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Philip's avatar

I think it's likely to be used in a similar manner to JA's bounty system.

People may request content and offer gold rewards to the best submissions.

I don't know about American and other tipping cultures. But as an Australian, I'd feel a bit odd about giving random strangers surprise cash for their posts.

If I received it randomly I'd be thinking 'do I have to send them a thank you note for the $1?'... like 'hey thanks for the golden upvote, very kind of you'.

Rupert's avatar

I'm also interested in the financial aspect (surprise surprise...). Based on the screenshot in the Verge article, it costs $2 per Gold to buy, but the user you are tipping only receives 90 cents or $1, depending on their account status. So Reddit are taking >50% of peer-to-peer tips?

Kane Carnifex's avatar

I dont like reddit. In special our subreddit.

How to improve? If people personal don´t want to evolve, there is no way.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Will be interesting to see how they will manage the moderation of this. If you can directly tip someone you could also say oh write something on this topic I'll tip you.... and then you don't tip, but the person has done the work expecting to be paid.

Philip's avatar

Its a very clunky mechanism to commission work. Especially if Reddit scrapes 50% each time.

Boomer's avatar

I think it depends on their motivation and what they want this to achieve. There is clearly a financial benefit to them which isn't necessarily bad, but the percentage they are taking is quite high.

I am curious what it will do to the quality of content shared on the platform. However you view the content in its current state, this change will spark a significant change in members' posting habits.

Will people feel encouraged to share AI-generated or high volume, low quality content to farm upvotes, or will a new class of high quality pro-redditor emerge? Will this create a class division between the members? What if people are rewarded but then the post is edited / moderated and no longer reflects the original post?

Obviously I am biased but I think rewarding members for their contribution to a platform is a good thing, however I think tacking it onto a platform as old and big as Reddit is will cause a lot of problems in the short term.

We'll see how it goes!

Tom's avatar

I'm fascinated with this from a problem-solving POV. I know Spez is looking for ways to make the platform profitable and this seems to tick that box - purely in a 'profit margins of the feature' sense - but the problem I thought they were trying to solve was users & mods feeling unappreciated and unrewarded in real terms. I don't see how this solves that at all. If anything it worsens that narrative of the platform profiting from the users and mods IMO

Dave's avatar

I was going to write a reply but this one covers what I was trying to type up pretty much.

Dave's avatar

Just to add though the announcement does also cover some sort of content creator revenue sharing programme if you hit certain criteria in terms of membership standing and content/contribution, so there is a bit more to it not just the tipping system.

In a general sense I don't like the the idea of potentially some kid (or adult) with very limited funds tipping me some gold/money for something I posted when the money is better used by them and I don't want it off them, as a concept I just don't like it. It's a different story when it comes to a business doing the "tipping", that isn't someone personally giving me money that they could have spent themselves. (even though it kind of is because the company is owned by someone and its still ultimately someones money, but you know what I mean!)

Rupert's avatar

I saw the announcement refers to a "separate" contributor program, but it looks like that is the other side of the same initiative: Reddit Gold being the purchase of Gold giving the ability for users' contributions to be rewarded, and the Reddit Contributor Program being the way a user's Gold/votes can be cashed out as real money (if they also hit the karma/eligibility criterea).

So I think it's all peer to peer (ie. no sponsor/advertising money goes in), there's no separate recognition for mods or creators (unless they are also posting contributions and receiving votes/Gold from other users).

I wonder what happens if a user receives Gold but they don't cash it out (for any reason). Presumably it expires eventually and Reddit keep it?

Dave's avatar

Oh yeah i re-read it and that looks correct! So potentially people buy gold and the person that receives it can't cash it out at all depending on how much they contribute etc

Philip's avatar

You'd kind of want and at the same time not want people to be identified as seeking monetary rewards, so you know if it is worthwhile giving them the golden upvote and tipping them.

Because who knows if your good intentions to tip someone will go to someone who has shared their PayPal with Reddit and is seeking to turn it into their side hustle. Rather than someone randomly posting something awesome, but not following through with regular quality content.

Boomer's avatar

In the case of someone that hasn't connected their PayPal it'd be nice if Reddit didn't take the money, but maybe notified the member that someone tried to send them gold.

That way members getting those notifications might be encouraged to connect it (which they could ignore / disable that notification), but Reddit isn't just taking member money for nothing.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

It could be a solution to this if people could opt in and out into this system, so if you don't want to get money you just like to post content, you could disable getting upvotes

Philip's avatar

I found this info on Reddit today.

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