Reworking Awarding: Changes to Awards, Coins, and Premium
old.reddit.com
Hi all, I’m u/venkman01 from the Reddit product team, and I’m here to give everyone an early look at the future of how redditors award (and...
  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    15·
    1 year ago

    I just said this yesterday or two days ago when they announced they were going to start paying people for content, but it truly is amazing how Reddit can find another significant thing that will hurt them as a business and move forward with it.

    It seems like they’d run out of things that could significantly hurt their business, they just keep finding something else.

    Soon they’re going to be down to basic features, And they’ll be like hey look so hyperlinks don’t work anymore. And then that’ll be the end of the press release.

    Their “business decisions” are insane right now.

    It’s very difficult to see this procession of self-mutilation technologically in another light other than deliberate corporate suicide. Like is someone going to benefit if Reddit goes bankrupt? Is that what’s happening?

    • gsa32@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      1 year ago

      Reddit’s incompetence is so mind-blowing it’s unreal. Even a crackhead can manage Reddit better than spez

          • can@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            1 year ago

            I have a bad feeling Threads will turn into this. I mean it’s literally called threads. Kind of up ends the “threadiverse” name.

            • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
              0·
              1 year ago

              Not with a 500-character post limit, it’s not. If it decides to change from Instagram in a Twitter suit to Instagram in a Twitter suit in a Reddit flying saucer…?

              • zeppo@lemmy.world
                0·
                1 year ago

                That’s kind of how instagram has worked… went from Photo Twitter with filters, to video, then to a Snapchat rip-off, then to a TikTok rip-off. Each time they pretty much forgot about the previous functions and promoted the new style and penalized the old one in the algorithms.

                • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  I’ll have to take your word for how Instagram has developed, since I have used Instagram for a total of about 15 minutes, and found it confusing and unpleasant. And it’s definitely a good argument for expecting them to shift ground and go for what’s left of Reddit, (maybe after they’ve mopped up what’s left of Twitter, which might not take long, since Twitter is busily mopping itself up).

                  When I say “Instagram in a Twitter skin,” I’m going off articles saying that Threads uses Instagram’s algorithm, which seems a little less likely to change than the user interface/general style…? I can try to find my exact sources, if you like. It seems like Meta might have business justifications for adding a separate Reddit-replacement service, though there could be equally strong reasons to morph Threads for that purpose. I’m morbidly interested in seeing how it develops.

          • jarfil@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            Hey, Penn&Teller are really good at what they do, and have been doing it for longer than either Twitter or Reddit existed.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        1 year ago

        It’s truly shocking. Like all the Twitter stuff that musk is doing, seems in some way connected to his ego and they seem like genuine mistakes that he’s making because he’s completely out of touch and an a******.

        But with Reddit, it’s like I can’t follow the logic of these decisions at all, I can’t tie back these obvious blunders to any sort of logical troubleshooting decision making process for their company.

        Perplexing

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
          0·
          1 year ago

          The logic is to destabilise public forums ahead of upcoming elections, so the wealthy can consolidate more power.

          • rockprada@midwest.socialEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            I hate that this take seems like the conspiracy take but also is totally plausible. Just look to the example of the Arab spring and how instrumental social media was for organizing. By fragmenting all social media it’s a lot less likely you see a massive resistance if shit goes sideways.

            • regedit@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              If this is the case, I guess it makes sense why these bad, seemingly “money-losing” changes aren’t going to be felt by the company or CEO. Soon as they go public, the elite that pushed these changes will buy up the amount they promised, spez will take his payout, and they will have “union-busted” another prominent social media platform used for progressive ideas and discussion.

              • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                Fun fact, most of the money Musk spent on Twitter was underwritten by stocks in Tesla, which have drastically shrunk in value since the purchase.

            • jarfil@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              This might be the top-down view, but the bottom-up is Telegram forums, Mastodon, Lemmy, and similar distributed hard to close down spaces.

              “Divide and conquer” is a valid strategy when one can conquer each part separately, “guerrilla warfare” is the aftermath of failing to conquer the divided parts.

    • HolidayGreed@lemmy.world
      41·
      1 year ago

      It’s all going to plan. A wealthy investor has paid a lot of money to shut down popular platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Knowledge is power and they can afford to, and have the incentive to keep us in the dark. Can’t have us poors rising up against inequality if we have no soapbox to stand on.

        • cynar@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          It fits with existing patterns depressingly well. The issue is, it’s generally very subtle.

