get it from the comments here.

They're not NFTs, NFTs are bad, no these token are called Community Points! Totally different than NFTs!

wow, thats impressivly tone deaf. "break free from walled communities, with our walled community! you will be free to do what you want with your community points, inside this one community you cant remove the points from!"

I see Reddit's solution to the class problem they created on their platform is to checks notes create another class problem.

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Community Points

At least the way I see this going.

$$$ ------> Reddit -------> Redditcoin --------> Community coin ------- > Weighted polls in your favor.

Did you see it? Where the money went? It doesn't go to the creator, it goes only to reddit, the person that posts on reddit only gets community points. Which can only be used for "Premium services like a reddit subscription"

Think if twitch.tv basically took all the money you donated to a streamer and only gave the creator "exposure" for his hard work.

I'm sorry but this is some dystopian bullshit that's all centred on the false premise that communities are anything other than the people who choose to count themselves among them and engage in them.

Reddit is just the tool some communities chose to use to gather their members and communicate. That's it. If a community decides that Reddit is no longer the appropriate tool for the job, they can leave and build their community elsewhere. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, given the resources and tools those communities might lose through the transition, but strictly speaking, Reddit can't do anything to stop the members of any particular subreddit going elsewhere, and a cryptocurrency absolutely is not going to fucking facilitate the ownership or mobility of a community.

It's a bullshit form of control that they want their users to willingly bind themselves to. Suddenly you're not just participating in a community, but you're genuinely invested, tied to something with a perceived monetary value, that even if you can theoretically remove from Reddit and take elsewhere, won't have any more value than people choose to place on it, and won't represent the community that generated it in any meaningful way.

It's literally "Hey, the more you use Reddit, the more of our crypto you'll earn, which could be worth more than zero one day! You better keep using Reddit, huh? You wouldn't want to lose that potential for more than zero eh? In fact, why don't you encourage more people to use Reddit too? Then they'll generate their own crypto, and the more people use our crypto, the more it'll be worth for everyone! See, if you get five more people to use Reddit, and those five people also get another five people each to use it etc etc etc..."

The fuck out of here.

The design of this website is trash:

I love how they talk about community independence yet Reddit can come in at any time and remove the mods if they don't like the content those communities are producing

Not often has bullshit been so transparent.

The people are gonna love this as much as the Metaverse

This reads like shit. it starts off with this ground breaking tone, then its just crypto bs? and then the article just ends abruptly. The fediverse is the solution to the problem theyre talking about not some shitcoin. sheesh

I wonder if whoever wrote that announcement really doesn't see the irony in what they wrote. Or maybe they do and they secretly hate reddit?

Either way, lollercoaster. Lollercopter. Lollapalooza.

The SEC or FTC or someone should sue Reddit for using the word 'decentralize' in connection with a feature that's only available within...Reddit! I don't care how many 'blockchains' and other buzz-terms they surround it with.

Okay. Each sub gets fresh points according to it's size, activity and admin preference.

Every month your karma in a sub gets converted into these new points. These points can then be used to tip others, buy animated emojis or badges to show off. They are also used to make your vote count more in polls.

Mods can give commenters fines for misbehaving and make posts earn less points.

Sounds very capitalist. I guess it makes everybody go to a few big subs, as little subs don't earn anything. And those big subs are overrun by a few big players who floated to the top and stay there because of their influence. Little subs get overrun by alt-right as the fines mods can give there are just pocket money.

But that's what you get when ideology and dictators rule.

Ah yes, the good ol' "let's solve this problem with blockchain". I thought we're already past that.

People who have contributed more to the community and earned more Points are able to have a larger say in the direction that the community takes.

When karma-whoring repost accounts have more say than actual community members... What could go wrong?

For now, Reddit will cover gas costs for distributing Points to users and allowing them to spend Points on features such as Special Memberships.

Spez: "We are not profitable"

This is where Spez is spending money. Not on making the App/UI/UX better, but on crypto scams lol

Good lord. They've looked at the last few years of crypto and thought..."Yeah, that looks like a good way to do things! What could go wrong?" What a ridiculous scam. The fact that the Cryptobros at /r/CryptoCurrency are excited tells me all I need to know that this is a scam.

“Own” your community, but if you blackout or post John Oliver, we’ll take it away from you.

Is this an out of season April fools joke?

This is pure comedy at this point. I don't have a popcorn bag big enough.

Had to get blockchain in there somewhere to appeal to the idiot investors.

In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away.

