Desperate or just business as normal?

The concept behind the program is straightforward. Redditors who receive substantial gold and karma from other community members can potentially convert these virtual rewards into real-world money that can be cashed out.

sigh, that's desperation. This means that the discussion on Reddit will not be natural or organic, it will cease to be human. Redditors will be like dogs, where they shitpost and post comments that everyone agrees with so they can make money, basically doing what the master tells them in order to get their treat. Reddit as we know it will cease to exist.

And we thought bots and karma farming were bad before.

Reddit must be super nervous and losing a lot of traffic. Burn baby, burn!

More incentive to post low quality content

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Can you imagine the abuse of that?

Steve Huffman: "Reddit doesn't make any money"

Also Steve Huffman: "Please stay on our platform, we'll pay you?"

As soon as users are paid for sharing someone else’s copyrighted content, wouldn’t companies like media outlets start pursuing it as theft for profit?

Sounds like Reddit is headed down the road of YouTube where UMG is going to start slamming users everywhere with strikes for their revenue, and DMCA will be abused a lot more heavily.

Imagine an environment where users are getting paid for gold award content and the moderators are still unpaid for all the work they do behind the scenes.

With bot detection going away, I can see programmers making several bots to manipulate this to make money, and lots of it, through many accounts.

Meanwhile, yikes, they are totally forgetting the real users. I’m a few months, there will be at least a 50% chance that comment or post you are replying to is a bot.

"This is gonna make the karmawhoring and bot problem so much better guys I swear"

-spez, probably

Gallowboob will be a billionaire overnight and everyone else will be left in the dust.

This plan isn't just stupid, it's moronic.

So wait, not only has their monetization effort so far been a flop, now they're going to start paying people to post? Woooow. Spez trying to edge out Elon for the Most Incompetent Management award this year?

>demand money from third party app developers
>give money to karmawhores

wut

Lol "third party API is too expensive".....but let's give out money to users for fun

How would this even work? How are they going to stop brigading, bots, low effort spam crap for upvotes, massive reposting, etc? How will this actually increase quality of content?

Also: this would mean giving reddit your actual information, right? How else are they going to pay you? Or are they going to try using crypto and nfts?

It sounds like a terrible idea to me, tbh. Maybe they should start with paid moderators to deal with all the extra spam, crossposting, brigading and bots that will result from this move.

Good Lord. This whole influencer/social media celebrity thing needs to die

Not sure if there are any ex Redditors old enough to remember the Sydrah debacle?

In which a Reddit user and mod of several communities advertised on LinkedIn that they were ‘a social community manager who had pull in several online communities’ (“has pull” is a direct quote the rest is paraphrased) and that they could be paid to influence the narrative in these communities.

Someone doxxed them and leaked the LinkedIn profile and a vast swathe of the community cried out in horror and revulsion. Oh how the bacon narwhaled on that day!

She’s still a mod of 2xC and at least a few dozen other subs.

Looks like Reddit just legitimised her now ancient play really. It’ll be a website full of Sydrahs after this.

This looks like the way to go full Digg. With payment comes verified accounts, and probably further segmentation of accounts with higher priority than normal accounts. The idea being the paid accounts are professionals with high karma, therefore assumed to provide better content and become prioritized.

This is exactly the way of thinking that destroyed Digg. Although this is tweaked compared to what Digg did, the basic idea is the same, and the outcome will very likely look somewhat similar. The quality of content will fall off a cliff, and the userbase will quickly evaporate.

Even if they never go through with this scheme, it shows the leadership of reddit has lost their perspective, and sense of the community shaping that originally made reddit good.

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Oh my God. This is awesome.

"We need to tighten the purse strings!!1" quickly became "open the coffers!" as soon as they hit a speed bump.

Seriously epic. With the amount of vote manipulation going on over there, this will be a complete and utter failure. I guarantee it will be pulled in a month or two.

Let me get this straight.

