People downvoting this post: don’t shoot the messenger.

I’ll copypaste what I said in [email protected] about this topic:

As I mentioned in the kbin comm about redditfugees: I think that the platform stopped being sustainable, and that changes like this - either trying to increase engagement or appeasing power users - are only a symptom of that.

They won’t work, by the way, because of the trust thermocline (the impact of an act violating the users’ trust is considerably greater, if there’s a backstory of trust violations).

…excuse me while I grab some popcorn. I’m loving to watch this.

Fun comment (from a user) in that thread:

Because it’s a Reddit Product Decision, you can always expect one step forward, two steps back, and four steps off in a random direction that makes no sense.
FAQ
Can people who used all their gold due to your short-sighted mistake get it back? Haha, no.
Are you offering any compensation? Sure, we’ll give you some free bullshit. And it expires, so make sure to Drive Engagement and Interact with Posts before the end of the year!
Wait, you’re replacing the stuff you made arbitrarily expire with a different arbitrarily-expiring currency? You know it.
Can you use Gold that people give you on other posts? Absolutely not. Gold you are given goes into a big pot where it will remain, serving no purpose, unless you’re like the 0.1% of people on this site who ruthlessly and relentlessly farm for gold and karma. If you’re one of those people, you can financialize your Reddit experience, earning upwards of, like, five bucks!
I run a subreddit that provides resources for people in mental health crisis or other major medical issues. Can I turn off gilding to stop people boosting bad or unsafe answers? At Reddit, we believe that consumers deserve choice, and in this case, the choice they deserve is to seethe and cope. You absolutely cannot turn this shit off.
You’re at least blacklisting the really high-risk subs from the new old Gold program, right? Yes. What happens when you inevitably miss a sub and end up causing massive headaches for mods? They can contact us at the Mod Help PO Box in Anchorage, Alaska. When the intern checks the mail in 6 months, we’ll get right on it.
What if I’m not eligible for the Contributors program? Go fuck yourself.
Does it work on Old Reddit? What do you think?

Additional detail: did anyone notice that you can’t log through old.reddit any more? I don’t even have an account there any more, but if you try it, here’s what you get:

They are already actively removing functionality from old.reddit!

That’s not why you messed up.

(It’s worth noting that although there were understandable concerns about the Contributor Program leading to karma farming or other spam and fraud issues, we haven’t seen an increase in this behavior since the rollout six months ago.)

reddit:

Is there some context for this? I’m gathering they’re bringing back gold?