Spyke
lemmy.ca

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.

330
effingjoereply
kbin.social

It is like that already, but try, if you can, to imagine how bad it will get if the incentive isn't fake internet points, but actual money.

87
lemm.ee

Maybe if you're on the main subs. I'd say to get rid of those, but it's best to get rid of all of reddit at this point lol.

10

No no, let Reddit stay and let it remain popular and profitable enough that people who want to run bots for easy money all stay there.

3
Nobodyreply
lemmy.world

This!

Thanks for the gold, kind stranger!

We did it, Reddit!

35

"Easy trick for TOP GOLD Reddit admins don't want YOU to now!"

10
lemm.ee

Basically Quora.

Quora started to pay people to ask questions, rather than reward the people who put efforts into answering.

I skipped that stupid thing instantly.

38
lemmy.ml

"I caught my 12 year old son playing Minecraft so I smashed all his things and beat him. Was I wrong?"

That was roughly one of the so-called questions I saw on Quora recently. Absolute garbage.

15

Well they get paid to ask absolute garbage so you'll see oodles of these shitty "questions"

2
Marxinereply
lemmy.ml

That explains why content quality over there is so damn bad, I didn't know about that before since I skipped the Quora train.

14

I used it for some time before, since it was just people asking questions and doubts and curiosities.

But once this paid stupidity started, it was adios time.

5

Looks great for engagement when everyone is greedily making posts for the most likes though. Just another step towards a golden facade for IPO.

33
SCBreply
lemmy.world

Worse, I don't think it's desperation. I think the senior leadership genuinely sees this as a good idea. That implies they view reddit no longer as a series of communities that organically develop and more as a social network that should pursue reach and "quality" content.

To me, that's way worse than desperation. That's like the exact opposite of what reddit was stated to be when I first joined.

32

That’s like the exact opposite of what reddit was stated to be when I first joined.

It is exactly the opposite of what Aaron Swartz created.

16

It is a good idea from the point of view that a lot of platforms are compensating their content creators for their work to keep them on the platform.

It is a bad idea because most power users used third party apps to help provide their content, and Reddit just pissed a lot of them off.

2
lemm.ee

Yeah this will make discussion 100x worse now that there's a strong financial reason to be ungenuine and follow the hive mind. Not to mention this decision has terrible timing with the rise of ChatGPT bots, as if bots weren't already an issue. Did they think these bots were actually going to use the API? I'm sure communities will love Reddit offering users money to ruin their communities.

11

Yeah. Who is going to risk a downvote with real money on the line. Actually I can see brigading wars to "ruin someone financially" being a thing.

4

Sounds like the exploitation of children that happens on Roblox. They may earn money if they make enough after cuts to withdraw. Just more user exploitation with the carrot-on-stick of getting paid.

10
sh.itjust.works

Or.....maybe some will use bots to make comments/post/earn money. Possible no humans needed for conversation at some point. Just bots chatting with bots making the "human dogs" money!!

Makes me wonder what the actual bot convo would look like!!!!

9
Hunter2reply
discuss.tchncs.de

r/cryptocurrency became exactly like that under a similar system.

This is also observable with all social media, where you can see that the communities shifted greatly once people started making money or getting a following, content just became mostly derivative of "what works".

5

I act natural around my friends and they pay me, so I dont know what the big issue is 🤷🏼‍♂️

5
kbin.social

And we thought bots and karma farming were bad before.

199
lemmy.world

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

165
lemmy.world

I feel like I got out just at the right time!

It's such a shame that everything has to be commodifed. Being on lemmy, free of ads and financial incentives is such a breath of fresh air. Community and sharing ideas shouldn't be driven by money.

111
kbin.social

I agree, but unfortunately it does cost money (way more than you think) to host something online, even a small Lemmy instance. The more traffic you have, the more it costs. The same goes for time spent on admin, which shouldn't be free unless it's a passion project.

28

which is exactly why the fediverse is so good! you can host it yourself and shoulder the cost, join a free instance, donate something small… the cost is shared among many, which makes it far more acceptable for a lot of small passion projects

22
lemmy.world

You can say the same for lots of things though. I think if we want to take back control of discourse then we have to accept the cost.

An example from a world I understand - putting on and taking part in free parties (in the UK and the rest of Europe) has a financial and time cost. But people put on these incredible festivals not for financial gain, and not to even break even as there's no charge to get in, but because they love music and community. Some things are more important than profit.

