Reddit enrages users again by ditching thank-you coins and awards::Reddit, which is still dealing with the fallout from its last controversial decision, said it plans to phase out coins and awards.

  • @Got_Bent
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    10010 months ago

    Lemmy should make its own awards.

    Award #1 – Blackjack

    Aware #2 – Hookers

    • @[email protected]
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      2110 months ago

      I like to give out Lemmy Lemons 🍋

      I enjoy that they’re meaningless and if people find them obnoxious they can just downvote them.

    • @[email protected]
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      610 months ago

      An anonymous user liked your comment so much they’ve gifted you Lemmy Hookers™!

      Very dapper!

    • EuphoricPenguin
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      610 months ago

      What would be pretty awesome is if Lemmy implemented an optional awards feature that could accept donations into a tip jar of some sort. Many of us running smaller instances appreciate selfless donations, but this could be a decent way to make supporting hosting costs more fun.

      • @Pika
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        110 months ago

        instance based awards only though, as of would be hard to control award manipulation from private lemmy servers thay are federated

        • @[email protected]
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          110 months ago

          Make awards not actually do anything other than be a tip for the server hoster like Reddit gold used to be. Now which server owner it should go to is another question.

    • @[email protected]
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      12210 months ago

      While I agree that user-generated reddit topics are best left to a dedicated community, I also think that published articles discussing the platform are appropriate for any Technology community; no different than Twitter, Threads, or other social media platform news coverage.

    • @Anders429
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      710 months ago

      I’m with you, but judging by the number of upvotes this post got, apparently we’re in the minority on this.

    • @_number8_
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      310 months ago

      i was hoping with lemmy people would stop caring about something completely arbitrary like this

    • @[email protected]
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      1910 months ago

      I think that reddit’s “going public” guru squad doesn’t want redditors to be able to have any control on what content is pushed to the top of the queue. That is just a guess, though.

      • @itscountolaf
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        810 months ago

        Then why don’t they just alter the algorithm or remove any coin-related influence? The average redditor does not care/know that gilded posts reach the top.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          Because it causes engineering overhead that perhaps no one there wants to do. And when reddit gets its IPO it will no longer give a hoot and an half about the “average redditor” because profit suddenly becomes the only thing that matters to shareholderds.

          What I am saying is that the visibility that coins make is prolly not inline with the people that want to use reddit to push products, shows, and ideologies for profit.

          It is just about control.

      • @BURN
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        410 months ago

        Upvote/downvote counts to be hidden next

        They’re already manipulated and dont show a true total, Reddit stops counting if they want to.

    • Corhen
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      1910 months ago

      Giving someone a reward gives them some Reddit premium, including coins they can spend. Wouldn’t be surprised if they relaunch it, in a way where everyone loses

      • @[email protected]
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        2310 months ago

        I got a message saying I apparently have premium and/or coins, and to use them before they expire.

        But, even before the Reddit plague I had no way of even knowing that, because I used old Reddit and RiF.

        Anyway, my point is that this change only affects official Reddit app users, and new Reddit users.

        So Reddit found a way to take stuff away from the users who weren’t directly affected by the third-party app shutdowns.

        It’s a genius way to make sure everyone is pissed off all at once.

      • Wrench Wizard
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        610 months ago

        Exactly, I liked getting free premium sometimes. One of the very few, possibly only things I’d see in my inbox and feel happy about.

        Oh, an award? On what comment? That one! Who gave it to me? Let’s thank them! Oh, free premium for a month? Awesome!

        Funny they’d do away with them bc those were almost the only things in the inbox that brought joy. All of the rest was:

        1: you have been permanently banned from participating in r/Everything-Ever because you made an innocuous comment on a sub that differs from our ideology. You can appeal this but we’ll probably just ignore your Nazi ass.

        2: Reply from u/NothingBetterToComplainAbout: “Um, okay, so you said that you “Spazzed out”. Glad you’ve outed yourself as an ableist prick that hates people with epilepsy!”

        3: Reply from u/Sensitive: “What a fatphobic fuck you are. Completely ignoring that the majority of obese people are that way due to genetic factors? It has NOTHING to do with diet or exercise and they were born this way!”