          E.g. Murdoch once even admitted on camera what he does. He “suggests” what he thinks should happen to politicians. Those that either agree, or follow his “advice” start getting negative stories about them dropped from his papers etc. Conversely, those that disagree get their positive stories dropped more. Once a few politicians have had their careers ended by it, most of the rest fall into line, it’s only minor favours. Until it’s not; and all the previous favours suddenly risk looking very bad in the press…

          No laws broken, no overt threats given, but the more it happens the stronger it becomes. It eventually helped cripple BBC news, in the UK, among many other problems.

          Reddits behaviour fits this pattern too well. Something has been offered in the background. Initially, it was for small favours, but it’s now reached a tipping point. I suspect they are hoping that they can fire sale the whole user driven system (everything must go [at once]). People fatigue on the constant news, and there’s nowhere new to flow and reorganize.

        • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
          0·
          1 year ago

          Hard to prove that type of stuff. It could just be incompetent leadership but it’s starting to feel like it’s something more given how many back to back missteps they’ve had recently.

      • DragonAce@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’ve played with this idea in my head on several occasions. It does seem rather insane how all social media sites are self destructing and making business decisions that are questionable at best. Given all the uprisings across the globe in recent years, it would not surprise me if there were various investors and governments who would pay good money to destroy those platforms. Also the sudden and complete self destruction of both Reddit and Twitter right as we’re about to head into the 2024 US presidential elections, seems rather suspect as well.

        The other idea I’ve been considering is that both Musk and Huffman are raging malignant narcissists who are throwing a massive childish tantrum and burning it all down simply because the users on their sites made fun of them.

        • can@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          1 year ago

          Whichever ends up being true Musk and Huffman are raging malignant narcissists regardless.

      • Lightor@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        This.

        People keep laughing at how dumb execs are. Like they are dumber than the average person. They aren’t. They pay lots of money to very smart people who tell them what will happen. It’s just much easier for them if people think they’re dumb instead of malicious. Because again, they have smart people telling them how to play this.

      • wwaxwork@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m leaning into the theory it’s someone in power in Saudi Arabia. A member of their royal family is heavily invested in Twitter, owns shares and fronted Elon a big chunk of money for Twitter and they would surely like to crack down on social media in pretty much every middle eastern country, what with those pesky women protesting by not wearing their hijabs and protests and riots happening over there in the past decade. The first thing they do when there is trouble is shut down twitter, shutting it down permanently makes things easier for them.

    • Raven FellBlade@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, actually. This has completely derailed what has historically been a powerful platform for progressive and leftist movements going into a US election cycle. Same with Twitter. Meanwhile, the MAGA propaganda machine at Meta chugs along unfettered.

      I can’t see any other motivation. There is certainly no economic incentive to run either business as they have been, but running the companies into the ground as a means to control or destroy opposition communication platforms definitely makes sense.

    • Tetra@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Reddit is overall quite left leaning, with a lot of its communities being some of the biggest hubs for lefties on the internet (antiwork comes to mind, all the LGBT subs, majority of the big politics subs also heavily lean left).

      I don’t think it’s that crazy a “conspiracy theory” to say that this could be intentional sabotage. IMO it’s what’s happening with Twitter also, I think the alt right is paying big to take down left leaning social media so they can control the flow on information. I know Musk and Spez are profoundly stupid but I don’t think they’re stupid enough to genuinely believe in their recent business decisions. I think these decisions make a lot more sense when viewed through that lens.

      They got officially fact checked a few times and that put the fear of god in them, since their whole schtick relies on ignorance.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      Didn’t they come out and say early on when they firsr introduced rewards that they’d made enough money to cover their server costs for many decades? Whatever happened with all that?

  • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
    11·
    1 year ago

    I don’t want to give Reddit any traffic so I’m reposting the content here:

    Hi all,

    I’m u/venkman01 from the Reddit product team, and I’m here to give everyone an early look at the future of how redditors award (and reward) each other.

    TL;DR: We are reworking how great content and contributions are rewarded on Reddit. As part of this, we made a decision to sunset coins (including Community coins for moderators) and awards (including Medals, Premium Awards, and Community Awards), which also impacts some existing Reddit Premium perks. Starting today, you will no longer be able to purchase new coins, but all awards and existing coins will continue to be available until September 12, 2023.