People make content, bots up vote content that aligns with their objectives. People get paid for up votes.

So... People are working for bots now?

desperate as fuckkkkkk

lemmy for me rn has become an almost perfect replacement. only thing i can feature request is the ability to transfer my data to other instances when needed, in case my current one blows up.

other than that, this place is solid 👍🏼

If you think karma whoring is bad now ...

If this is true, the end is nigh. What kind of content do they think this will encourage? Bots and low-quality rehashings will flood the place further.

Though I guess they'll get some juicy income from requiring this information:

email addresses, personal details, and tax and bank account information.

Good riddance!

“I wouldn’t use the piece-of-shit first-party App, even if you paid me!”

“What if we pay you?”

“…”

It's going to be a Karma OnlyFans out there soon.

We're about to see the Great Flood of Reposts and Karma Farming.

All ye Redditors that got annoyed at the protests, this is what you brought upon yourself.

Shitposts, shitposts everywhere

To be honest, if I were in Spez's shoes, I wouldn't have gone after the third-party apps but instead created actual incentives to subscribe to Reddit Premium like anonymous posting, enhanced privacy settings, enhanced search functionality, the ability to post images and videos in comments, etc.

Also I would've added a partner program where approved creators can monetize their artwork, videos, nudes, etc. Rather than have such creators astroturf the shit out of your platform to push their Fansly, OnlyFans and Patreon accounts, Spez could've cut out the middle-man and profiteered directly from content creators and porn stars.

I would've even poised RPAN to become a direct competitor to apps like Periscope, Kick and Twitch.

Here's the interesting bit for me:

To begin verification, you must have at least ten gold and 100 karma, according to the code.

and

users will have to maintain a certain level of activity and accumulate a designated amount of gold and karma each month to remain eligible for payouts

Sounds like an attempt to drive up reddit gold sales? I deleted my account and still had that one free gold award from forever ago. Feels like the easiest way to do this is have a second account that buys gold and awards it to the primary earning account to meet the minimum.

Quick maffs $20 to get 10 gold awards, which also gives the recipient 1000 coins (worth 2 gold awards for another account, so you'll probably see subs devoted to a black market for discounted gold awards for that accumulated coin) and 10 weeks of reddit premium. It honestly sounds like a very complicated subscription.

I'm honestly interested in how they'll get around anti money laundering laws

All those ShowerThoughts that were blocked by bots, only to be reposted for Karma by a different person…yeah, somehow that’s going to be rigged.

My decision to move here looks better the time goes by

Crazy thought but what if they paid third party developers instead by simply not kicking them off

Spez: "I paid you a small fortune."

Me: "And this gives you power over me?"

"The Barbie Rises", only in theaters July 21st.

That will make them profitable for sure!

Faking popularity for profit. Ew.

Users must be over 18 years old and reside in the United States

Reddit: the front page of the internet intranet

This is going to be super easy to exploit

I basically quit Reddit cold turkey. Rather than watch the slow, sad decline of its communities by going along with Reddit management, I'd advocate them to make the transition to the Fediverse now rather than later. The /retrogaming/ community (I need to drop the /r/ for obvious reasons) did this and is doing quite well for itself on Lemmy and Mastodon.

"Thus creating the self sustaining economy we've been looking for"

Pay moderators and app developers that help make communities thrive? Hell no. Pay people to contribute content? Yes! That’s the way! Force the community with money. Yes!

I know who will be the top contributor!

Their name is ChatGPT.

Just give me cash for my 16 years of karma so I can fuck off to Lemmy, kthx.

Feels a bit like a slap in the face to the moderators to boot.

The Nerd Wars of 2023 are shaping up to be even more action packed than The Great Meme War of 2016!

I’m definitely not opposed to this from an ideological perspective — you are actively producing content for a platform that’s making money off of it, so surely revenue sharing with you is just the right thing to do.