        4: Reply from u/beatingAdeadHorse on AITA: Bruh, she had NO obligation to call an ambulance when her mother was having a heart attack. I don’t care if she did beg for help, that doesn’t magically bestow responsibility! (Clap) NO (CLAP) ONE (CLAP) HAS (CLAP) ANY OBLIGATION (CLAP!) TO HELP (CLAP!) ANYONE ELSE!! (CLAP!)

        5: Reply from u/Political in r/politics: Apolitical? Ha, cought you undercover Nazi. No one is apolitical.

        6: Message from r/MoreSubs: You have been permanently banned for saying the following: “Can straight men really be lesbians? That makes no sense?” - Note from moderation team: Delete yourself, anyone can be anything they say they are and you must allow your reality to be shaped by their imagination. It’s not enough to call them by their preferred pronouns, you must accept it and believe it deep down in your heart, you vile piece of elephant shit we’ll know if you’re lying.

        7: AWARD ENCLOSED: Someone has liked your comment so much that they’ve given it the “BEST COMMENT THROUGHOUT ETERNITY!” Award. This comment was handpicked by Jesus Christ himself as his favorite, which means, YOU are his favorite! Yes, this is literal confirmation that Jesus Loves you and you have been pre-accepted into heaven for an eternity of bliss! ALSO: You get one free month of Reddit premium, AD FREE! AND 750 coins of which you can use to pass on the blessings!

        Message from award-giver: This is Jesus Christ, I love you my son. I have seen the woes in your inbox and admire your good works in spreading the message of God around Reddit. I can’t wait to see you in heaven, my son, until then I will always be watching but don’t worry, I’ve already accepted you into heaven so you won’t fail and go to hell no matter what!

        8: YOU PUECE YX ASSHOLE I HTE U!

        • @NaNaNaNaCatman
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          210 months ago

          Yeah, while my politics are typically fairly in line with the average Reddit user, I have little tolerance for bandwagoning or purposely misconstruing the opposition, so I always tried to emphasize that “while I totally agree with X, we shouldn’t pretend that there’s some huge outcry for Y or that Z is actually illegal anywhere in the US.” Usually didn’t matter, and I got banned anyway.

          But I guess when your identity is super wrapped up in being online and a mod, you need to feel like you got a win against the evils of the world.

    • @Ashenparty
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      1110 months ago

      They’re incompetent but I’m confident they’re at least going to put out some dumb replacement system ready by the time they have that karma to cash system.

      • @[email protected]
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        910 months ago

        Introducing the Reddit Battlepass! Post 100 times for this month’s golden Snoo! Skip a tier every day by clicking 50 ads! Now only $19.99!

    • @vimdiesel
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      1010 months ago

      That stuff also costs next to nothing to maintain. Thus proving that spez is even more stupid than we already thought. Now he’s just getting downright hitleresque, a comic book villain lmao

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Please don’t dilute Hitler by referencing him for something as trivial as removing gold awards.

        One sent millions to the gas chamber with the specific goal of committing actual genocide. The other? No longer lets you waste money to bro-5 a meme post. Be better.

        • @vimdiesel
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          -310 months ago

          I’ll use any references I like, it’s a free country

            • @vimdiesel
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              10 months ago

              And if you want to continue to monitor the internet policing, looking for ways to virtue signal while looking like an idiot, please continue.

    • @luis123456
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      510 months ago

      Seems like spez is an uncorrigible idiot.

    • @whatsarefoogee
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      3510 months ago

      As someone who would never pay for reddit coins or premium, it’s still pretty easy to identify with them.

      They paid for a product and now it’s being removed with no compensation or refund. That’s total bullshit regardless of what the product was.

      • @FinalBoy1975
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        310 months ago

        It’s hard for me to identify with them because it’s just not very smart to pay money for that kind of crap. I don’t buy stuff that can be taken away like that. It is true that nothing lasts forever, but digital doo-dads only last as long as the web site you bought them on. I hope they learned their lesson. I doubt they did. People pay for this stuff every day on web sites. Cosmetic stuff for avatars, special edition avatars, little award thingies, blah blah blah. It’s all a waste. It’s very easy for people to say, “eh, it’s only a dollar” or “eh, it’s only 50 cents” or “meh, it’s only 5 bucks” but if you repeatedly spend money on those things it adds up. So, do I feel bad for these outraged people? No, I don’t. They should smarten up and stop wasting money.