    Many eons ago, Reddit introduced something called Reddit Gold. Gold then evolved, and we introduced new awards including Reddit Silver, Platinum, Ternium, and Argentium. And the evolution continued from there. 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. 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.

    It’s become clear that awards and coins as they exist today need to be re-thought, and the existing system sunsetted. Rewarding content and contribution (as well as something golden) will still be a core part of Reddit. We’ll share more in the coming months as to what this new future looks like.

    On a personal note: in my several years at Reddit, I’ve been focused on how to help redditors be able to express themselves in fun ways and feel joy when their content is celebrated. I led the product launch on awards – if you happen to recognize the username – so this is a particularly tough moment for me as we wind these products down. At the same time, I’m excited for us to evolve our thinking on rewarding contributions to make it more valuable to the community.

    Why are we making these changes?

    We mentioned early this year that we want to both make Reddit simpler and a place where the community empowers the community more directly.

    With simplification in mind, we’re moving away from the 50+ awards available today. Though the breadth of awards have had mixed reception, we’ve also seen them - be it a local subreddit meme or the “Press F” award - be embraced. And we know that many redditors want to be able to recognize high quality content.

    Which is why rewarding good content will still be part of Reddit. Though we’d love to reveal more to you all now, we’re in the process of early testing and feedback, so aren’t ready to share official details just yet. Stay tuned for future posts on this!

    What’s changing exactly?

    Awards - Awards (including Medals, Premium Awards, and Community Awards) will no longer be available after September 12.

    Reddit Coins - Coins will be deprecated, since Awards will be going away. Starting today, you’ll no longer be able to purchase coins, but you can use your remaining coins to gift awards by September 12.

    Reddit Premium - Reddit Premium is not going away. However, after September 12, we will discontinue the monthly coin drip and Premium Awards. Other current Premium perks will still exist, including the ad-free experience.

    Note: As indicated in our User Agreement past purchases are non-refundable. If you’re a Premium user and would like to cancel your subscription before these changes go into effect, you can find instructions here.

    What comes next?

    In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about a new direction for awarding that allows redditors to empower one another and create more meaningful ways to reward high-quality contributions on Reddit.

    I’ll be around for a while to answer any questions you may have and hear any feedback!

        • damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          1 year ago

          Also he is using it wrong because “sunsetting” means a slow winding down. You know, because the sun doesn’t instantly turn off.

          But they basically literally just suddenly turned off gold today, without any pre warning.

          They have basically sent a message to everyone telling them they’ve already done it.

        • –Phase–@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          1 year ago

          Corpo scum are allergic to saying exactly what they mean, so they insist on hiding their intent behind flowery words that sound “good” to them. I guess they think that if they use weasel words, it’ll soften the blow when they decide to strip out features and further destroy their platforms.

          • Sheltac@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            It’s not an allergy, it’s hiding punches. It’s concealing the fact that they’re fucking you in the ass by telling you it’s just a penis-based prostate exam, and that you’re the one being weird. It’s gaslighting.

            It’s one of the things I hate most in our capitalist dystopia.

        • Spike@feddit.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          Gesundheit?

          Anyways, who has time and energy to read such a dumb, way too long post?

    • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      – if you happen to recognize the username –.

      Lol no one knows or cares who you are

    • AzPsycho@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      I think that’s actually closer to the mark than many realize. Awards are great when they are not directed at the company or it’s rep in a negative manner as they show positive engagement and help the company with sales marketing. When awards and upvote/downvote counters are used to highlight that the users are having a negative experience then it hurts the platform image. Similarly to how YouTube removed the downvote tracker because their marketing team realized it hurt their sales revenue with business partners.

      • Thanks4Nothing@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        TBH, I don’t think they care. It is monetization and engagement of their microtransactions…as smug as they may be, I think it’s all about $

  • FringeTheory999@lemmy.world
    9·
    1 year ago

    Sometimes people would buy me coins if I posted something they liked. It took me forever to find some sort of use for the coins, since I never did any of the shit that people might spend coins on. 15 years on the site and I never had an avatar or anything like that. THEN I finally figured it out. The only acceptable use for reddit coins. Buying cute teddy bear awards for people that hate you. It was fun, and it pissed them off. When they’re trying to have a vicious argument about “marvel movies” or something, and getting all worked up sending them a cute teddy bear icon that attaches to their name, whether they want it or not, is exactly the right thing to do with your stupid gold coins.

  • olafurp@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 year ago

    First, many don’t appreciate the clutter from awards

    “Hide Awards” in settings?

