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Comment by spondylosaurus | Hacker News Reader

They also try to monetize the whole thing with Reddit Gold or whatever where you can pay like five bucks to put a badge on someone else's post or comment.

Although I wouldn't know a whole lot about it because after a decade-plus on Reddit I've still never bought any.

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This was such a confusing feature to me. I just looked and my Reddit account is 13 years old, and I've also never bought any of these "rewards" because they seem so empty and useless. The person you're giving it to gets nothing other than some images above their post, so I _know_ that if I spend the money on one it's basically just a donation to Reddit which I'm not keen to do if I get nothing out of it. They also have their "premium" subscription which seems even more useless.

Now, if they had implemented it in a way similar to how Brave did their rewards where people would get some share of the reward (say, 5% of the money?) then I would be way more likely to buy it and would probably also participate a lot more. Imagine if some people could make a living off of Reddit the same way they do off of YouTube or Twitch!

I’m probably overly cynical about this, but the only people buying those seem to be fake accounts trying to prop up their other fake accounts.

I have never bought them but I have actually received a few silver and gold badges like that for some of my comments. So I guess that makes my account a fake then?

Nope, it makes me overly cynical and expecting the worst from Reddit.

they used to give out reddit silver badge and other badges for free if you used the official app. I used that to give out a lot of badges to the community I moderate.

Ironically all the badges are from memes that were born on reddit...

I pay for Reddit Gold. Reddit has brought a lot of value to my life, I don't like seeing ads, and I like the idea of supporting non-ad-based business models.

Same, been paying for it for years. I'll be canceling it when RIF dies though, this just feels too much like the beginning of the end.

I've supported it on and off for years and currently have Reddit Gold. It's easy to justify the cost when considering the conversations over the years and the amazing resource it's been for making decisions or learning.

I was already considering dropping Gold at the end of this payment cycle due to some of their advertising bedfellows, but this mess has really sealed the deal.

Maybe Reddit doesn't have a breakout competitor for people to jump to atm, but I suspect blood is in the water and we're about to see an influx of alternatives.

People felt the same way about Elon Musk buying Twitter but after the temporary Mastodon bump, it seems like almost everyone is back on Twitter.

Twitter engagement is definitely lower[0], though it’s difficult to know from the outside how much and we can’t trust their numbers.

Anecdotally, the accounts I follow in various niche subject areas have both depleted in number, with I’d estimate around 20-25% having stopped posting altogether, and cut back on how often they post if they did stay.

[0] https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/15/23683554/twitter-dy...

My personal impression of post-purchase Twitter is that the quality has declined significantly as paid accounts crowd the top responses. But, I don't have a good sense of it, since I removed multiple accounts and haven't been back.

I'm serious about not participating in or contributing to products and platforms It could be bias, but I don't think I'm alone. Maybe new people will take my place, but this whole thing obviously puts a damper on the word of mouth marketing they were getting out of me.

I still think it was a missed opportunity to not just give API access for premium users only.

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