Reddit kills awards and coins
Reddit kills awards and coins
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...
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?
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!
What happened to them being so desperate to make money that they'd charge third party all devs $20 million a year for API access? Surely removing ways to give them money won't help that situation, right?
I know the API thing was all about control and not the actual money, but they're just being so blatant about not giving a fuck about the site or the users. What a dreadful company.
If I was a VC, I would want a glut of ad-sensitive, lowest common denominator users. Think your Aunt on Facebook, or your sister on VSCO, or your young nephew on TikTok. I don’t think those people are necessarily attracted to the overall community attitude(s) currently on Reddit.
I would never call the ex-Hacker News/Digg Redditors smart. But.
Those users do have certain proclivities that make them EXTREMELY unattractive to investment dollars. Strong interest in anti-mainstream topics, including the 3Ps (Privacy, Piracy, and Pornography) doth not good ROI make. This exodus of users and elimination of features, outside looking in, seems like a misstep. I’d be skeptical.
I found Reddit Gold and Discord Nitro's gifting systems to be smart ways of monetization.
There are people who, despite what you try, cannot or will not pay you. Gifting allows you to keep the people that positively contribute on your platform while still earning money from elsewhere.
Amazing how swiftly they're progressing with their enshittification. Makes me re-think all those 9 years spent there.
Either they are dumb or I am.
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.
So they are killing cashflow at this crucial point and any possible replacement is "in the process of early testing and feedback"? WTF? Am I missing something?
I think they dont like the fact that these awards also grant reddit premium to the user who receives them. But they cant just remove that feature of the rewards without killing rewards otherwise they look really bad. So the new award system will just be a community highlight. Maybe something that changes the background color of the post to highlight it on the front page. Like gold background. Then they will allow advertisers to also pay to make their "paid advertisements" also have background colors to generate a dark pattern where they trick you into clicking ads because you think they are awarded front page posts.
Thats my guess at least.
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 REDDITEDIT: Yes, do chargebacks instead
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.
Listen, gold was cute while it first happened, and the evolution of silver was hilarious, i believe a crappy Jpeg with a Microsoft paint style silver coin, hilarious. In my opinion it should have never moved pass this point. It was clutter, a quick visit to mlmym gave me a kick of nostalgia as its like Reddit used to be when i started 11 years ago.
Shocker. Reddit has been going out of its way for years to run itself into the ground. Honestly if I had known about Lemmy a while back I'd have come here instead. I started messing about on reddit when I was 18. I am now 31. I've seen that website grow through so many stages and each one was actively worse than the next.
I'm not remotely surprising that they've decided to reneg on absolutely everything, including paid services.
They're just gonna push their stupid crypto, aren't they? The awards have been dumb, especially once it moved beyond the community and was embraced by corpo-reddit. But they are absolute morons so they HAVE to be pivoting to crypto in the year of our lord 2023, because of course, that's what an absolute moron would do.
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.
Wonder how that’s going to work with this
Of course they kill off the only user provided monetization that was working in favor of a future feature that's going to get abused like crazy to push and brigade stories by anyone with money, power, and influence. Hell, troll factories may even begin to earn money by farming populisms now. I'd sarcastically say this will totally not get reddit in problems legally, if it weren't for the fact that they've gotten away with just about murder at this point.
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.
Never really was a fan of the copious amount of awards to begin with. Gold and Silver were fine enough, and they got a point across. If I saw them on a post or comment, I'd have an indicator that someone really liked it, and wanted to praise it beyond giving it an upvote. Silver and Gold were two tiers to this, which coupled with upvotes, was more than sufficient in giving users a metric by which to value posts or comments.
It turned to shit when I start seeing diamond-clad medals, seal heads, unicorns and rainbows, and shooting stars flying across my screen. It took the simple approach and turned it into a clusterfuck of visual noise because the people designing them had no clue about the basics of a user interface.
And then they kill the entire thing because (shocker) it just doesn't work. Typical.
It looks like the brain drain from Reddit is now in full swing!
We mentioned early this year that we want to both make Reddit simpler and a place where the community empowers the community more directly.
..and because that we took away the power from our communitys by banning moderators of communitys, closing down communitys, and forcing users to be our bitch who does everything we ask them to. also we didn't listen to our communitys at all and actively lied and ignored them.
DISTRACTION TIME DISTRACTION TIME DISTRACTION TIME DISTRACTION TIME
After the API changes announcement, I cancelled my premium renewal. I'm still on premium.
