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Comment by CivBase | Hacker News Reader

Many platforms have recently shown how you can monitize an audience without ads. It's weird to me that Reddit hasn't pursued something like that.

Discord and Twitch have a funding model that would probably work great for Reddit. Allow users to pay a small fee to upgrade their subscription to a subreddit - maybe $1.50/mo per sub or $15/mo for all subs. The upgrade includes access to special emojis for the sub, a special flair or re-colored username, and no ads on the upgraded sub. A portion of the money would go towards funding moderation for the sub, and Reddit could pocket the rest.

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The irony is that Reddit already has this feature, but that goes to show how poorly they market it. They also sell NFT avatars (though cleverly, not describing them as NFTs in the UI)

> A portion of the money would go towards funding moderation for the sub

That creates bad incentives, though. A streamer I mod for once suggested something similar, I told them I’d quit modding in that case. If it’s a job, it stops being a hobby.

Cognitive dissonance in action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

I disagree

I think you are confusing OPs point. If he is a volunteer moderator he gets to set his own expectations and efforts. By introducing a financial component it could disrupt his incentives, make him feel like he has to put X hours, and change the spirit/community of the people that now volunteer (but would then "work") with him

There is a name for this effect (it's no cognitive dissonance) I think - I recall reading about it in Freakonomics, wherein they discuss it in the scope of parents being "fined" for picking up their children late. The fine actually validated the tardiness as part of a business transaction - instead of being a social imposition - and actually led to more delays, not fewer

> There is a name for this effect

Are you referring to incentives? Specifically turning a social incentive to a market incentive?

> The fine actually validated the tardiness as part of a business transaction

It should also be noted the parent’s monthly bill was around $380, and the fine was only around $3. So even being late every workday in a month was only an additional $60. And I’m sure some of those parents would happily spend that to be rid of their children for a little bit longer.

I do wish it was recorded whether the length of tardiness increased as well, and what the mean and mode were. Whether parents started to abuse the time or not, in effect milking the daycare for care, is an important data point as well.

Looks like you pasted the wrong reply in this thread ;)

No, though you may wish to check over the 2nd paragraph in the post I replied to ;D

Admittedly without quoting it does look out of place. I just edited it to fix that. Thank you!

Oh, yeah, without actually having read freakonomics, that looked very out of place ;)

Milking the daycare would look the same as people feeling less obligated to pick up on time, now that they are compensating the provider for the extra time spent.

Name of the effect: categorical change.

The most (in)famous example in the US is the American Red Cross following the US forces in Europe during WW2 beginning to charge a few cents for donuts that they had been giving away for free. While they were still inexpensive compared to their usual price at US donut shops, it was a huge change in the relationship that ended up souring a lot of soldiers towards the Red Cross.

The early Festinger (1959) studies are basically this exact point. Getting paid or paying transforms an internally driven experience into an externally driven one (get paid or deal with fines). Later studies generalized, but the idea that "external reward or punishment is involved" changes perception of the task from internally reward driven to external, due to the dissonance of "why I'm doing it."

The economists have their own name for many phenomena that come down to the same thing that the psychologists would predict. Hence the rise of "behavioral economics" to converge the fields.

I think I see the point - that people have very different beliefs and expectations about paid jobs versus volunteer work.

If I pay you just a little bit for something you were doing, it may not really register much because it isn't enough money to really do anything with besides buy a meal or a new toy here and there or something.

If I pay you enough for it to be considered a job, that brings in a whole bunch of new expectations on both sides. You may expect to be paid a fair wage compared to what you previously did, to have a good career path, to do something that looks good on a resume, to have a good work-life balance, etc. And they may expect a certain stable and reliable productivity level, advanced notice for any time off, etc.

Is there any way Reddit could support mods using the funds without paying them for moderation?

They could create better modding tools, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Not sure if you're joking, because that is hilarious, but they do offer that sort of thing. Reddit Premium (née Reddit Gold iirc).

https://www.reddit.com/premium

They don't revenue share with moderators though, because as far as Reddit is concerned, fuck moderators.

Reddit has offered a premium subscription for years, though it's not specific to subreddits. It gives the user a customizable avatar, removes ads, and enhances a couple UI features.

https://www.reddit.com/premium

They had this!! It was called PowerUps.

Then they killed it.

Nearly everyone who cares at all as a user or creator hates how Twitch makes money. They take 50% of gift subs and yesterday banned some ads, etc.

I’m unsure why Twitch would keep squeezing every dollar in insane ways unless their funding model isn’t working either.

Do discord and twitch actually make money though? Consumers are tired of subscriptions so I bet that would be a hard sell. They tried premium features with the gold and stuff but I don't think it every really caught on.

>Twitch have a funding model that would probably work great for Reddit.

Twitch's model works great for creators but not for Twitch and as a result Twitch has been working hard to force their creators to run more ads.

Taking 50% of subs is not great for creators.

Twitch is ad driven though.

Discord doesn’t charge for per sub access does it?

No. They charge a yearly fee for their "nitro" product which offers some perks in any server you're in. Each server can setup their own perks (emoji, reactions l, user name color, etc) for nitro users that join.

You also get sitewide access to emojis/stickers from other servers, for the $2.99/mo Basic plan. For $9.99/mo you get profile customization, HD video streaming, and 500MB uploads.

Decent perks for an eye-watering price, and you don’t even get encrypted messages to boot.

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