13
jose423reply
lemmy.jgholistic.com

Aren't Reddit moderators already volunteer admins? Still, Lemmy has the same issue as Reddit when considering server costs, if not worse. On Reddit, if a post brings in high volume of traffic, their server (farm?) needs to be strong to handle the influx. On Lemmy, the server instance can go down... theoretically. Not sure how much load a post can cause. But, compared to Reddit, Lemmy federated design means high load situations are suboptimal.

3

Reddit has a harsher delineation between mods and admins compared to Lemmy. It seems common for Lemmy admins to mod some of their communities, while that is really rare on Reddit.

3

They are, and yet they have limited control over the discourse as we've seen over the last month.

I get your points - I'm interested and excited to see how the Feddiverse grows and I hope it remains sustainable. I feel uncharacteristically positive about it.

3

Sure, but the decentralized nature of the fediverse means that a single failure point is no longer enough to take the entire thing down.

2

True but donations help, it's the best way to support this kind of projects IMO, doesn't cover admins time and the soul they pour into it but at least the server costs.

6
prolereply
sh.itjust.works

All it would take is one left-leaning billionaire to fund server costs for Lemmy instances with no strings attached, and we'd never have to worry about it being commodified. C'mon George Soros, where are you at? It would be pocket change for you.

So many far right billionaires putting so much money into their hateful, bigoted causes, while progressive causes seem to die on the vine due to lack of funding.

1
lemmy.world

Problem is, you don't become a billionaire without massive amounts of exploiting people for profit, and someone like that isn't going to support Lemmy since there's no profit to be had. There are no left-leaning billionaires, only neo-liberal billionaires.

5

I hope he wasn't serious lol, he even has three arrows on his profile pic. It's such a corporate thing to say.

-1
coeus.sbs

More incentive to post low quality content

143
kbin.social

"...and remember guys, if you liked this comment please UPVOTE and GILD!!!!!!"

67

This post is sponsored by NordVPN. Make sure to check out my Patreon after reading my comment.

18

All these typing makes my hand sore. Did I mention this supplement that is good for muscle cramps? You can buy it now at mychannelstore dot com!

8

Remember all those posts that sometimes will come up in r/relationship advice or subs like that portraying really vulnerable people that are really down on their luck ("Im a single mom/dad and have to do horrible things so that my children can eat" "Im an abused teen and can't escape my home" "Im trying to escape a borderline cult" etc etc)?

Now, Im sure at least some of those were fake to begin with (I don't have anything against those subs or those stories, but you can't guarantee every single one of them is true). Now imagine if they could put a little edit in the end "thank you all, you are so kind, I managed to sign up into reddit's content program, so if you want to help make sure to upvote and leave some gold, it means so much".

In those subs, people were already helping out how they could (I would often see people offering to send food or stuff to OPs home, things like that)... so that's not gonna backfire at all if its implemented.

23

Great post, 4 day old account /u/BroughtListless! Here's $20!

19
lemmy.world

So all those perma bans of high karma long time members for no reason was a money driven directive?

By suspending the accounts reddit just wiped a bunch of karma they wont pay for but still can use the content.

33

Pretty sure it’s just for karma you earn after after you apply.

0

I was going to say…with what money is Reddit going to pay these posters? Because they couldn’t turn a profit while relying on unpaid moderators.

It’s completely ass-backwards to pay posters while telling mods to suck it and donate their time.

7
db2reply

Corruption usually comes from the top down. The real trickle down economics.

31

I don't think money laundering would be worth it. I would expect Reddit to end up with the majority due to the pay out rate.

I was thinking a mix of theft and fraud. Use stolen credit cards to buy gold for bot/puppet accounts then post on your main account. If a post starts to take off, throw the bots at it to gild and add extra upvotes.

If someone was doing this, I would expect it to be a side hustle. Use the stolen credit cards early like this to test if they're valid. Then use them for the main crime of buying goods to resell.

6
Woolyreply
lemmy.world

No, I don't think so. How you would get the dirty money in the system? I'm assuming the content creators don't have to give Reddit any money to get money back for their content.

5
lemmy.fmhy.ml

Just spitballimg here, could be totally wrong as we're not 100% sure how this is going to work:

Get 2 accounts

Link a prepaid card with dirty money to account 1.

Comment/post on account 2 (whichever pays more)

Gild account 2s activity repeatedly with account 1, use bots to upvote spam account 2.