You mean, like . . . landed gentry?

Looks like they want users to buy MeowMeowBeenz

They have been experimenting with this on /r/cryptocurrency for a long time. I was a moderator in that ecosystem and am good friends with some of the mods there. I've always been weary of moons, but I didn't think they would actually bring it to the whole platform.

This is definitely a paradigm shift that'll be an interesting dumpster fire to watch.

I work on Ethereum related things full time (and love the core parts of it), but I also, like you, think most crypto stuff is a slimy scam. Stuff like this is exactly why. It's a way for reddit to encourage bots to farm karma for real/fake money on garbage repost content.

I know crypto/blockchain in general is mostly hated in this community, and stuff like this absolutely does not help.

Ah now they can add the buzzword "Blockchain powered" on every page of their IPO prospectus

If this were written by anyone else, it would read as an absolutely sarcastic and ironically self aware lampoon-esque post

Step 1. Kick out all the mods from the past 15 years Step 2. Spez temper tantrum Step 3. Give ownership to ???? Mods and content creators???? Or some shit??? Step 4. Pr?f?t????

Knew before clicking it'd be crypto crap

How many community coins make a Shrute buck?

Corporate centralized social media: advertises "decentralization" through crypto People on actual decentralized social media: "That's the stupidest thing I heard in the last 2 days"

I am so glad I made a bet with a friend about reddit being much smaller or dead in 5 years, it just keeps getting better for me.

Oh what complete fucking energy wasting bullshit that can be handled by a simple db. Just more corporate buzzword bingo from these jackasses in charge.

Is this just a way increasing their perceived worth by making people buy their shitty crypto and locking it into the platform that can only be spent on reddit features?

Wow... You will be much more free... if you pay us...

What.

So, they’re saying they’re going to pay people to post and mod, but in a cryptocurrency whose value isn’t listed here? I’ll bet someone’s already coding a whole bot forum to get all the community points.

Lol. What a shit system. Apart from it being not as popular, Lemmy is a lot better than Reddit lmao.

Sometimes I wonder if the people who work at Reddit have ever heard of Reddit.

Missed the crypto craze a bit late there.

They should put their money where their mouth is - give out shares of their upcoming IPO for Karma. 10000 Karma = 1 share or something like that. If you thought their system was broken before, just you wait!

It’s a fucking blockchain. I’m fucking done. That’s it. I’m going to put the Reddit app in a folder and pretend it doesn’t exist.

What the fuck is in the water over at the Reddit HQ, lead?

Called it. It's crypto.

tl;dr, it's more crypto bullshit and it requires the reddit mobile app.

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Oh! So they know most of the people still on their platforms are gullible doom scrollers they can milk with crypto or whatever monetization scheme they want. They know they're scum and are cool with it.

Adblockers should add reddit.com as a shaddy and unsafe link

Am I the only one that used Reddit till just recently and has no idea what coins or awards are, or what purpose they served?

This seems quite silly.

It isn't new, and framing it as though it were seems rather disingenuous.

Archive link from two years ago : https://web.archive.org/web/20211208000349/https://www.reddit.com/community-points/documentation/introduction

FUCKING CRINGE REDDIT, FUCK SPEZ, FUCK REDDITORS AND ALSO FUCK EVERYONE WHO STILL USES REDDIT FOR ANYTHING AFTER THIS!

so what am i missing? how are these points awarded? just by purchasing them? like the awards? this sounds like some dumb mother fucking shit.

Reddit's hypocrisy is mind-boggling!

After proving in recent weeks that 1) they want anything but free and independent communities, and 2) they want nothing more than complete control over their communities and their data, and 3) they have no interest in being an open platform (where are the 3rd part apps? why force the app when you open Reddit in a browser?), they have the nerve to say all this about freedom and independence?

Who believes it? Is this a way to win back lost users? Restore damaged trust? It's obviously not what they say it's about. Companies don't give away freedom, Reddit least of all. There's plenty of evidence for that.

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Lmao the crypto bros on reddit are talking about how amazing this is - fucking morons lmao

Community points=CP? Back in my day, CP was something else

I had to keep reminding myself that it’s August, not April 1st. This is asinine.

The fact that it just spits out a CSV in an announcement post per subreddit that you have to manually download and CTRL+F your username is hilarious for a company this big. They couldn't implement a proper dashboard?

I got their email about ending the old awards, etc.

I told them to shove what I had up their ass along with their shitty app.

I guess I'm off the mailing list.

