Someone made a post years ago of all the super users and I blocked them all and it was a really fun experience until others rose up again and I didn't have a list.
I ended up blocking anyone with 6 digit post karma that I came across.
Some were licking the boot because reddit promised ways to monetize subs during a Mod Summit ~2 years ago (business model would be taking a cut of all transactions happening on their platform). I quit modding shortly after and then reddit entirely so I'm not sure if they ever implemented this. Even if they didn't, mods will remember that promise.
Given how rigged the entire experience became over the years, what with the relationships between supermods and admins, the number of openly broken promises and the sheer amount of asshattery involved in everyday happenings, the neverending lies, and then marginalizing the visually impaired in one stroke with a response that seemed like a useless long form of "so what are you gonna do about it?" just like they did with the API call debacle, this seems far more like a toilet factory reserving shares in shit for its biggest shitters more than anything else. And at least a toilet factory would have something tangible in porcelain to show for it in the end, but Reddit's just a huge steaming pile of ad riddled bot shit now.
I think this IPO reserve probably sounds reallllly good to both the very guilty and the very gullible, and to absolutely no one in between.
Something about this is very bizarre to me. On the one hand, offering ownership to heavy users sounds like a great idea, albeit one quite counter to Reddit’s demeanor and behavior towards users over the last couple years. On the other hand, isn’t this kind of like Netflix offering shares to the subscribers who stream the most content? Just because you use a service more than anyone else doesn’t necessarily mean you should be invested in the company. I dunno, I have mixed feelings about this, but I’m generally skeptical that Reddit ever has its users best interests in mind.
Yeah that makes more sense. Kind of ironic though, they didn’t respect their users enough to continue allowing third party apps, but now that they realize they still need new content to sign over to some unnamed AI company, they’re suddenly willing to compensate their heaviest users by reserving shares.
Is this a way of using the users to implement their own personal pump and dump scheme once they become financially invested? It seems very circular to me. Where is the value that you're purchasing come from?
isn’t this kind of like Netflix offering shares to the subscribers who stream the most
Not really, because a Netflix subscriber is purely a consumer of content. Someone who posts on Reddit is contributing real value which can be profited from.
A better comparison is the difference between a "Bank" and a "Credit Union". A bank has customers and shareholders. The shareholders profit by selling services to customers. With a Credit Union your customers are your shareholders.
Credit Unions don't sell services... they use the account holders money to pay for services which provided to account holders. They also use the account holder's money to invest and earn profits. Those profits are returned (in full, minus operational costs) to the account holders in the form of interest rates based on the amount of money in each account (banks do that too, but credit unions usually have better interest rates). PS: if you have an account with a bank, you should probably consider closing it and find a good Credit Union... especially in the modern world where transactions are online and you don't have as much need for cash/etc (banks tend to have more branches).
It seems like Reddit is planning to be somewhere in between. With shareholders, and customers, and "customers who are also shareholders". Maybe it's something the we should consider over here in the fediverse... because I certainly don't trust reddit's leadership to do anything good with the content I provided for them (which is why I deleted it...)
Still don't regret deleting my account. Millions in karma through years of sharing interesting things. But Reddit has become a cesspool and this only proves it is getting worse.
What implications will this have for people who post other people's content for profit? Karma being worthless was the only thing keeping the whole model in a grey area, I thought.
The theory is that the issue price is less than what the stock will be at shortly after IPO. That's why principals get excited about IPOs. You're issued some vested shares and often have the privilege of purchasing more shares at the issue price before launch, then it goes up, you profit.
Of course, sometimes that goes hilariously wrong, see Facebook.
Wonder if this would mean that Reddit might end up going the way of Quora, when they did their question monetisation scheme. Since users might be incentivised to become big by posting a lot, and replying a lot.
Might be interesting to see if this might mean a massive surge in reposts, or just a big increase in the amount of posting as people fight for those spots, trying to be funny/up voted enough for it.