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
    13•2 years 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•2 years ago

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

      • Spaceman Spiff
        5•2 years ago

        You mean Musk? Because it seems that whatever insanity that Musk does, Spez wants to copy verbatim

      • @Szymon@lemmy.ca
        1•2 years ago

        Regulatory Capture is when corporations install favourable politicians and former employees into positions that enact policies and regulations favourable to the goals of industry (profit).

        I think what we’re saying here is Corporate Capture, where malicious players have captured major corporate entities in an attempt to neuter platforms that are used by the masses in an effort to control the messages given to the population.

        People start talking about revolution, and suddenly the mediums used to enable free communication are removed.

        • @Donjuanme@lemmy.world
          1•2 years ago

          Thanks for putting my thoughts into easily digestible words. Enshittification isn’t natural, it’s deliberate. Any CEO 's who throw up their hands and say they’re all of ideas are just trying to pull the rip cords of their golden parachutes, given to them by people who want us to believe it’s unavoidable.

          Was not breaking something that hard? No, but it doesn’t pay as well.

      • @Varyk@sh.itjust.works
        0•2 years 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

    • @HolidayGreed@lemmy.world
      1•2 years 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•2 years 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.

        • @Maturin@sh.itjust.works
          1•2 years ago

          But seriously, why aren’t we talking about this more? We’ve seen some fairly significant mass movements gain real traction on Twitter and Reddit in the past few years and, simultaneously and nearly instantly they are both quickly scrambled and made completely useless for that purpose.

        • @ferne@lemmy.world
          0•2 years ago

          Not to divert too much from your point, but Reddit was a progressive and intelligent community? Thanks for the laugh haha

          • @Seasoned_Greetings@lemmy.world
            1•2 years ago

            Reddit is 1000’s of communities. It’s just as wrong to say that it isn’t progressive and intelligent as it is to insinuate it’s all one big community in the first place.

            However, it’s really not a secret that reddit’s majority (at least used to) lean left harder than any other social media. Intelligent is maybe subjective and not accurate, but they were at least more progressive than most other social media sites.

      • Lightor
        1•2 years 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.

    • @TheHog@feddit.uk
      1•2 years ago

      Seriously, spend a bit of time looking into Gamestop / superstonk. It explains all of it. And you may get some real money out of it. DRSGME.org will work if you don’t wanna use reddit, r/superstonk. There is a lot to digest but it may change the world as we know it.

    • @Clbull@lemmy.world
      1•2 years ago

      To be fair the awards system was complete dogshit and just became a rich man’s upvote and a way to financially brigade comments.

      I remember the days when /r/the_donald gilded hateful comments/posts to game Reddit’s frontpage.

      Awards well and truly jumped the shark when the admins took Reddit Silver, a meme pic that people would often post to mock the act of gilding, and make that into an award that offered the recipient nothing other than a silver crudely-drawn emblem by their comment.

      Normally I’d support the removal of this feature, but it’s blatantly obvious they did it because Reddit’s top payers abandoned the site and because they were fed up with watching “fuck u/Spez” posts getting gilded.

    • TWeaK
      1•2 years 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?

    • Tetra
      0•2 years 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.

  • @ButtHertz@lemmy.world
    11•2 years 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.

    • @MrValdez@lemmy.world
      2•2 years ago

      Then where would I go to look for cat pictures?

      Trick question. Everyone knows cats invented the Internet to put their pictures in.

  • @SulaymanF@lemmy.world
    9•2 years 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!

    • NakamuraEmi_bias
      4•2 years ago

      thanks for posting here. I have no idea who the venkman01 is but the way they worded that post is borderline cringe

        • @damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works
          2•2 years 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–
          1•2 years 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•2 years 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.

  • Mog Spawn
    8•2 years ago

    It looks like the brain drain from Reddit is now in full swing!

    • @AzPsycho@lemmy.world
      5•2 years 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
        2•2 years 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 $

    • AnonymousLlama
      1•2 years ago

      That’s where I’m putting my money. They don’t want clearly shit dogshit admin posts to get poor awards

  • Open
    5•2 years ago

    Awards were always super jarring when I accidentally ended up on “new reddit”. I could never tell who actually liked them. But to just remove the feature, and take coins immediately (that people paid for) away with no alternative is shitty.

    I guess management wants to get rid of those nasty ad free benefits.

  • Boris the spider
    4•2 years ago

    I see the “follow twitter” business model is proceeding.