Deposit payments from reddit into personal account. Now your money is washed

9

Omg that's good! I wonder what the limit is on how much a single post or comment could earn. Like, say, you have $100,000 to wash - could that go to one post, or 100,000 posts? Does Reddit take any percentage of the earnings (not.sure if that was mentioned in the article)?

3
mk36109reply
kbin.social

From what I understood from the article, the money only comes from gold and awards users bought and then awarded to the content. so its more like, "we won't pay for your labor but we will ask the other, previously free users to pay for it"

31
Monomatereply
lemm.ee

I guess what he meant is that, at the moment, Reddit Gold revenue goes 100% into Reddit's pockets. But if they start funneling part of this money into contributor's pockets, it means Reddit is effectively paying them from a money pool that was previously exclusively theirs. Thus, Reddit is "paying them".

8
lemmy.world

Reddit seems to be creating a tipping process in which they take a cut... Delightful.

2

Actually a lot more like there is a reservoir of value from which you can sip if you do Immortan Spezs bidding. And you can ride with him through the gates of karma for eternity all shiny and chrome.

1
lemmy.world

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.

75

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.

14
rustyfishreply
lemmy.world

So…we can actively harm Reddit by going on reporting sprees? Yes?

5

Maybe, if you have sufficient accounts to do so and not get caught. It's probably not worth the time and effort. Living well (elsewhere) is the best revenge.

7
lemmy.world

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.

74
pawb.social

I’m a few months, there will be at least a 50% chance that comment or post you are replying to is a bot.

It already feels this way. A lot of them are the most basic comments or don't make any sense at all.

24
delvachreply
lemmy.world

Part of why I liked the Apollo app was that it could show account ages. There'd be a post from a 23-day-old account, and a heavily-upvoted thread with witty comments from a 24-day-old account, replied to by a 22-day-old account, replied to by a 27-day-old account.

It really sucks because I'm working on stuff I'd love to share with people, but sharing content on reddit would feel dirty. I haven't done anything but lurk the stable diffusion subreddit using Brave in over a month.

11

Could also have been old-timers that have had accounts repeatedly banned by admins for bullshit reasons. But yeah more likely just bots lol.

-1

Or it'll end up going the same way as Quora. People just churn out answers for money, irrespective of whether they're helpful or all that relevant at all.

10

Contributors should be rewarded. What kind of contributions though? Video? Isn't that Youtube? Articles? Ok. I mean, if they are really good articles that really give insight into important information, great!. Art? Sure. They deserve it. This is the thing. Once it becomes "commercial". Then the forums will become safespaces. The whole thing becomes just a giant market and I can see reddit "demonetizing" depending on the content. That will turn reddit into something entirely different to Lemmy. And you know what? That's alright. The internet is big enough where reddit can coexist with the fediverse. But this is actually a good thing. Because then, lemmy and systems like this can become community oriented. A platform where people can discuss without concerns of what a corporation will or won't do. A place where the value lies on our contributions as a community in the very same way reddit was in its beginnings.

Reddit becoming a source of income for contributors shouldn't be a bad thing. It simply turns it into something entirely different to what we saw back in the early 2000s

8
lemmy.world

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

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

66
lemmy.world

Why do I suddenly have visions of that South Park episode about virtual internet money?

9
zepporeply
lemmy.world

Left or just changed to various other accounts?

11

From looking at his profile, he is not on reddit often now but still posts periodically.

9

What ever happened to that dude? I blocked him long ago, but he also wasn't a frequent poster on the small communities I was subbed to.

3
lemmy.one

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?

65
Marxinereply
lemmy.ml

He wants to be recognized by his "Elon-senpai" to take part in the "dick measuring" contest too.

32
lemdro.id

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

wut

64
lemmy.world

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

59

This payout has got to be fractions of a penny per 100 gold or something similar to the low rates artists are paid for Spotify plays or YouTube views.

14
sopuli.xyz

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

57
lemmy.world

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.

57
lemmy.world

To ensure the authenticity and security of the program, contributors will need to provide verification information, including their email addresses, personal details, and tax and bank account information.

21
Gomiboyreply
lemm.ee

You'll be paid in NFT Snoos.

In all seriousness, this leaves the site wide open to exploitation in the pursuit of monetary gain.

Ultimately that will lead to a degredation of content (even more so than now).

