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”
Holy shit.
I did not expect the next wave of new users on Lemmy to be happening this soon.
Poor Lemmy servers.
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)
Guys, you missed the block chain boat, this isn't going to save your IPO
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.
"It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens and take ownership of their existence online."
So, literally the fediverse ?
Reddit is talking about decentralization and stuff like that like they aren't a centralized platform themselves. Giving control to the community, but remember if we don't like what you're doing with your communities we'll threaten your moderation team!!!
LMAO ITS BLOCKCHAIN
we called it, reddit goes fucking crypto bro
Everybody knew the second he started talking to Musk. Burn it down to chase off everyone but the farthest right whose only concern with a platform is not getting banned for the n word, then load it up with buzz words they don't understand but will worship anyway.
communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away.
uuuuh
They are trying to win us back by... gaslighting.
Hey, no baby, I didn't just ban some mods because they refused to do what I said, no way baby, I respect you too much for that! Now, you're going to stop dating that lemmy guy and come back to me, right? You know I love you. You know I would never ban a subreddit unless they broke the site wide rules, right? You need me, you know it's true.
Apparently, this has been around for ages:
May 28 2020: https://consensys.net/blog/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-reddits-new-blockchain-based-community-points/
May 15 2020: https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/gk0x6g/could_the_admins_please_explain_this_community/
IA History: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.reddit.com/community-points
Discussions of proliferating it and fantasies about the resulting weird exploitation it will enable have occurred as well:
March 17 2023: https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/11tv5vz/when_community_points_are_introduced_to_other/
July 16 2023: https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/151fg8h/which_subreddits_need_to_be_the_next_to_get/
Apparently, they also tried to do this before, almost 9 years ago:
https://www.engadget.com/2014-12-19-reddit-notes.html
https://techcrunch.com/2014/12/19/reddit-announces-redditnotes-a-way-to-share-equity-with-readers/
https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/20/7427491/reddit-notes-announced-give-5-million-dollars-to-users
https://slate.com/business/2014/12/what-reddit-notes-are-their-history-and-future.html
https://old.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2pt25f/announcing_reddit_notes/
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/5fyaec/what_happened_to_reddit_notes/
https://www.fortune.com/2015/01/30/reddit-notes-is-not-going-to-happen/
Kinda puts things in a new light. Ruining the site has always been the plan.
"It is time for them to take back ownership and control." Funny that this is coming from Reddit. Actually more like ironic.
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.
I'm sorry but this is some dystopian bullshit that's all centred on the false premise that communities are anything other than the people who choose to count themselves among them and engage in them.
Reddit is just the tool some communities chose to use to gather their members and communicate. That's it. If a community decides that Reddit is no longer the appropriate tool for the job, they can leave and build their community elsewhere. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, given the resources and tools those communities might lose through the transition, but strictly speaking, Reddit can't do anything to stop the members of any particular subreddit going elsewhere, and a cryptocurrency absolutely is not going to fucking facilitate the ownership or mobility of a community.
It's a bullshit form of control that they want their users to willingly bind themselves to. Suddenly you're not just participating in a community, but you're genuinely invested, tied to something with a perceived monetary value, that even if you can theoretically remove from Reddit and take elsewhere, won't have any more value than people choose to place on it, and won't represent the community that generated it in any meaningful way.
It's literally "Hey, the more you use Reddit, the more of our crypto you'll earn, which could be worth more than zero one day! You better keep using Reddit, huh? You wouldn't want to lose that potential for more than zero eh? In fact, why don't you encourage more people to use Reddit too? Then they'll generate their own crypto, and the more people use our crypto, the more it'll be worth for everyone! See, if you get five more people to use Reddit, and those five people also get another five people each to use it etc etc etc..."
The fuck out of here.
I love how they talk about community independence yet Reddit can come in at any time and remove the mods if they don't like the content those communities are producing
This reads like shit. it starts off with this ground breaking tone, then its just crypto bs? and then the article just ends abruptly. The fediverse is the solution to the problem theyre talking about not some shitcoin. sheesh
For now, Reddit will cover gas costs for distributing Points to users and allowing them to spend Points on features such as Special Memberships.
Spez: "We are not profitable"
This is where Spez is spending money. Not on making the App/UI/UX better, but on crypto scams lol
“Own” your community, but if you blackout or post John Oliver, we’ll take it away from you.
Okay. Each sub gets fresh points according to it's size, activity and admin preference.
Every month your karma in a sub gets converted into these new points. These points can then be used to tip others, buy animated emojis or badges to show off. They are also used to make your vote count more in polls.
Mods can give commenters fines for misbehaving and make posts earn less points.
Sounds very capitalist. I guess it makes everybody go to a few big subs, as little subs don't earn anything. And those big subs are overrun by a few big players who floated to the top and stay there because of their influence. Little subs get overrun by alt-right as the fines mods can give there are just pocket money.
But that's what you get when ideology and dictators rule.
Knew before clicking it'd be crypto crap
Oh what complete fucking energy wasting bullshit that can be handled by a simple db. Just more corporate buzzword bingo from these jackasses in charge.
Missed the crypto craze a bit late there.
Called it. It's crypto.
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.
Lol. What a shit system. Apart from it being not as popular, Lemmy is a lot better than Reddit lmao.
It’s a fucking blockchain. I’m fucking done. That’s it. I’m going to put the Reddit app in a folder and pretend it doesn’t exist.
Why not delete it? The more they see people uninstalling the app, the better.
It is time for communities to break free of walled gardens
Lmao how can they say that with a straight face
Am I the only one that used Reddit till just recently and has no idea what coins or awards are, or what purpose they served?
Had to get blockchain in there somewhere to appeal to the idiot investors.
I had to keep reminding myself that it’s August, not April 1st. This is asinine.
Embarassing. Does anyone in Silicon Valley have original thoughts anymore?
Rest in piss. "Got out at the right time" is underselling it.
If this were written by anyone else, it would read as an absolutely sarcastic and ironically self aware lampoon-esque post
Got an email from Reddit the other day telling me to "spend my Reddit coins while I still can". It reminded me that I still have a Reddit account, so I just login and delete it (mass delete all my posts and edit all my comments since July).
Instant eyeroll when I got to 'blockchain'.
I don't even understand the problem they are trying to solve? The only way we are 'second-class citizens' is how the reddit admins treat their users.
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