    “We’re having cash flow issues? What should we do?” “I know! Lets cancel the one thing that we’re doing that people are just giving us money for!” “Brilliant!”

  • Hello Hotel
    4•2 years ago

    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.

    Thats a non existant notice period and frankly either a knee jerk or the plan from the start. Its also in line with the new “core vision” of reddit. Goodbye, reddit.

    so this is a particularly tough moment for me as we wind these products down.

    Products, ey? Their intentionally designed to not feel loke them.

    we want to both make Reddit simpler and a place where the community empowers the community more directly.

    redditors be able to express themselves in fun ways and feel joy when their content is celebrated.

    You cant do that directly, you need to give people a reason to trust you. Trust your not twisting their words for your ends. This wouldnt be so bad if you didnt burn up all that trust. New Reddit, to be blunt, fake paridises are utterly disturbing to almost all humans. New Reddit, go ahaid, use tools to make users beleave there in a room of attractive people all giving you welcoming smiles, most are going to run for the hills

    Note: As indicated in our User Agreement past purchases are non-refundable. (Fuck you)

    We took your digital stuff that you paid for in actually useful green papers

    If you’re a Premium user and would like to cancel your subscription before these changes go into effect, you can find instructions here.

    Now, NOW!!! KILL YOUR TIES TO REDDIT

  • @kep@lemmy.world
    4•2 years ago

    I know the timing lends itself to dogpiling, but honestly? Good for them. Throughout the fog, reddit made a solid choice - awards and coins were absolutely fucking stupid. I had posted regularly on reddit since 2011 or so. The coin shit distracted from the original sorting system - upvotes/downvotes.

    Of course, hindsight belies that even that algorithm was bullshit the entire time. Alas, fuck reddit. Good riddance.

    • OwlBoy
      1•2 years ago

      I thought awards were fine. Though I used Apollo, and it tastefully displayed them and never had giant highlight boxes around comments or any other adornment nonsense.

      In smaller communities they had symbolic value. In massive ones it was kinda just noise. But like I said, not really an issue on Apollo.

      • @kep@lemmy.world
        0•2 years ago

        Describing the various ways in which you mitigated the intrusiveness of reddit’s awards is not exactly corroborating your argument that the awards were fine. I’m also struggling to see the symbolic value of a badge that indicates you paid the administrators. The award system did not build upon the original sorting mechanism of upvotes in any meaningful way.

        • OwlBoy
          1•2 years ago

          That’s a good point about how I mitigated the worst aspects.

          I have a similar feeling about Twitter. I hate algorithmic status/tweet timelines. But I never had them, due to third party clients. So I was in a different world when it came to Twitter.

          And I think we just fundamentally disagree about the value of the awards in smaller communities. It does not matter to me if they had value for sorting. They had social value.

          Most awards were anonymous afaik, or at the least the awarder name was not prominent or important to anyone. So the idea it was a badge to puff up the awarder does not hold weight for me.

        • @Odusei@lemmy.world
          1•2 years ago

          It was never intended to build upon the original sorting mechanism, it was intended to be a super upvote that granted the receiver elevated privileges. It used to get you into an exclusive subreddit, turn off the ads, and give you discounts at stores across the internet. But then people memed on it and the admin decided to indulge the memes.

          • ParadoxEnglish
            1•2 years ago

            Gold wasn’t ever even supposed to be that. When raldi (iirc) wrote the original gold system, it was just supposed to be a donator thing. Buy the gold stuff, and you get an award in your achievements thing, access to r/lounge, ability to keep track of what you’ve seen previously (persistent, not just in a cookie), and “extended” pages (load a full thousand comments, etc). The XKCD merch stuff was just another goodie to sweeten the pile (reddit’s original merch store was just hosted through XKCD).

            Gold gifting started out fairly clunky; you had to go to someone’s userpage, and then there was a tiny “buy gold” link in the sidebar. The post/comment upsells came later, but were still pretty minor

            Then sometime in the middle of the 10s, it turned into a meme, along with other features like snoovatars, avatars, profile posts, bios, and then eventually all of the new reddit slop, which seemed to run counter to the original idea of reddit: the content is more important than who is posting it. This old, long dead ideal, was what really distinguished reddit from Digg. Digg would give higher “karma” users votes more weight, and would rank their submissions higher. Reddit, on the other hand, barely acknowledged users. Wasn’t quite the full-on Anon of 4chan, but who made the post was never supposed to be the focus. There’s a reason why old reddit, the bylines are rather small compared to the posts and comments themselves

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
    3•2 years 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