IDGAF about fake internet points from people I don't know. I don't need validation.

Embarassing. Does anyone in Silicon Valley have original thoughts anymore?

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

"Own your community with our blockchain bullshit, but fuck you gently if you try to exert any control over it if it works against our IPO."

What a bunch of shitbirds. Fuck me, I'm so glad I'm shut of that dumpster fire. Let 'er burn.

Damn that’s just strange. Reddits explanation still doesn’t really explain what “community points” actually do. I don’t really get what their angle is with this.

Why would they do a 180 (from recent policy) and talk about how subreddits should be semi-independent? And are they really planning on making “community points” based off if you moderate and post, rather than paying for them?

Rest in piss. "Got out at the right time" is underselling it.

Cmon, grandpa spez... lets get you to bed.

Wow. I read through most of the pages. What a convoluted system! Besides several new terms that are interdependent and poorly defined, this scheme is going to be impossibly opaque to users and orders of magnitude more complex than upvote/downvote. I especially don't like that points are directly related to karma, when karma whoring and botting are prevalent. Last thing we need is karma earning one some measure of influence or control in a community.

They clearly think this is something people will simply get used to should they not enthusiastically embrace it. Why they think that in an era of other platforms dumbing down interaction to nothing more than an upvote I can't wrap my head around.

What a colossal waste of resources. Thankfully it appears to be opt in by sub for now, though I doubt that will last.

Got an email from Reddit the other day telling me to "spend my Reddit coins while I still can". It reminded me that I still have a Reddit account, so I just login and delete it (mass delete all my posts and edit all my comments since July).

So they cant take my Reddit coins like they took my reddit gold?

This Reddit coins on a blockchain has been happening for a while. The cryptocurrency subreddit had "Moons" for years now.

I sold 110k Moons as soon as they came out, nobody tell me how much they're worth now

Aww, poor spez, missed the crypto hype by about a year. They say timing is the hardest part of product management, and spez again proves he is really fucking terrible at it.

Do they not comprehend the irony of this? "It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens and take ownership of their existence online. Imagine a crypto future"

This'll surely help all the mods who have been begging for mod tools.

They just took away a shit load of freedom and had a PR disaster, so they're trying to fix by gaslighting us with crypto scam bullshit? God this company can not go out of business fast enough.

Didn't bother reading their entire docs, but this all looks gamified as fuck. I knew this would happen, with these stupid points ingrained in every aspect of the site everything just became predatory and hostile unless you pay. It's literally a game of "free2play" users grinding whatever is needed to get points (which probably is not feasible) vs buying the "special subscriptions".

Then the introduction is laughable, I want to peek into the brains of these mfers who not even weeks ago were taking subreddits from mods by force, and now preach of community independence from platforms.

Great, crypto shit, what's next?

Ugh, I just left. Why does u/spez insist on coming up with all these shitty monetary schemes???

also a reminder that they had nfts for like an entire year

It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens and take ownership of their existence online.

Knowing Reddit, this means implementing blockchain technology and crypto shenanigans...and I'm right.

From one of the pages describing "reputation":

Governance Polls have a Decision Threshold that they must meet in order to pass. This is the minimum amount of weighted vote that the winning option must have for the poll to be considered approved by the community.

The Decision Threshold is set to a minimum of 10% of Points in a community and is updated algorithmically according to the activity on recent governance polls. As more votes are cast on Governance Polls, the Decision Threshold for future Governance Polls increases.

Governance Polls can be used to change distribution rules for Points or get input on other community decisions, such as content rules or flairs. They are enacted by Reddit in the case of distribution rules and the moderators for rules that require nuanced community input.

I mean, what do you say to this? They've gone completely insane.

reddit being reddit

Bahahaha fucking NFTs, a bit late to the party

Truth is sometimes more absurd than fiction.

Am I just too old to understand this? I don’t get it at all. Does any of it translate to real money?

In the real world, communities are independent entities, free to choose where and how they hang out. No one tells them what to do or where to go.

I guess the people who run Reddit really think none of their audience was educated by say... Snoopy.... or seen a "no skateboarding" sign in their life. You can just hang out anywhere IRL!

Well to be honest I never paid any attention to the old system either

I don't if I trust crypto man now if they were paying in nfts which are totally lagit I might consider it

dont care, I dont use reddit

This is some green bay packers bullshit.

Work shall set you As Reddit's Very Special Camper!

Call me when you get past the “first step” where Reddit controlled NFTs somehow make communities independent from Reddit.