8
Nolegjoereply
lemmy.world

They already have crypto and NFTs. Take a look at Reddit Moons and the NFT Avatars

8

I never really cared about them tacking on a bunch of useless shit on top of Reddit. As a third-party-app and old.reddit user I kind of figured that if they monitized that piece and let me hang out in the underbelly then it wasn't really a problem. Why not have the normies subsidize the denizens of the old reddit, it's not like we aren't using adblock anyway.

But now that they've killed off the API it's only a matter of time before the come for old.reddit so I'm out before they get around to it.

9
lemmy.world

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.

53
lemmy.world

Everyone loves to joke about how moderators are “jannies” and “free labor” but let’s be honest, all the power mods that have control of dozens of subs are making money off it. Political/news subs have loads of value to groups with agendas, and non-political subs still have value to corporations that want to advertise their products.

The only thing Sydrah did that was unique was getting caught.

16

Wholeheartedly agree.

I always apply the adage: ‘if it can be done it is being done’.

3
lemmy.world

How did you find the mod list on that sub? I'm using browser now to occasionally check Reddit, but it seems like they are removing rhe ability to search for sub mods, or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

6
lemmy.world

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.

52
P03 Lockereply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

it shows the leadership of reddit has lost their perspective, and sense of the community shaping that originally made reddit good.

Most importantly, they forgot their history and why Reddit succeeded when Digg failed.

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

16

It’s transactional. Community dies when relationships become transactional.

8
lemmy.world

Or like YouTube where people will be arbitrarily demonetized for rules they aren't actually violating while others who blatantly violate rules will be ignored because they are corporate posters and Reddit won't want the legal nightmare they might start if they enforce rules with them.

It's an interesting idea and a step in the right direction overall, but this reality has a way of turning every possible utopia into a distopia.

18

Well, at least YouTube is still a valid way to make a living for a lot of people. Who knows how long this will last, but somehow they managed to keep the whole ecosystem alive and working thus far

5
discuss.tchncs.de

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?

50
Toriborreply
corndog.uk

You're working for the people who run the bots. Push the narrative and you'll get paid.

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

29

Again, the "Barbie" movie is the only allowed corporate interest on Lemmy, only in theaters July 21st.

11

Your children are now the property of Carl's Junior. Fuck you, I'm eating.

7

I think you forgot a crucial step... Bots steal actual content, then direct other bots to down vote and report said original content, and then direct said bots to upvote the stolen content.

14
kep
lemmy.world

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.

49
prolereply
sh.itjust.works

So stupid. Greedy motherfuckers... I thought it was the unpaid, volunteer mods that were the "landed gentry" that were ruining the site? They fucked around and found out pretty quickly, and now they're creating something that fits their analogy much better.

I can't wait to see their IPO fail miserably, and watch Steve Huffman realize that he fucked himself over by being too greedy.

20

I have a feeling that whatever disappointment the current owners and execs of Reddit have with the IPO will be eclipsed by the disappointment of the people who buy the shares. I don't think Reddit was worth anywhere close to the valuations two months ago and I'd be surprised if it's still worth half of its true value two months ago.

But then again, it has close to zero value to me at the moment (it varies which side of zero it's on based on my mood).

3
lemm.ee

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 👍🏼

48
Marxinereply
lemmy.ml

There are already some issues open on Lemmy's github about transferring data between instances, so it has good chances of being implemented (although there isn't a timeline for when it could happen). I just don't think things like comments, posts and votes can be transferred, at least for now.

10

There are several tools out there on GitHub already which allows you to export all your settings and import it elsewhere.

6
Nalivaireply
discuss.tchncs.de

Instances being blowed up will be a huge issue if the whole thing will be getting really popular. And if not, it might die anyway

1
Joshreply
lemm.ee

I meant blowed up in the sense of like, genuinely goes out of service (i was at work at the time, i did not explain properly). But yeah, if it gets too popular for the admin to handle that may also be an issue. So far I like lemmy a little more than reddit. I think I will always miss apollo, but this will guarantee that my third party client will not go out of service 🙏🏼

1
Nalivaireply
discuss.tchncs.de

I mean that too. The second it goes popular, the instance will either run out of traffic, or will suddenly cost tens of thousands of dollars per day. There is a huge jump in price there, from 10-50 dollars a month to a hundred thousands.

2
Joshreply
lemm.ee

you’re correct 👍🏼 i want lemmy to get popular, but these are the roadblocks that we need to watch out for. at least the solution is easy tho, make more servers

1

If it will be easier to migrate the profile, with all the comments and subscriptions, it will help immensely.

