Reddit is going to sunset its current coins and awards systems, meaning you won’t be able to buy Reddit Gold for posts you like. However, it is working on a new system for awards.

    • the_itsb (she/her)@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      idk how else to express my appreciation for this except to tell you that I gazed upon it with love and admiration for a good minute, long enough that I made my own self uncomfortable with how happy this goofy picture made me. It feels like a true representation of the casual, homemade, “let’s just try it!” vibe of lemmy. This is beautiful, thank you.

      • brsrklf@compuverse.uk
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        1 year ago

        Not to take away from this beautiful piece of art, but it’s a take on “reddit silver”, an equally silly pic of a MSPaint coin that’s used on reddit as a tongue-in-cheek (and free) alternative for reddit gold awards.

        Beyond the simple reason “don’t have money for that right now”, it became especially popular since lots of people wanted to show appreciation for posts without supporting reddit’s model.

  • very_well_lost@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Based on code in the Reddit’s Android app, Reddit appears to be working on a “contributor program” that would let users cash out gold or karma (basically, points you get for posts, comments, or giving awards) they receive into real money.

    So rather than start paying the volunteer moderators that keep their site running, Reddit is going to pay the repost bots and low-effort karma farmers? Surely that will improve the quality of content on the site… /s

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yea … all around, it’s looking more and more likely that big social may become something rather embarrassing and dystopian.

      The best reason I can think of for why big social is going to die is that it was born out of a particular economic environment that either inaccurately assessed the technological-financial situation or just doesn’t exist anymore. Namely, that having a bunch of users on your platform and the data that follows will always magically just produce a profitable business model such that blindly investing in such a business is an obvious move.

      I’m guessing that big social just isn’t that profitable, or is only profitable at the sort of mega monopoly level that facebook and google operate at, but even then risks fading over time due to how social spaces are generational. And that the belief that big social was super profitable was born out of a vague big data web2.0, that convinced itself it had found the new oil.

      Beyond that, throwing VC cash at big-data businesses may just not be something anyone believes in any more, partly because of the above, and partly, I’m wondering, because the power of actually creating new technology and new types of platforms has always been a bigger business prospect and AI and chatGPT has basically forced the tech world to remember that.

      If I’m on to something, the awkward thing for Twitter and Reddit is that their finances and corporate structures are probably bound up in the older presumptions and have no choice but to do their best to return on the promised profits, however dumb they look, while the rest of us can easily and happily move on, because that’s what the internet is fundamentally about.

      • zeppo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Facebook/IG have certainly made a ton of money. Twitter and reddit haven’t I believe because they’ve been less aggressive about monetizing their data, and having a site with content attractive to advertisers. This also attracted users who were on Twitter or reddit because they weren’t doing what FB does, which I guess makes it difficult to increase monetization.

    • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
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      1 year ago

      Spez is following twitter’s playbook down to the letter. Aren’t twitter just starting to enable revenue sharing program with their most popular users?

      • zeppo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It seems like Twitter was basically copying YouTube, which sort of makes sense (Instagram and TikTok also pay people) but I get the impression reddit is mainly copying Twitter.

        Spez mentioned he thought Twitter was doing great and wanted to emulate them, which is confusing considering nothing they’ve done has been popular or successful. Mark Zuckerberg said he also was impressed, but with recent events, I think he was psychologically tricking musk, like “you’re doing great! Just keep doing that!”.

    • dreadpon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And all that after killing any automated moderation that utilized public API

      The amout of shooting themselves in the leg is through the roof

  • SGG@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A lot of people are saying this is another reaction from /u/Spez, he doesn’t like that “fuck /u/Spez” posts keep getting all the rewards.

    • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been on there browsing at lunch telling people about here, old being gone would be it. That’s the Digg in the dirt for me.

  • BURN@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not even just getting rid of it, they’re retroactively removing all awards already given to posts

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      WTF? Like, I never bothered with the things, but why would they go to the trouble of stripping them out? Somethings weird about that.

      • BURN@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sounds like they’re just ripping the code out entirely. It’s absolutely insane. At the very least leaving them on old posts should be the minimum.

  • nodel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    After they introduced several other awards except gold, the awards completely lost its meaning (and value) in my eyes. I still remember the bliss I felt the day I discovered Apollos “hide awards”-setting.

