Reddit is ending Reddit Gold and users are furious

While reddit makes further enemies, I laugh because I know the #fediverse will benefit from their outflow. The fediverse will become even more diverse.

That company is so badly run it's laughable.

Didn’t Reddit gold start as just a user-run bot, that kept a tally of how many times it had been invoked for any particular recipient?

And then Reddit forced the bot to retire so they could offer a paid version. And now they’re retiring their mandatory replacement. Good job Reddit.

Die monster, die.

My belief is that they want to tokenize Karma and any other reward/currency will compete against their new tradable currency.

I believe they had already said years ago that the r/CC moons was a test run for something site-wide.

Personally I made $300 after moons first tanked, just from some lame comments in the subreddit that was ruined by the scheme.

I will likely use my 150k+ Karma account for profit if this happens and it won't be for the benefit of the community like the last decade of my activity used to be.

Lemmy is now where I participate in a positive way.

Remember kids, don't let the news tell you how to feel. Watch out for words in the title like "outrage" and "furious". Anger increases engagement and they know it.

This finally pushed me to stop supporting the platform with a premium sub and now here I am, checking out lemmy!

I said this in another thread - I bet they're going the YouTube route and are going to start allowing content creators to make money.

Might sound good on the surface but it's absolutely going to shred what Reddit used to be. Goodbye discussion forum and hello new social media.

All those users complaining about their coins going to waste and I'm wondering why the fuck you'd ever spend real money on that.
That's like paying for porn.

The worst part is they're also removing all of the existing gold awards from old posts as well.

on one hand, reddit gold is useless and a waste of money imo

other hand, they just keep going for making the most controversial decisions with zero thought lmao

Are they furious? Sure. But I feel like anyone still on Reddit just doesn’t care what they do, they’ll still be there scrolling.

Just looked and I have 1100 coins. Not sure what from, I've never bought any. Any suggestions for them?

Never mind, I decided I only go to Reddit now for one small, private sub, so I went there and gave awards to posts I thought were good.

They are really trying hard to piss off all their users lol

Here’s what I received today… first time I’ve visited Reddit in over a month:

Hello from Reddit,

We're reaching out because you have Reddit Premium and/or Reddit Coins on your account.

TL;DR: We're making updates to awards and coins on Reddit that we'll complete by September 12, 2023. As part of this, we made a decision to move away from Reddit coins and awards. This includes the 700 monthly coins* and Premium Awards, which are currently part of the Reddit Premium experience.

You'll still be able to use your Reddit Coins until September 12, after which they'll be removed from your account.

Note: all other current Premium perks will still continue to exist, including the ad-free experience.

As we looked at our current awarding system, there was consistent feedback from redditors that stood out – particularly around the clutter from awards and all the steps involved with awarding content. We also learned that redditors want awarded content to be more valuable. With that, we are reworking how great content and contributions are rewarded on Reddit. We will have more updates to share soon.

If you have further questions please check out our announcement post to read more about the update.

• This perk is part of the paid Reddit Premium experience

Yea, my 29.1k coins aren't happy about this change

It’s almost like spez secretly enjoys Lemmy. Doing the work for us.

I just gave away 26 Reddit golds to everyone I liked in /r/RedditAlternatives

Never paid for gold but somehow had like 10 years of it on my 16 year account.

Redditors care about their coins a lot. Not really a shock.

if they continue using reddit

are they actually furious?

Dude, this is just laughable. For those who are left, what are you sticking around for?

Also, here’s my theory: these idiot product managers, fresh outta b-school didn’t think to interview their most engaged users. Instead, they randomly polled people. That’s the only way I can fathom their takeaway from users was “it’s too much clutter” instead of, “this drives engagement”.

“Mind Your Business,” Declares Man, Seen Repeatedly Throwing Himself Down Up Escalator

I'm gonna make an outlandish prediction that Spez will no longer be CEO of Reddit Inc within the next six months. He's made some incredibly bone-headed decisions and if the IPO does happen, Reddit are either going to be valued really low to the point where they could face a hostile takeover from a more competent tech giant, or Reddit's existing shareholders are going to oust him in a revolt.

Either way, Spez has pissed off a lot of angel investors and has driven a good chunk of people towards Tildes and Lemmy. When this place (and other Lemmy instances) looks like an increasingly viable alternative to Reddit, it's going to eclipse the main site once we get decent apps like Sync and Boost.

Honestly, I never liked all the additional rewards they added to the system anyway, seemed really superfluous.

I actually preferred it when it was gold only. No silver, bronze or any of the other 10+ "coins" they had.

You paid for gold to support their server time, you could also give others a month of gold as well - it had a similar feeling to subs and gift subs on a twitch channel. You gave others gold not only to support the servers, but to say, "I want to give you more than an upvote for what you said" it was a way of going above and beyond.

Sure the lounge was crap, but that wasn't the point, that was an intended reward for donating.

I honestly don't know why they're killing it, as it's a known fact that having a subscription system with the ability for people to pay monthly is a far better, more consistent source of revenue than ads, and it's less invasive. It's why musk is pushing twitter blue so hard.

Unless they're only killing the awards part of it and still allowing people to subscribe to premium, I can kinda see some of the logic in that - by making it impossible to access premium features through gold gifts, you make it so everyone has to access those features by subscribing - the hope is more become willing people sign up to it after losing their free gold. Honestly I think they're misjudging how much value Reddit premium actually has, especially given the recent alienation by Reddit staff, and therefore removing the ability to give awards is misleading. Sure if premium had more value than it does, it might actually have the intended effect, but I think it's just gonna result in a precipitous drop in revenue.

Honestly Lemmy kinda does donations better, as it doesn't turn donations into a fake award you can give other people. Instead it's just that, you donate, the server stays running and we get to continue having this space. And the admins are actually careful enough to turn off registrations when growth starts to increase too quickly.

You could have just left it at "Reddit is ending..."

And hurray for it burning down.

My account is just gone. I wasn't a big time poster or anything, but 10 years of use and my account doesn't exist. I only went back on to delete it.

This just feels like the inevitable next step of Reddit becoming a 'monetizable' platform for influencers. It's annoying but it's a tried-and-true method of getting paid engagement; get influencers(marketed/advertised personalities) to engage and build a following.

Honestly, not furious. But I guess I don't count as a reddit user any more. Still, did anyone ever care about these features?

For me these already came in after I wished the reddit devs would just do maintenance.

I don't get it. Wasn't the whole API thing supposed to be about money? Reddit is killing one of its sources of income!

That doesn't even make business sense! What the hell is going on inside Spez's mind?

That is what pushed me to Lemmy- Why the hell would you do that? There is no reason for it.

So? They've just proven that almost no one will truly react to their bullshit.

But how few people actually buy gold?

Good. People that spent actual money on this need a wake up call really bad.

It’s like a domino effect.

Why would they be furious about not being able to spend money on reddit?

I can barely imagine giving a shit.

Wasn’t paying for Reddit Gold the only way currently to not see ads, or is that something else?

Idgaf. They don’t have to be there.

I don't know why anyone would even care. I think this is actually a good change.