1
aelweroreply
lemmy.ml

Ok God damnit... Someone fucking explain the shitty ass chat filter to me please? I don't know what was removed from dudes comment, but I'd kinda like to know if anything will get me banned before I go fucking around and get settled in here...

Sorry bud, not picking on you personal or anything like that, just a FNG from baconreader trying to sort shit out ;)

Edit- not a single "removed" here? I got the word removed removed from another comment...

More edit- yeah that word lol... Can I get banned for bypassing? Like if I say b***h? Can I get a warning or some shit here please?

-3

I'm the stupid new guy man, just pushing buttons to see what happens is all :)

1

Not a thing, sorry dude. Check your settings, maybe your instance added some sort of explicit language filter? That's all I can think of.

2
Sturgistreply
lemmy.ca

You're on .ml, they have a filter. The thing that was removed was w h o r e.

1

Thanks for clarifying :)

I guess the filter is looking for non-woke stuff? Whole lotta cuss words not filtered there...

Gonna guess things the n word, the b word, the r word, etc will be what gets the filter.

Should I switch to .world? It was borked when I went to create my account so I went with .ml, and I didn't really expect to see any functional differences like comments getting filtered :)

0
lemmy.world

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!

41

yea, all this does is incentivize running plenty of bots. enough chatGPT content, and you will be able to cash it out.

12
aussie.zone

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

What if we pay you?

“…”

40
eeereply

It also sounds like a way to drive up gold subscriptions. Reddit has gone full digg.

17

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.

39
lemmy.world

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.

35

I would have fixed the damn API to push ads out to third party apps, with ad revenue sharing. Then implemented a per user API price to enable browsing ad free.

14

It is a much better (and more honest) way to manipulate users using the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Instead of blackmailing Mods to stay by saying “you have invested a lot of your time into this subreddit, it would be a shame if something would happen to it”, they could say to users “you are already paying for the ability to use Reddit, you might as well use Reddit”.

13
Imotalireply
lemmy.world

Oh hey I'm relevant! I actually got a message from Reddit back when I was selling porn 2-3 years ago. What did it say you might ask.

It was a cease and desist for using Reddit to push "obscene and questionable materials" involving "abuse of disabled individuals" because my wheelchair was visible in a few of my stuffs. Not to mention the only reason I needed the wheelchair was cause I had to get an appendix removed and that combined with my heart problem made walking difficult.

9
lemmy.world

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.

28
lemmy.world

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

27

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.

27
lemmy.world

Spez: "I paid you a small fortune."

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

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

25
WarmSodareply
lemm.ee

It's not about Ken, it's about sending a message.

6

And the message is that you should preorder your tickets to "Barbie" today!

Oh jeez please let the writer's strike be over soon.

5
lemm.ee

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

25
lemmy.world

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.

22

If you could link to their lemmy so other retrogmaing lovers can sub and follow, that'd be amazing!

2

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

Reddit: the front page of the internet intranet

20
HobbitFootreply
thelemmy.club

Not really. I expect that the cost of gold will be higher than the pay.

4

You're over estimating the payout. I'd imagine it to be something like the creator gets 10 cents of the 3$ a gold costs.

6

I love this bot. Of all the bots this one is by far the coolest.

3
lemmy.fmhy.ml

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!

17
sopuli.xyz

so broke they have to kill api-use yet rich enough to throw money at a problem they created

15

No, it was always a fuckwits chasing money issue.

How far back does Reddit’s legacy of failed monetisation attempts go?

1

And because we all know the kind of content on Reddit is worth paying money for. You know, stolen memes from Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc, etc......

8

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

15

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

14
Marxinereply
lemmy.ml

Nah, mods will delete posts that can become popular and repost the same content themselves.

5
NightOwlreply
lemmy.one

They'll shadow ban the comment to try and keep those posters from immediately noticing, since deleting would be too obvious.

5
akqreply

only admins can shadowban though

2

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).

14

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.

12
lemmy.world

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.

11
Froynreply
kbin.social

It won't be retroactive. They'll come up with a new award instead.

Did you really believe they'd honor golds of old?

6

I know it won't be retroactive, but I haven't changed my behavior, so I could potentially earn if this stupid idea happens.

2

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.

11

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

11

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

11

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!

10

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?

10
lemmy.ca

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

10

All that sweet, sweet API money that's gonna come rolling in any day now. Yep... annnny day now.

8

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.

9

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

6

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

5

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

5

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 🤸🏼‍♀️

5

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

4

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.

3

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

3

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.

-1