From the article, emphasis mine:
“Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably,” the moderators wrote. “But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.”
I think they’re wrong. I don’t think Reddit has the funds.
They can just take it out of the c-suite salaries
Yeah exactly — Reddit hasn’t been profitable ever. Probably explains why they fired the person who actually was hired to do celebrity AMAs and leaving it to volunteers. Celebrity AMAs are probably one of the better ways to attract attention, but of course are pretty expensive.
Personally, I would have thought AMAs made more (and more reliable) income for Reddit than they’re likely to get from the API. A lot of AMAs are associated with PR campaigns, which I think means Reddit gets paid for them.
I think they were wrong on purpose, tbh. It’s the kind of thing that would be embarrassing for Reddit to admit when they’re going for an IPO.
Also, it’s amazing how much money a large company can spend when it wants, even if its bank account is so far in the red it’s upsetting bulls. Small companies, on the other hand, can’t spend money they don’t have. There’s a lot wrong with this picture, but the net effect is that Reddit probably can hire full-time mods for r/IAmA if they want.
Oh well.
Well since I deleted my reddit account, I don’t really mind. Fuck reddit
Spez and co underestimated the degree to which they’re reliant on good will.
Nice post, but can we get back to talking about Rampart?
I was under the impression iAMA was pretty much dead after Victoria was fired. Has any AMA of note occured there since then?
How does that make any sense? A celebrity AMA is like a form of advertisement. I sincerely doubt money ever changed hands between anyone, especially with volunteer moderators at the helm. The celebrity gets to schmooze about their latest project, and Reddit got extra clicks.
Didn’t this already happen, like years ago? They don’t learn.
Not surprising, as much shit as mods get (some of it for good reason) it’s all unpaid labor and when you effectively remove the apps that had tools to make it easier there’s going to be even less people that want to do it. I highly doubt Reddit develops any quickly since they’ve had years to do so and haven’t come close to having their app anywhere near as good as Apollo, RIF, etc.
oh no, anyway
