Read all about it at the above link. There’s way too much to process here. This is going to be wild.
Today’s online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms, where they do not have independence or control anything of value.
That’s hilarious, when they literally just trapped users in their app and killed 3rd party apps.
In case anyone’s confused about what this is all about:
$5/month per community
It’s easy to miss, but they snuck in that Special Memberships (subreddit subscriptions, which unlock badges and emojis and stuff) cost $5 a month per subreddit, outside of Reddit Premium. You can also spend 1000 Community Points, but if you don’t have the balance and want the benefits, you’ll be giving reddit money.
It feels like reddit has come to understand how much closer redditors feel to their communities than reddit as a whole - reddit is hated, but users still cling to their communities. A sitewide Reddit Premium badge is irrelevant, even repugnant and a badge of shame, but special flairs and features in close knit communities are still desirable.
This is reddit exploiting their users’ relationships with their communities with a stackable 5 buck alternative to Reddit Premium.
Per subreddit?!
ROFL. 🤣🤣🤣👒
Man I remember back in the day when somebody bought me in Argentinium award. I shit a brick when I found out how much that thing cost.
I got a few thousand points to spend on awards, but I never would spend money on an app like that. Such a rip off.
Probably the only smart thing Reddit has done all year. All you have to do is invent some sort of perk for a community and put it behind a monthly paywall. Make it a pooled system with a goal and peer pressure will get you more subs. Discord has been making bank on this concept for a while now.
If they can leverage subreddit tribalism, it might have even have more potential than Discord, which isn’t nearly as interconnected. Or it would have, if they hadn’t hitched this to the blockchain.
Community Points are the first step towards a better future for online communities. In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away. With the advent of blockchain technology, we now have a way to establish this freedom in a decentralized and secure way.
The way to be independent of Reddit is by having a token on a blockchain maintained by Reddit?
Also an odd statement from a company that just strong armed a bunch of communities into either conforming or having their leaders replaced.
Almost like they’re creating the problem in order to sell the “solution”
Guys, you missed the block chain boat, this isn’t going to save your IPO
They’ll do something with AI in 3 years or so, if they still exist.
In a few months all content in Reddit will be AI generated
Spez has been jonesing for redditcrypto since 2016.
right? Blockchain is so 5 years ago
What are you talking about? By the way, could I interest you in some GameStop stock?
Holy shit.
I did not expect the next wave of new users on Lemmy to be happening this soon.
New LemmyFediverse boi since the Great Purge; this is seriously happening again, already? Glad I got out when I did. Compared to the old place, experiencing and interacting with Lemmy is like a calming dip in the Great Link (not a Changeling honest)
Yeah same. There are a couple of communities over there that I kind of miss, although one or two of them have been recreated on Lemmy basic nobody posts on the yet, or they get continually brigated.
I need to check out the other servers though. Lemmy is just so far superior to what Reddit was in how it’s fundamentally designed.
Me neither. How long till old.reddit.com goes away? That was supposed to be the next big spike in the Lemmy growth curve.
I can’t believe I read that whole thing. I take that back, I can’t believe Reddit actually thought this was a good idea and put it out into the world.
Poor Lemmy servers.
In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away.
Is this a fucking joke
Reading this: are they implementing ActivityPub?
Blockchain
Oh sweet lord, no. No, they are not.
Someone at Reddit had Blockchain missing in their buzzword bingo for 2023, I swear.
I think that’s their point, to sound like the Fediverse but is actually a different way for them to get money and control the narrative. They’re also possibly trying to take away shutting down shitty sites “by giving the communities control.”
Glanced over it. Complete word salad. Corporate nonsense: baffle them with bullshit.
You get points from communities. These points are stored on the block chain, because why not? The points themselves come from reddit, but the communities distribute them. Since they’re on the block chain, reddit can’t take back your magic bean points or whatever once you get them. Nevermind that they’re worthless and that reddit controls the only platform that they’re even remotely useful on.
For now, Reddit will cover gas costs for distributing Points to users and allowing them to spend Points on features such as Special Memberships.
Emphasis mine. Someone has to pay for it, because that’s how the block chain works. For now it’s Reddit. In the future? Who knows!
How does this benefit the consumer? It doesn’t, really. Potentially it gives posters more control over a subreddit, but looks like mods will still hold essentially all the power when it comes to a subreddit, which is how it works now.
How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn’t, really. They’re handing out magic beans with the selling point being that they can’t take them away from you once you get them. It costs them money to do this, because it’s on the block chain as opposed to some in-house database. This replaced coins, right? They killed an income stream and replaced it with an expense.