    It’s almost like they’re allergic to working on their app.

    • Lakija@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      They could have fixed the clutter and still accumulated money. They’re really bad at business

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        They could have fed ads through the API instead of shutting down clients. They aren’t very smart over there.

      • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Keep bringing it up. It’s clear that Spez was annoyed and offended by Apollo and we shouldn’t let him drop the topic.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          Apollo automatically refunded everyone for the money they had spent for a full year. Reddit isn’t doing anything at all. It says a lot.

      • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        So did sync. You could hide awards completely, display them all, or have it just show that the post had been awarded, but no detail on what the award was.

    • Setarkus.LW@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Not surprising considering what it is. I’ve seen people claim that the API is quite bad, to say it nicely. Can’t imagine the app’s code to be much better :)

      • Cabrio@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        They literally bought out one of the best apps, brought it in house, and actively made it the worst app. It’s almost amazing how consistent reddit’s management failures have been.

        • SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’ve now seen one person complain about it.

          I only used 3rd party apps to navigate, so it was never an issue.

          Sounds like R×ddit’s solution for a barking dog is to run it over with a steamroller.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
    5·
    1 year ago

    It’s good that Reddit did this today because the memes on the fediverse have been extremely good lately. Reddit Remainers checking it out will find a fun, active community

  • Frz@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    1 year ago

    Man. What the actual hell is Reddit doing? They’ve been making the most suicidal business decisions this year. Blocking third party apps, they piss off a huge active portion of their user base but sure, you could say they weren’t paying anyway. But now they’re screwing over their PAYING users? I don’t even know what they expect at this point.

      • Frz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        But it doesn’t make any sense, no matter how you spin it. In the aftermath of one highly controversial decision, instead of laying low for a while to let the dust settle, they decide to make another one. And this time targeting the group that happens to be the least likely aggravated by the last one (since people paying for Premium likely use the official app) and also the ones that directly bring in income. I can definitely see this ending well.

  • ButtHertz@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 year ago

    You can always tell when a community is going downhill when they say they’re “empowering users” with their latest changes. They’re never actually empowering anyone but the shareholders to make more money.

    • redballooon@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 year ago

      Although they’re just taking an existing feature away here. Not sure how that’ll create more money.

      • another_lemming@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        TL;DR: I’m no fortune-teller but I feel like they want to change how we perceive and consume Reddit posts: to kill ways of engagement and make you just scroll feed.

        I bet they’d add new subscription-based service, something musk-esque, that would promote you to the top of the feed or comment section. In new Reddit there are like a dozen of top comments visible before you tap to show more items. They’d probably be mostly from paid users. Also, no ability to visibly promote others’ posts – it’s bad for PR when something bad gets gold, like advertisements for Lemmy. And, in general, Reddit should (in their vision, imho) be like tiktok, where you just scroll through a queue of curated content – staying in comment section for too long or showing your opinion (with up\downvotes or gold a.k.a superupdoot) is wasting your time while you could as well watch some ads. In this case, killing comments and any kind of active and natural reaction is obvious. As a bonus, there’d be more advertisers, as critique of them won’t get viral and their post won’t get downvoted into hell. Oh, and if their board of managers won’t get booted, downvote button and post stats would be cut next.

  • amcjv12@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 year ago

    Zero percent chance this isn’t a cover to launch something more predatory for monetization reasons.

  • joshhsoj1902@lemmy.ca
    2·
    1 year ago

    I paid for Reddit gold back in the day, I really enjoyed the ability to selectively gift gold to comments.

    When they replaced gold with coins I ended up unsubscribing. The coins felt like they devalued what gold actually was.

    I think it’s fair that they want to revisit the feature, but shutting off a revenue stream a month after they made such a big deal about charging for API access, it feels to me like they are lacking common direction and priorities within the company…

    • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      They’re doing it in preparation for their new model where they pay content creators. If that doesn’t P.O. the rest of the remaining mods who work free I don’t know what will.

  • Chickenstalker@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    Lol. This venkman guy claims credit for creating the awards when it was reddit users who started the semi-ironic (and free) Reddit Gold shit.

    • jdeath@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      but taking credit for others’ work is how executives get ahead in the modern corporate hellscape! how else are they supposed to get promoted? working?!

    • Ech@lemm.ee
      11·
      1 year ago

      And then stole silver, too, replacing gold with it and making gold more expensive.