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207 comments

  • "It is time for them to take back ownership and control." Funny that this is coming from Reddit. Actually more like ironic.

  • I'm sorry but this is some dystopian bullshit that's all centred on the false premise that communities are anything other than the people who choose to count themselves among them and engage in them.

    Reddit is just the tool some communities chose to use to gather their members and communicate. That's it. If a community decides that Reddit is no longer the appropriate tool for the job, they can leave and build their community elsewhere. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, given the resources and tools those communities might lose through the transition, but strictly speaking, Reddit can't do anything to stop the members of any particular subreddit going elsewhere, and a cryptocurrency absolutely is not going to fucking facilitate the ownership or mobility of a community.

    It's a bullshit form of control that they want their users to willingly bind themselves to. Suddenly you're not just participating in a community, but you're genuinely invested, tied to something with a perceived monetary value, that even if you can theoretically remove from Reddit and take elsewhere, won't have any more value than people choose to place on it, and won't represent the community that generated it in any meaningful way.

    It's literally "Hey, the more you use Reddit, the more of our crypto you'll earn, which could be worth more than zero one day! You better keep using Reddit, huh? You wouldn't want to lose that potential for more than zero eh? In fact, why don't you encourage more people to use Reddit too? Then they'll generate their own crypto, and the more people use our crypto, the more it'll be worth for everyone! See, if you get five more people to use Reddit, and those five people also get another five people each to use it etc etc etc..."

    The fuck out of here.

  • “Own” your community, but if you blackout or post John Oliver, we’ll take it away from you.

  • Glanced over it. Complete word salad. Corporate nonsense: baffle them with bullshit.

    You get points from communities. These points are stored on the block chain, because why not? The points themselves come from reddit, but the communities distribute them. Since they're on the block chain, reddit can't take back your magic bean points or whatever once you get them. Nevermind that they're worthless and that reddit controls the only platform that they're even remotely useful on.

    For now, Reddit will cover gas costs for distributing Points to users and allowing them to spend Points on features such as Special Memberships.

    Emphasis mine. Someone has to pay for it, because that's how the block chain works. For now it's Reddit. In the future? Who knows!

    How does this benefit the consumer? It doesn't, really. Potentially it gives posters more control over a subreddit, but looks like mods will still hold essentially all the power when it comes to a subreddit, which is how it works now.

    How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn't, really. They're handing out magic beans with the selling point being that they can't take them away from you once you get them. It costs them money to do this, because it's on the block chain as opposed to some in-house database. This replaced coins, right? They killed an income stream and replaced it with an expense.

    They get to tell investors that they're into the block chain when they launch their IPO, I guess. All I can say is buyer beware. Chances are high the powers that be unload their stock options in the IPO hype and then get the hell out of dodge. They might have waited too long, though. The tech bubble deflated, and I don't know if the books are impressive enough to draw in the big bucks from investors.

    If you want genuine control over your community, start one on the Fediverse and self-host an instance. No admins will kick you off since you're your own admin and head mod rolled into one.

    • its main value to the owners is that it is a more direct means of controlling user behavior.. once they get people used to "real" rewards, they can better use the platform as a means of controlling discourse.. which is why the Mukser is doing it on the other thing, and where they got the idea..

      they're trolls.. they want to use it to troll harder..

    • How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn't, really

      $5/month per community

      You may have missed it, but they snuck in that Special Memberships (subreddit subscriptions, which unlock badges and emojis and stuff) cost $5 a month per subreddit, outside of Reddit Premium. You can also spend 1000 Community Points, but if you don't have the balance and want the benefits, you'll be giving reddit money.

      It feels like reddit has come to understand how much closer redditors feel to their communities than reddit as a whole - reddit is hated, but users still cling to their communities. A sitewide Reddit Premium badge is irrelevant, even repugnant and a badge of shame, but special flairs and features in close knit communities are still desirable.

      This is reddit exploiting their users' relationships with their communities with a stackable 5 buck alternative to Reddit Premium.

      • I still don't really get who gets the money from this special membership? I understand people subscribe to YouTube and twitch personalities because they want to support the creator and they get most of the money, but what incentive does anyone have to buy this community membership here? Is it really just the special avatars/badges/whatever?

  • Had to get blockchain in there somewhere to appeal to the idiot investors.

  • Lmao

    Today's online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms, where they do not have independence

    Trapped in apps like the official Reddit app? Because they ruined 3rd party apps? What are they sniffing over there, the trapping of communities is their own doing.

    I'm done with reddit, so either way I don't really care. Tbh I don't think this will necessarily be a dumpster fire. It might even be interesting, depending on the specifics of this implementation. It's probably fueled by higher ups hearing hype words like blockchain. My expectation is that things will mostly just continue as normal, but now the management and CEO's etc can masturbate to the idea of having a blockchain application.

  • Guaranteed that people smarter than the reddit staff will exploit their processes or code to cause mayhem and chaos.

    100% guaranteed.

    • I can hardly wait for someone to find a vulnerability in their blockchain implementation that allows community points to execute arbitrary code.

  • I don't if I trust crypto man now if they were paying in nfts which are totally lagit I might consider it

  • It is all about content and bragging rights. Everything else just distracts.

    People consume media for fun.

    People create media for feedback.

    Feedback can be Upvotes, Money or stupid hats.

    Your community is your live blood.

    Everything else doesn't matter.

207 comments