The best feature was that I'd get coins to give away as rewards every month. There were other benefits I enjoyed, but the ability to gift someone gold on a whim from the coins I had gotten was very nice.
Now, all the coins I have stockpiled will be worthless.
Gg Reddit. I'm sorry to see it end this way, but you've done this to yourself.
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.
yooo it'd be neat if we could have our own community custom awards that can be used to help fundraise the servers the community is on
Well, I never paid for Reddit, but this must suck for people that did it.
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...
I remember back in like, 2013 when getting gold was actually really cool, or maybe it was just me so easily made happy at that point.
I've never followed the updated bullshit with the awards that came out thereafter. It was right around the time reddit really turned to shit.
Anyways, I guess it was inevitable.
It’s become clear that awards and coins as they exist today need to be re-thought, and the existing system sunsetted.
Has it? 🤔
This is brilliant. Instead of advertisers making sponsored posts that are ignored or trying to sneak an ad into a community, they can outright buy engagement. Utilize subliminal advertising, then advertisers buy their own "tips" (or whatever they end up being called) and they get back a portion of the money spent. There's been an uptick in those types of posts lately and reddit's just leaning into market trends. Not to mention that bots can earn real money by reposting top/all time content!
Reddit is nothing but an another advertising platform now.
I never knew how any of that stuff worked and never cared... until I made a dumb comment and someone gave me an award for it. Dammit, I was proud. But I still feel sour about the API changes, to the point where I don't care what they do. Maybe drive more people out to other platforms. I'd like to see some of my Fandom communities migrate to other places.
Lemmy chads just can't stop winning
So they're sunsetting current payment features, right now, just for the hell of it without having an answer to fix it for months yet?
Good God, they've gone Musk.
Oh yeah! News sites come out and say a reward system is found in the app code and a day later, they come out and say they are taking away features without really giving a replacement.
Another fantastic decision among all other fantastic decisions… if your goal is to destroy the brand.
"Business as usual" lmao what is this then
Its fine more users on lemmy then
"thanks for gold, kind stranger" is no more
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.
Guess the datamined stuff about cashing out on karma and awards from others is true then. Makes me honestly glad I jumped off of that shit show. There's just no way that isn't going to backfire hard, if we can even call it that, because I guess it will just be by design.
I still visit a few subs that haven’t really built a solid community here yet, so I’m still on Reddit a good bit.
You can already see a change in the user base and they way people talk in the comments. Reddit has changed a lot over the years but man, it really seems like most of the interesting conversation has left the site; outside of very niche communities.
Just my 2¢
If anyone has any coins they want to dump, r/GoForGold has reopened for challenges.
If you want to get rid of them quickly, a challenge could be like "first 5 commenters get a platinum", you could award a community award. GoForGold have a 5,000 coin "Golden Bracelet Award" which gives 1,000 coins to mods to give out on behalf of the sub. (10,000 also gives them 1,000 so 5,000 is better value. same for the 40,000 coin award, only giving 4,000 to community). The GoForGold mods have a summer bonanza lined up and i think they'll find a way to make use of all community awarded coins.
If you want to get rid of them efficiently, the timeless beauty award gives the awardee 100 coins to spend and the community.
Giving a gold medal gives the recipient a week of ad-free browsing and giving a platinum gives a month of ad-free browsing.
On the new scheme, A while ago i had Reddit app installed and noted there was an option for a "vault" in the menu bar where you could share stuff with other people, it needed a sign up for something else and i didn't look further into it, but think it could be related.
Since all the 3rd party stuff kicked off, Reddit feels different. Also i noted they kicked up a stink saying that DNDMemes and NCD were both SFW when people joined and its unfair that mods changed it to NSFW. When i signed up i could award people coins and without a replacement scheme out for us to judge it feels a bit hypocritical.
Haha, I’m glad I wasted all my (gifted) Reddit Gold on Christian’s farewell to Apollo posts.
Obligatory fuck u/spez, as we used to say on that old site.
Most pepega move I've ever since since the APIcalypse
It hasn't been 2 months already lol
They are making it easy to move here.
Yep I just got my message from them saying if I don't use them by September, then they will take from me. I still have Reddit as a couple of subs I'm not happy to leave
I was given them by someone who gave me a gold award. I hardly ever bother with them, so do I start giving them out or let them steal them from me?
Edit :Giving them away on r/lemmy
Probs so spez can bury the fact that he gave a bunch of fucking pedo mods from the jaibait subreddit custom awards
I feel they're gonna replace it with some blockchain/crypto BS.