      • @Pika
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        310 months ago

        sounds like an easy chargeback claim if that’s the case, “service not rendered/doesn’t exist anymore” might lose the acct out of it but who really cares at this point

    • @[email protected]
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      3010 months ago

      I hated the “coin culture” with a passion (hey, look, it’s Bill Gates, let’s give him tons of paid emoticons he won’t care about!), but it’s clear this move is part of Reddit’s further enshittification. You can bet whatever replaces coins will be even shittier, and I think Reddit’s users know it.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      I can’t identify with giving reddit money but I can sympathize with people who were saving monthly coins they paid for. Seriously, it has to be deliberate now. Why piss off your most loyal, paying customers? Is it a test?

      • @FinalBoy1975
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        710 months ago

        Yeah, it’s a mystery to me how much money they got from these types of things. It’s a company that is supposedly not profitable, yet there is online rage about something some people bought. It makes me wonder about so much. First, I had no idea so many people payed money for these things. Second, Reddit wants us to believe, through legal loophole magic and accounting, that it is not profitable.

    • @[email protected]
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      1610 months ago

      Yea I think the outrage is or should be directed at removing the already given awards. Just to go and wipe everything is not a great idea

      • @setsneedtofeed
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        610 months ago

        Especially gold. The other awards were arguably bloat, but gold was iconic to reddit. All those classic posts now missing their gold seems wrong.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          Sometimes prepaying is the more frugal option, since there’s usually a discount for buying in bulk. As of January of this year, I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me that Reddit was going to do something so egregious that I would permanently stop browsing there.

          • @FinalBoy1975
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            010 months ago

            Any kind of paying for this kind of junk, whether it’s prepay or not, is a waste of money and people should just stop doing it. There are far better things to do with money than to buy some digital thing-a-ma-bob that is useless and can disappear any old time at the whim of the web site owner. I mean, I could make the same argument about knickknacks, because they’re silly and collect dust. However, a web site can’t remove them from your house. So, even a knickknack that collects dust is a better purchase than digital coins and awards and all that other bullshit.

    • @_number8_
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      310 months ago

      i used coins basically as a bookmark feature for great posts; it was nice to give a treat to a good poster as well. so incredibly stupid they’re destroying the site like this

  • @WiseassWolfOfYoitsu
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    5510 months ago

    I just dumped all my old coins onto comments encouraging people to do chargebacks for any year-long Premium subscriptions since they’re in material breach.

    • @procrastinator
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      510 months ago

      Can you elaborate, I’m not quite sure i understand?

      • @WiseassWolfOfYoitsu
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        1610 months ago

        So when a charge is made against a credit card, you have the option to do a “chargeback” - this is meant to be used for fraud. In this case, the argument is that Reddit fraudulently changed the terms of the program after people had already paid - being in “material breach” means they made a binding promise to provide a thing and they failed to do so. Chargebacks are really, really bad for a vendor. They lose the money, and they get a penalty fee, AND if it keeps happening the credit card processor can crank up their overall fees or even drop them as a bad customer.

    • @TheCraiggers
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      10 months ago

      Are they really in material beach since the agreement you agreed to by giving them money basically says “coins have no value and we can delete them at any time we want”?

      I mean, I hate Reddit as much as the next guy here but that sounds a bit like doing a charge back because you didn’t win on the slot machine you just pulled.

        • @TheCraiggers
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          110 months ago

          Are you sure this would be considered an EULA and not a TOS?

    • @DigitalWanderer
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      1810 months ago

      that used to be what i though would be my queue to exit…until i realised that my reddit experience was basically RIF… so yea if they want to get rid of another great chunk of users, do get rid of old reddit, do it spez!

      • @[email protected]
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        810 months ago

        Haha same. “Oh I will just use old reddit” forgetting that 95% of my internet usage is mobile and old.reddit is nearly impossible to navigate on mobile. I have been 94% Lemmy since July.

