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.
Probably, but that is a horrible business plan for Reddit. The awards system ended up being a great idea for Reddit to gain revenue; a mega upvote.
Honestly I don’t think they care. I think they are only concerned about the immediate sale.
Each fiscal quarter, companies want to make more and more profit. If they aren’t making more profit, they see it as a failure.
Eventually, a point is reached where you can’t raise the price of your product or service any more without people leaving. You’re draining your customers for everything they have, but you’re still just barely beating out last quarter’s profits.
So in desparation, you need to do whatever you can to see profits this quarter. Drop that feature, fire this team, and you’ve just barely beat last quarter. Phew.
But now we have this quarter to worry about, and we’ve burned a bit of goodwill with our consumers by removing that feature, and we’re short-staffed because we laid off all these people.
And the cycle repeats, trading in long term longevity for short-term profits.
There’s rumors that Reddit may launch some new cryptocurrency. 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.
They’ve kind of already implemented that on the cryptocurrency subreddit as Moons - and yes, it’s about as bad as you’d expect.
Didn’t that just cause rampant upvote farming and ultimately not work out since they had picked FTX as their partner for it?
Maybe something that changes the background color of the post to highlight it on the front page. Like gold background.