Someone in the reddit comments mentioned you can use awards/coins to bypass ads. That makes sense. In a stupid way. I guess
NO WAY HAHAHAHA
Just when you think the dumpster fire can't possibly burn any brighter, u/spez comes running with a barrel of gasoline.
There are some great comments on that thread absolutely ripping the piss out of Reddit. I almost wish I hadn't deleted my account, just so I could upvote them ;-)
I really wonder what @ChristianSelig thinks of this
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Lemmy is the new old Reddit, Reddit is the new new Twitter.
TIL - I had been adding them all to the uBlock rules!
This should shock no one everything they are doing is to create a Facebook clone of sorts where they can easily feed people information and garner their attention in the form of ads. This truly marks the hour in which everyone needs to start looking for and at more open systems. When reddit went public and Tencent bought some of the company the writing was already on the wall.
I dunno. Part of me thinks they have a plan. I have no idea what, but if the entire boardroom is just going along with all the crazy, it makes me think there's a reason. Maybe there's a thing that happens if reddit just tanks. Or maybe they all just want it to end and just want to watch it burn.
I'm not saying this is the case, it just wouldn't surprise me that in a year or so, something comes out to explain all the batshit decisions.
Haha
Remember when people just said "reddit silver" to imply it was Reddit gold but they had no money, and then they made it into a paid thing and everyone stopped saying it. Now there is a bunch of meaningless icons on every front page post and reddit is removing them because??? Lol.
Thats a great thread to get people to move to lemmy lol
Especially now that the Memmy app is on the app store and its so similar to Apollo
Killing awards, after killing awards, is bloody stupid. Like ffs.
This will be related to the recent news that there are plans to pay contributors for posts. Will update with a link when I find it...
As we saw with Reddit gifts, anything that could help develop an audience or good publicity is not destined to last forever.
It’s like the API thing didn’t piss off enough users, so now spez is switching to Plan B.
If he isn’t trying to destroy the company, though, I have no idea what the goal is.
At first I was all "I dont care. Nothing to do with me" and then I noticed a new email.. fuck off reddit!
As much as I hate these awards cringey bullshits I have to say it is indeed a bad implementation
Awards are nothing in value. Awards could be used for harassment.
Could be worse, could have gotten exit scammed on a shitcoin!
I didn't know I had any. Only used the old reddit and Joey (which just died today 😢)
Banning coins that people paid for, hmm something is fishy and since the announcement they just nuked all my accounts. For ban evasion on main page sub that I never visit. I said F it and I'm here now. I have a nasty feeling that they are going to ban all the porn pre IPO. Some of my accounts were mods on some NSFW subs that weren't too big. Start small and work your way up from there.
They can go the way of Tumblr/Digg/Etc I'm done.
I will be curious if they nuked my accounts at work. I have never cross pollinated between machines (no upvote/comments between work/home). If I do have bans then they might be using AI to look for common misspelling/writing patterns/ect
W
What is next, I really wonder...?
Changing name to Fuckit?
and now premium is even more useless than it already was
not even surprised, just sitting here watching spez's dumbassery slowly kill off the website
That's seriously surprising, what of reddit is going to still be reddit by the time their IPO starts?
So they're taking away Awards without a replacement already to go... What could possibly go wrong?!
I thought you had to buy awards to give out (or included as part of paid or “premium” Reddit). So they are killing a source of income or reducing the feature set?
Lol. Glad my only contribution to that site was shit posts and whatever ad revenue they can squeeze or get past my ad blocker.
Somebody make an image merging Spez and Musk faces please.
Sounds like they're actually going through with the leak saying they'll pay high karma users much faster than I thought.
I am actually okay with this. Now what are all of the gilding farmers going to do? Oh no...anyways.
They’re just straight up making shit up about excuses for getting rid of awards.
Interesting how I can’t find this anywhere on /r/all
They can't remove awards from a particular comment without people noticing.
I’m imagining a future where redditors award each other with nfts and crypto coins
Lemmy is the new old Reddit, Reddit is the new new Twitter.
Seems like an overall bad change. Feels like these platforms are trying to drive themselves into the ground all at once.
I don't care about awards that much but Redditors certainly do so it will have a negative impact.
Can we pay for a blue checkmark yet?
I’m very curious why they would do this. Curiouser and curiouser.
tldr: they're trying to implement more expensive awards and coins
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I'm not surprised.