      • mintiefresh
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        310 months ago

        Same here.

        I didn’t think old reddit would outlast me lol

      • @WhatASave
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        310 months ago

        It’s funny whenever this is brought up on a reddit admin post. They always come with some stat saying a tiny % of users use old.reddit.com like that means people barely use it and therefore useless. But I see a lot of active posters talk about it which means those are probably the users you want to keep around lol.

    • scytale
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      1210 months ago

      That’s gonna be the final nail in the coffin for me. As of now I only go there for my city’s subreddit as the fediverse equivalent isn’t quite active yet.

      • @nodel
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        810 months ago

        Go be the change you want. Create posts, invite the users from your city’s subreddit

  • @Chriszz
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    4810 months ago

    Amazing. Really does sound like they’re trying to sabotage the site now.

    I was thinking about it; Lemmy could technically implement a system of gold on its own e.g can give one award a month after hitting a certain karma level or something to siphon more Reddit users.

    But a lot of people on this site seem to not want normie Reddit users flocking here and my personal expectation is that people here would not care for awards. So whether they flock here or not will likely depend on how fed up they get.

      • @Chriszz
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        4010 months ago

        I think little piggy spez is an Elon fanboy so it makes sense

        • chrishazfun
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          510 months ago

          @InternetTubes @phx He did the Jerma joke “Do so much dumb shit that people have problems trying to figure out why people are mad at you” but unironically and irl

      • TWeaK
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        610 months ago

        I prefer to think that it’s all coordinated by real life Bond villain (and Musk’s old business partner) Peter Thiel. He failed at setting up competing Twitter platforms, so he got Musk to buy and tank it. After seeing how effective that was they roped in reddit’s owners to undermine that as well.

        • @axtualdave
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          610 months ago

          Let’s not forget the Saudi royal family. They really hate social media.

          • TWeaK
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            10 months ago

            Definitely not. Here’s the breakdown of the $44 bn purchase:

            • $5 bn from other investors, including a Saudi prince
            • $26 bn from Elon, underwritten by stocks in Tesla (which significantly dropped in value after the purchase)
            • $13 bn in a loan that Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk’s behalf.

            Twitter could hardly pay the interest on that $13 bn, even before Musk tanked the company’s revenue. Either Twitter steps into line and gets more investment from right wing control freaks, or it dies - both could be seen as a win in the eyes of Peter Thiel or the Saudis.

            • @vimdiesel
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              210 months ago

              don’t you mean billion?

              • TWeaK
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                110 months ago

                I did, thought I’d edited out all the "mil"s hah. Thanks, fixed now.

    • @Molecular0079
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      2610 months ago

      I have no problem with Redditors flocking over here, but I just don’t think online discussions should be “awarded”. It just distracts from actual discussion and turns everything into a popularity contest. Leave the karma and point hoarding on Reddit IMHO.

    • @[email protected]
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      2310 months ago

      I admit I like upvotes. They provide feedback on whether a comment was helpful. And awards highlighted the most helpful comments.

      • @Chriszz
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        510 months ago

        Did you mean awards? I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t like upvotes so I’m not sure why the distinction

        • @[email protected]
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          810 months ago

          The point I tried to make was: Awards are like an upvote on steroids. I like upvotes, so I like awards.

          Sorry for wording it so badly.

          • @StealthToad
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            310 months ago

            I dunno, I thought your wording perfectly described Reddit comment experience 🤷🏻‍♀️

    • @[email protected]
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      510 months ago

      I think it would be a great system to easily donate to instance hosts if it was supported as an instance opt-in feature.

      • @[email protected]
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        810 months ago

        That was the original premise of reddit gold. You bought it to support the server costs. It used to even show you how much server time your gold had supported. I think at one point it even had a progress bar for monthly costs.

    • @T156
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      510 months ago

      With how Lemmy works, it might be a little complicated. Especially since the payment information would need to be federated, and there would be a lot of complications depending on the region the server was hosted in.

      • @Chreutz
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        210 months ago

        Yeah. Giving awards would probably be limited to comments/posts that are on the same instance as your user.