That said unless the system has extensive human involvement I have no idea how it could possibly work. It seems rife for abuse. And I would bet on it being the first thing cut during cost-cutting (if it was ever implemented at all of which I’m pretty skeptical).

Because if karma bots weren't a problem before..

Remember the Real-Money Auction House in Diablo 3? This seems very much like that...

And I bet it's going to go the way of the RMAH.

They just got done complaining about third-party apps making money while they’re not. Now they want to pay people to post and interact? Smelling very desperate.

Not trying to brag, just for the sake of this discussion, I had a shit ton of karma and I would get gold awards all the time. I guess Reddit is saving money by me refusing to go back there. That sort of puts me in a bind. Do I keep away from Reddit or do I help bleed them dry?

Just kidding, fuck Reddit. I am totally done with them.

“We have already determined what kind of person you are, now we are just establishing the price."

They’ve really fucked that place.

Such a shame.

Anyway…

I had nearly 600k post karma on Reddit but I’m never going to post anything there again.

Okay, hear me out. Someone make a gold-farming bot on reddit, and take that money and donate to some lemmy/kbin instance. I think we found a way to fund lemmy/kbin! Reddit will do it for us!

Forgetting everything that's happened so far, and taking that statement at face value... That is exactly how things should have always worked...

Make *****, get eXpOsUrE. How in the hell did the internet turn into we pay for access; we use it to socialize, share art, ideas, answers, make connections. And now they are not only making money selling our data, but we're expected to pay for their crap content they scraped from our own data?

What could possibly go wrong!?

A real move of desperation. Reminds of steemit, a crypto-based social network that never took off

Pffff.. with what money are they going to pay people?

real money, or some crypto bullshit?

Just more confirmation that the decision to leave Reddit was the right and best one. Bots, AI and farms will be all that's left on Reddit if this goes through.

But I do wonder how a company that hasn't been profitable ever will be able to afford to pay these creators since any cut of ad revenue or award purchases just cuts into the already non-existent profits.

yikess…the world aint ready for reddit influencers

I'm sure this has got to look great for an IPO...

Yeah no way this goes poorly…..

Oh look, another empty promise from Spez.

Reddit Cash will be the exact equivalent of the storied AT&T Visa Gift Card: always promised, forever dangled, and never actually seen. AT&T has been promising me gift cards since the 1990s, and I have yet to see even one.

TL;DR: Reddit Cash? Get it before you swallow.

I thought they don't make money and now they're gonna pay users when they don't even pay their mods.

I'm glad I left Reddit but I would appreciate screenshots once they launch this change.

Reddit was already full of repost bots and karma farmers when the only reward was fake internet points, the site will become completely unusable if they add real money into the mix

What coke-fueled bender produced this brilliant idea?

If they can't make themselves "profitable" when the content is free they're sure as hell not going to be profitable if they pay for it

So they switching the platform to become Tiktokesque instead of being Facebook, then. Cringe🤡

Only thing that would make me back for a bit is if they retroactively applied this for everyone (because their userbase ain't just from the States alone) and allow everyone to cash out 🤸🏼‍♀️

Cuz that's working out so great for YouTube. To the point where they gotta eBeg for money via third party systems.

What could possibly go wrong?

Cool more crypto shit

This is possibly the dumbest solution to their (self created) problem. Can't think of a way it can go wrong!

Based on what happen to quora, I think this is a bad idea

Oh good, the Reddit will assume it's final form, just a stew of advertising and bots

Sorry who or what the fuck the Tech Times?

Wow, I didn't think they'd implement anything more cancerous than various site preferred paywalling. This reeks of needing some good numbers to blow out headed into the IPO.

If it's this bad already, get ready for a circus.

Will mods get paid? Or something?

If bots posting and replying to each other wasn't a reality already, it will be now.

They must have lost a lot of shitposters.

I think its just gonna be a way to spend karma to get stickers for free is all. Its what people have been asking for since reddit started doing stickers. I dont think its gonna incentivize bots or circle jerking any more than it already has.