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Comment by waselighis | Hacker News Reader

Please no. I wish the users who create quality posts could get paid. But sadly, once money is involved, people will start to gamify the system, posting as much barely-passable garbage as possible to maximize upvotes, and the quality of content will deteriorate very quickly.

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Money's already involved. Rather than posting barely-passable garbage, the automated systems just repost things that were popular a year or two to various subjects, with the top few comments replacing the titles of the posts. There are a number of counter-bots that detect these posts and warn people that the content is being automatically reposted, but it doesn't really stop it form happening. Presumably Reddit chooses not to stop it because, hey, engagement, woo, metrics go up, manager of engagement look good.

I'm not sure exactly how they're monetizing (maybe they sell the accounts once they have some popular posts?), but they definitely are.

I think this is actually a reddit, and all other similar platforms, problem. The issue is that there's good content, funny memes, insightful essays, whatever, that was submitted in the past. Some of it is no longer relevant and some of it your audience has already seen and would be bored by - but lots of it would be valuable to resurface now.

Because reddit focuses mainly on what's happening recently the good content of the past that might be relevant to a user today is buried. Reposters play a valuable role in resurfacing content. I think a better paradigm, though one I can't really imagine that well, would remove the need for reposters by automatically showing the content they would repost. Maybe a recommendation algorithm?

No, the issue is that pretend internet points always end up having real value, because human brains are lazy and rate in-group signalling really high and therefore trust ads that come from "big people" more. That's like the whole thing behind the influencer advertising economy.

Reddit didn't get rid of r/hailcorporate on accident. There are literal industries that exist to make fake accounts, karma farm, and sell use of those accounts to post basically sponsored messages that maybe even reddit itself doesn't know are sponsored. Think of how many people say "I search reddit for product recommendations" and know that companies have been pushing on that button for years and years. Whether reddit is honestly trying to prevent this kind of stuff doesn't actually matter, because as long as real moderation costs money and breaking that moderation makes money, the advantage is towards those who break it. FFS, reddit still has most popular subreddits modded by one account and their sockpuppets.

They got rid of HailCorporate? I'm only a casual Reddit reader so I thought that I had missed some ban drama but it's still there:

https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/

It no longer shows up on the /all tab for most users. I imagine that is due to some rule fiddling they did, similar to how one of the donald trump subreddits kept gaming the system to be most of the me page so they changed the rules.

Hard agree.

It'd turn into a world where people would try to make money (which still happens but normally is sniffed out), instead of a place where people like LundgrensFrontKick produce content, for free, because they love doing so, like:

* Estimating how long it took The Joker to set up the giant cash pyramid in The Dark Knight

* Comparing the box office success of movies that have a snowmobile action scene vs those that have a jet ski action scene

* Objectively trying to determine which Fast and Furious movie was the fastest and most furious

https://www.reddit.com/user/LundgrensFrontKick/?sort=top

Yes I know he has like a podcast now or something, but that only came after years of doing this for no reason other than he enjoyed doing it.

I came across this user just last week from their Vin Diesel sleeveless shirt post! It was the first time I've ever seen their content.

It is extremely interesting that money fails so hard at the one thing it should be good at, incentivizing behavior. I mean, yes, you'd get more content, but it would be hollow, as you say.

> It is extremely interesting that money fails so hard at the one thing it should be good at, incentivizing behavior.

Money itself doesn't fail to incentivize behavior. Rather, it is what you choose to reward with money that has be carefully chosen to incentivize the behaviors you want to encourage (via monetary reward).

Money is a fantastic motivator, as evidence by how quickly flaws in systems are gamed in order to attain it.

It's not money that's failing, it's the rule-masters. Agents can't work well in systems with bad rules.

No, it's money. Because the rule-masters you complain about are just optimizing for more money.

Sounds like a good motivator if even the rule-masters are chasing it.

It can be a good motivator and till be failing to serve any greater social purpose. People and organizations can get addicted to money exactly the same as people get addicted to sugar, nicotine, or cocaine. Addicts can be enormously tenacious, creative, and resourceful, but only to the end of feeding their addiction.

Totally agree. I was just taking issue with the blame on money specifically. Money is working as intended. The rules in which money is operating are fundamentally broken though, no doubt.

This is an interesting line of reasoning, does it also apply to HN karma and the big acquirers of karma?

It could. Some people pursue it very aggressively, optimizing submission times and autoposting submissions of new papers or blog posts, for example. I recall one semi-spam account that was set up to submit anything relating to Ruby, including videos that happened to mention gemstones in the title.

Basically the same as the alignment problem in AI. You need to be very careful of how you define your rewards, because you'll end up incentivizing exactly what you define.

It is like Goodhart‘s Law (When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure) with an incentive attached to the measure. It probably needs to be in constant flux by design. Maybe a good thing as it would otherwise get rigid and boring.

Money spent is a good way to understand revealed preferences but this goes only one-way: you can't hand out money to reveal preferences.

This is also prevalent with the way that Google incentivizes page content structure now. I have to get 3/4 the way through a page before I find what I'm looking for because they encourage this big kitchen sink posts.

When you incentivize words, you get words.

How is that any different from current Reddit? The users gamify themselves into garbage without money.

Youtubers who rise to the top seem to satisfy their viewers even if there's hard monetary incentive

As an avid redditor I can say it's already like that and they will teach it nothing of value unless they limit it to a very low number of subreddits, which will still barely teach it anything of value unless the goal is teaching it current generation humor and shitposting habits, which would be very valuable to anyone wanting to boost engagement and try to sway a fairly left leaning generation of people toward whatever they're selling.

Which is today's right-wing billionaires and their pet politicians.

Hate to say it but this happens already from what I've seen on Reddit. Even decent subreddits I've followed for years that don't have the issues the major subs have. People want their karma, post low quality content, and somehow people still upvote them.

This is already an issue with the mods of the big subreddits being partial to both bias and incentives.

Welcome to the Internet. Should we ban users who try to make money from their skills?

This isn't really users trying to make money from their skills.

This is a company taking user contributions as their own, aggregating it, and using their work for free to make money off it.

Solution, just use historical content.

Good point.

>people will start to gamify the system, posting as much barely-passable garbage as possible to maximize upvotes

As if this behavior isn't already rampant.

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