      • @muzzle
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        10 months ago

        Honestly I wouldn’t want anything baked into the protocol, but I can see people donating small amounts to the instance hosting a worthy comment if there was a simple enough way to do it.

        Cryptocurrencies were supposed to enable that, but I think we are still a long way away (no, lighting does not qualify).

      • @rbar
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        110 months ago

        Given the work by the guys behind podcasting 2.0 it would be interesting to see the fediverae adopt boosts backed by sats / the lightning network. It seems like they solve a lot of the same problems. You need a common currency people can freely transfer in small amounts to support content they like and the infra they are hosted on.

        Here is an article by one of my favorite podcasts that have gone all in on boosts.

    • @[email protected]
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      210 months ago

      A lot of Reddit users have become more toxic over the years. Let them sink down with the Reddit failboat, we don’t need them here.

  • @[email protected]
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    4810 months ago

    Honestly the whole reddit protest was really good for me. I stopped spending so much time online, I only open lemmy occasionally too. Overall goodness for the planet

    • @andy_wijaya_med
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      410 months ago

      What do you do for the planet instead of browsing Reddit man. :D serious question!p

      • @what
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        10 months ago

        I’ve been working on switching careers for the last six or so months. Made a lot more progress after the protests and have a final interview on Thursday. Please send prayers and/or good vibes my way. Switching from Marketing to Cybersecurity. One less talented marketing person makes the world a little less cluttered with people buying shit they don’t need.

        Besides that specifically since the protests started I’ve been researching and thinking about learning to play piano. It’s amazing how much time I wasted scrolling endlessly on Reddit.

        • @andy_wijaya_med
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          210 months ago

          That sounds awesome. :D But how can someone moves from marketing to cyber security. I mean, it’s a completely different thing.

          Music instrument learning is fun! Glad that now you can utilize your time better.

          • @what
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            310 months ago

            Cybersecurity and Penetration Testing/Hacking is more skill based than most industries. It’s just a matter of learning the tools and getting good at it.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        I think its supposed to mean that since they are spending less time they are more active outside of just the reddit focus and if they are doing it others will be doing similar. Less of a “good for the environment” and more of a “good for the group of people who quit”.

  • @[email protected]
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    4110 months ago

    Is spez trying to beat Musk’s record for number of strategic blunders made while running a tech company?

    • @djmarcone
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      610 months ago

      It seems so, and also seems like he’s in a hurry to catch up.

  • @[email protected]
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    10 months ago

    They were a zero-effort money printer. Why on Earth would they ditch them?

    This makes no sense at all even from their perspective.

    • @[email protected]
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      1610 months ago

      They said they are replacing it with something else. I believe more money will be directly involved.

      • @moosh
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        710 months ago

        A subscription, perhaps?

          • @moosh
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            310 months ago

            Yea, guess you’re right.

        • @chakan2
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          510 months ago

          I think they’re changing how awards work. A portion of the award price will go to the awardee.

          It’s going to be a very cheap way for them to pay freelance writers / creators.

          In other words, imagine something like TiqTock with lower quality content.

          • @moosh
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            310 months ago

            Ah, interesting. I never really got into the TikTok so don’t really have a reference point.

  • @[email protected]
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    2910 months ago

    Reddit has gone to the crapper. It’s not just banning 3rd party apps, it’s not just ditching awards, all of these wildly unpopular decisions have left a permanent scar on the user base and it shows. Now, all of the top posts on r/popular are garbage nonsense like “unpopular opinion: the far left and far right are both just as bad as each other” or “im a horse girl rate me”. Sad times.

  • @errer
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    2410 months ago

    It was such a nice way to monetize, just a teensy little icon on posts you could easily ignore. Tells you whatever replaces it is gonna be far less acceptable.

    • @baldingpudenda
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      910 months ago

      Gonna be they’re version of a blue check mark. Buy the widget and it stays at the top regardless of up votes or down votes.

      • @vimdiesel
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        210 months ago

        they’ll make blue aliens more important and always float to the top like the blue check robot armies on twitter lmao

  • @99nights
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    2110 months ago

    Honestly I can’t wait for the downfall of reddit. They seem to be constantly pushing away and annoying their users.