    • Gsus4@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      It wasn’t that bad, gold just signals that the comment is good (intensity), but some of the other awards made explicit the way in which it is good (hue/flavour) e.g. funny, informative, creative, sarcastic…I actually liked the award system (even if I always was a bit suspicious of who was giving them and what their intentions were)

      • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
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        1 year ago

        A few years ago, when the only award available was gold, I used to occasionally buy gold to award comments I really like. Back then buying gold was the only monetization in reddit so it was pretty well received. I stopped doing that around the time they implemented coins and ramping up ads.

    • TrustedTyrant@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I remember when people on Reddit would downvote immediately if someone used an emoji in the comments and then proceeded to pay for awards that are pretty much just emojis.

  • Sneezy McGlassface@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Honestly I always felt kinda awkward after getting one, knowing somebody paid real money for a stupid icon. What a waste. Good riddance, I say.

    • funkyb@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t understand why people frequently say this. While it’s true you can pay money for them, I’ve never spent a dime on reddit and have given out over 50 golds and have enough coins to give out a half dozen more. I don’t know what the mechanics are for earning the coins I have, all I can say is I haven’t paid for any of them yet I do have them, so it’s not true that when someone gives an award it was paid for with real money.

      • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        They gave out a shit ton of coins for years, and when you get gold you get coins to give out more awards. My guess is there are so many unpaid coins flying around that they’re just wiping it all out to start fresh with a (maybe) profitable system.

      • Gond0r@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        If you had Alien Blue, you got a shitload when Reddit bought it. That’s where I got mine and also never spent a dime on Reddit.

    • bitcrafter@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      When you buy a subscription to Reddit you get free coins you can use to give out these awards, so at least some of the time the award didn’t actually cost anything above what they were already paying for their subscription.

    • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      To be fair they’re attempting to rehost reddit.net’s content, right?

      Yeah, I’d limit them too.

      Not saying everything reddit is doing is great, but at least that one makes sense.

      If you disagree with reddit, the best thing to do is cut the cord, not to continue using them in other formats. The only reason to use reddit is to tell people about alternatives.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    CEO: Is this part broken yet?

    Lackey: No sir.

    CEO: Well then grab a sledgehammer and get crackin!

  • ThisIsMyLemmyLogin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m starting to think Spez is depressed. He probably had visions of being a Billionaire tech bro by now like Zuckerberg and Musk. His only thought these days seems to be how to monetize Reddit, regardless of how he destroys it.

    • barrio_libre@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If he’d had any insight, he’d have realized Reddit’s structure wasn’t a good vehicle for monetization and gone the way of Wikipedia/Jimmy Wales. He’d be popular and respected now and probably able to extract a decent living from it.

      But his insistence that a square peg be pounded into a round hole will end up with him being neither popular nor respected—and he’ll never sniff that moonshot IPO.

      • bdiddy@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        I think the advertising it can do is a perfectly reasonable way to monetize…

        Their problem is they want to be some major player and not a “right sized” organization… They want to go public and try to be billionaires and be like elon or zuck, but it’s just not going to be that.

        So in their quest for GREED they’ll destroy the very thing that can make them absolute massive amounts of money. It’s crazy how many mega corps have fallen to the same fate.

        They should welcome 3rd parties and any other means to see reddit and monetize the advertising… Hell they could even try to work streaming deals with NFL and NBA and whatever… Cowboys games live threads alone have caused the entire reddit website to collapse lol.

        SOOO much monetization possibilities in that. And it’s charging billion dollar organizations… not the people that use the service…

        Spez is not a good business man

  • xc2215x@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t care about the awards that much but Redditors do a lot. This decision will piss off Redditors.

  • noodlejetski@geddit.social
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    1 year ago

    “While we saw many of the awards used as a fun way to recognize contributions from your fellow redditors, looking back at those eons, we also saw consistent feedback on awards as a whole,” venkman01 said. “First, many don’t appreciate the clutter from awards (50+ awards right now, but who’s counting?) and all the steps that go into actually awarding content. Second, redditors want awarded content to be more valuable to the recipient.”

    so… the way it was when there was just a single Gold award to choose from?