They get to tell investors that they’re into the block chain when they launch their IPO, I guess. All I can say is buyer beware. Chances are high the powers that be unload their stock options in the IPO hype and then get the hell out of dodge. They might have waited too long, though. The tech bubble deflated, and I don’t know if the books are impressive enough to draw in the big bucks from investors.
If you want genuine control over your community, start one on the Fediverse and self-host an instance. No admins will kick you off since you’re your own admin and head mod rolled into one.
its main value to the owners is that it is a more direct means of controlling user behavior… once they get people used to “real” rewards, they can better use the platform as a means of controlling discourse… which is why the Mukser is doing it on the other thing, and where they got the idea…
they’re trolls… they want to use it to troll harder…
How does this benefit reddit as a business? It doesn’t, really
$5/month per community
You may have missed it, but they snuck in that Special Memberships (subreddit subscriptions, which unlock badges and emojis and stuff) cost $5 a month per subreddit, outside of Reddit Premium. You can also spend 1000 Community Points, but if you don’t have the balance and want the benefits, you’ll be giving reddit money.
It feels like reddit has come to understand how much closer redditors feel to their communities than reddit as a whole - reddit is hated, but users still cling to their communities. A sitewide Reddit Premium badge is irrelevant, even repugnant and a badge of shame, but special flairs and features in close knit communities are still desirable.
This is reddit exploiting their users’ relationships with their communities with a stackable 5 buck alternative to Reddit Premium.
I still don’t really get who gets the money from this special membership? I understand people subscribe to YouTube and twitch personalities because they want to support the creator and they get most of the money, but what incentive does anyone have to buy this community membership here? Is it really just the special avatars/badges/whatever?
Clout in a community they care about. I can’t relate to wanting it, but people buy clout all the time online and in games. This is basically a more personalized Twitter Blue.
It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens
Lmao how can they say that with a straight face
Today’s online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms,
How ironic… Reddit trying to lock me in was the exact reason why I stopped being active there…
“It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens and take ownership of their existence online.”
So, literally the fediverse ?
As blockchain tokens
Thanks I read enough.
A crypto scam? All this was building to a crypto scam? They burned Reddit to the ground to pump some shitty Redditcoin going into the IPO?
I expect nothing and I’m still let down.
Earn points through generating content and moderation? Okay, sure, why not?
Use those points to weigh votes in community governance? Suuuure, okay I can see how that could be cool.
The points are on the blockchain? Uh… so what’s stopping rich assholes from buying up points and using their capital to take over communities?
If the points are non-transferable then I can see the merit of a points system… but then why would you need a blockchain at all? It’s all still a closed off walled garden despite what they are pitching.
Lmao
Today’s online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms, where they do not have independence
Trapped in apps like the official Reddit app? Because they ruined 3rd party apps? What are they sniffing over there, the trapping of communities is their own doing.
I’m done with reddit, so either way I don’t really care. Tbh I don’t think this will necessarily be a dumpster fire. It might even be interesting, depending on the specifics of this implementation. It’s probably fueled by higher ups hearing hype words like blockchain. My expectation is that things will mostly just continue as normal, but now the management and CEO’s etc can masturbate to the idea of having a blockchain application.
Community Points represent a way for Redditors to own a piece of their favorite communities. […] They can even be used in custom tools outside of Reddit and on other platforms.
How the fuck would this work, I wonder? I tried to read through some but it makes little sense to me. It sounds like putting karma on blockchain and making it into a currency acting as reddit gold.
Rest is just regular cryptobro talk formulated so that Reddit looks like it cares about communities - or am I missing something?
I don’t think you’re missing anything.
It’s just tradable karma on a blockchain.
So it’s basically Reddit NFTs. Let’s just call it as it is.
It is time for them to take back ownership and control. It is time for a change.
Lol. You’re still on Reddit. You’re not controlling shit.
As blockchain tokens that are owned and controlled by communities themselves — not by any app or platform — Community Points represent a way for Redditors to own a piece of their favorite communities.
You don’t own it, it’s made by Reddit, distributed by Reddit, and only useful on Reddit and not anywhere else. What’s the meaning of decentralization and ownership if it’s only useful in one place?
Nah this isnt NFTs. They already introduced NFTs a while ago with their shitty profile pictures that are as shameful to own as a blue checkmark. This is them trying to introduce their own crypto currency after the market already crashed lol
It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens
That’s what I did when I came to Lemmy after you killed 3rd party apps you troglodytes. Do you fucktards not even know what a walled garden is?
Guaranteed that people smarter than the reddit staff will exploit their processes or code to cause mayhem and chaos.
100% guaranteed.
I can hardly wait for someone to find a vulnerability in their blockchain implementation that allows community points to execute arbitrary code.
