Is Reddit going all in on Web3?
I was just browsing and noticed an add for a Staff Engineer Position at Reddit focusing on crypto and this was in the job description:
""" The Internet is the most important public square in history. It shapes economies and elections, relationships and futures. Yet it is controlled by a handful of powerful platforms, who shape the Internet to their own advantage.
People have lost trust in the Internet. They don’t have control over it, and they don’t own the things online that are most important to them. It is time for a change. A big one. We need a new model for how the Internet should work – one that puts people back in charge – and the Crypto team at Reddit is leading the way.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the future of the Internet. The Crypto team is a special team at Reddit designed to take on a moonshot project: building an entirely new model for the Internet and social media on top of blockchain and decentralized technologies. With Reddit’s 500 million users and tens of thousands of communities, our goal is to reach widespread, mainstream adoption of a more decentralized Internet where people, not platforms, have real ownership and control.
The way there is not easy. We are looking for a Staff Backend Engineer who wants to work on hard, unsolved problems – such as making blockchain scale to millions of people, designing new incentive models for decentralized networks, and building the right tools to empower people and communities to take control of their lives online.
""" Damn, you think karma farming is bad now? Imagine if upvotes actually translated to money, regardless of how bad the exchange rate is. The post makes it seem all high and mighty moonshot, but it's most likely they introduce their own crypto that you can trade and maybe earn. Maybe a tipping feature similar to twitter. I don't know if that's going "all in" but it could certainly change the dynamics. It's already highly gamed with top posters dominating pretty much all the major subs. But with the monetary motivation, it'll likely be even harder for regular people just to post interesting content and be noticed. But it could also be a whimper, like ability to tip someone or your reddit gold is an NFT. Either way, I don't see an upside to the reddit community apart from very few top posters The karma farming point reminds me of Steemit: https://steemit.com/ I visited this a couple of years ago to see what all the fuss was about, and what I saw were many people from mostly developing countries posting very low quality comments and content, all in the hope that it would bring them money. Once you change incentives like that, you don't need to worry about posting quality content, you're only focused on content that brings in money. Of course, quality is subjective, and you could say something similar about some of the popular YouTubers, but there at least some resemblance of effort is needed to produce content and have a consistent viewership. For Steemit, it seemed doomed right from the beginning. The way you describe Steemit reminds me 100% of Quora. They already have their own cryptocurrency. In r/cryptocurrency you can earn “moons” based on your monthly upvotes. Lots of karma farming going on like you said. There is a sub on reddit that has their own cryptocurrency this has nothing to do with the company reddit. It's an official reddit thing called "Community Points", has integration with the reddit apps, ... https://www.reddit.com/community-points/ "Community Points [beta] - Own a piece of your community" That seems more of a "coming soon" rather than an existing cryptocurrency. It's the basis for the mentioned above example. I founded the /r/cryptocurrency subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/n2vrer/my_sad_att... I detail here what happened to my subreddit after spending months and years if work in promoting it and increasing user audience and engagement by using my other subreddits to divert discussion. I was just pawned off, demoted and was forced to forget about it. Well now its a default subreddit and one of the most profitable for reddit. I remember joining reddit when Digg.com was the best website in the world but started to act this way, there was a community takeover and everyone just moved to reddit after spamming digg. Reminds me off how myspace got ditched for facebook. I know facebook realised this could happen so they moved the herd over to instagram while rebranding. But these companies thing the platform is what keeps the community together but there are the initial rules and like minded thinking that creates a foundation for the community and not the platform. To be clear, did you found the sub, or co-found it? You mention that the moderator list was reorganized, was that by another moderator? If so, this is well within their powers. (Aside: Yes, obviously very lame thing for them to do given that they were monetizing the sub) But the way you wrote this comment, I thought it was the admins who replaced you, and that they just took over the sub. That would be much more concerning. As an onlooker who does read /r/cryptocurrency on occasion, I've concluded that Reddit is default crypto-hostile because - even though it has subreddits and mods, and that makes things "categorized" - the discussion being gamified pushes it towards groupthink every time: A gives upvotes, B does not. Thus, always say A, never say B, and never introduce anything new either, that is disruptive to the game. The mods will tend to play into the game rather than fight it because it's the path of least resistance; subs like /r/AskHistorians are exceptions that prove the rule. So actually discussing crypto topics means discussing them in a way that avoids moderation and gets upvotes...which leads directly towards mindless tribalism and backroom power plays to buy placements. Information about new developments other than price action just gets lost unless payola or botting is used to support it. It's hard to learn anything new from crypto Reddit, even on smaller subs. You will get much more out of a mix of Twitter(awareness) and Discord(discussion). This is great news. I spend too much time on Reddit right now and this would make me not want to spend time on Reddit. Reddit has tons of new stuff that I never even see because I use RES and a third party Reddit app. I was so confused when I heard about people complaining about profile pics and the like. My Reddit experience is mercifully unchanged from 2012. Same. I couldn't imagine using the official app or new site consistently. Everything Reddit has created in the last 5 years or so has, without fail, been a huge downgrade from whatever it replaced. heh, old man yells at cloud. Older man here (figuratively, I don’t know GP’s age [edit: and I’d be remiss if I don’t mention I’m NB]), and I just felt that way already when Reddit came to my attention and I’ve been glad to be continually validated that I don’t need to spend time on the platform. I’m v old and it’s a big cloud. Here's a similar Reddit job post from October 2021 (3 months ago) regarding NFTs: https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/3454478 """ For Reddit, it will always be about community. As the “frontpage of the Internet”, Reddit brings over 430 million people together each month through their common interests, inviting them to share, vote, comment, and create across thousands of communities. If there is one thing we’ve noticed with NFTs, they too have an incredible power to create a sense of participation and belonging. With every new NFT project, a vibrant community of owners pops up with it. Fans of today’s biggest creators and brands are now flocking to buy digital goods directly from them -- to support them, to gain exclusive access, and to feel a greater sense of connection with them. Over time, we believe this will only grow, and NFTs will play a central role in how fans support their favorite creators and communities. Our team is a new and exciting, rapidly growing team that aims to build the largest creator economy on the internet, powered by independent creators, digital goods, and NFTs. We are looking for strong engineers and leaders to help us seed the team, set its strategy, and build for the future. If you ask us, the NFT movement has only just begun, so come and join our team to get started. """ What an incredible example of doublespeak. Yes in a world where "selling for crazy prices" means a "sense of participation and belonging", word algebra can take you anywhere you want! > more decentralized Internet where people, not platforms, have real ownership and control Does this mean Reddit will give control of its forums, or the equivalent thereof in meta-space to its users? Reddit is a "platform" right? It seems to be saying that it doesn't want to be in control. It's a sensationalist job description, not a corporate five-year plan. I wouldn't read that much into it. Yes, according to Ben Thompson's latest post on Stratechy, "OpenSea, Web3, and Aggregation" [1]. He suggests that the next age of the web will replace accounts with no technical lock in, and network effects with virtual communities (see the diagram at the end of the article). [1]: https://stratechery.com/2022/opensea-raises-money-bans-nfts-... Hiring a small pilot team is not the same as going "all in". Likely one VP just decided to grab the web3 space as theirs and throw a few bodies at it. I seems sensible for them to have a "Crypto team" to "an entirely new model for the Internet" from a business point of view. It works - big money, doesn't work - shut it down. I'm not sure about "people, not platforms, have real ownership and control" though. It seems to be more crypto bros and scammers who get the control. Reddit coins and reddit gold are already the future crypto is promising. It makes sense to experiment with this, if you can artificially inflate the value of your reddit currency by combining it with crypto hype. There's some parallels between utility NFTs and rewarding a post you liked with a relevant jpeg badge, that provides a short subscription to reddit gold. Reddit can't build functional software. I would never consider letting thdm connect to my wallet. > Reddit can't build functional software. I would never consider letting thdm connect to my wallet. Seriously this. I'll never understand how this platform has the traction it has when it is such a buggy POS, forums in the 90s worked better than the current version of Reddit. Not to mention their tendency to censor and shadowban: it goes to show that when it comes to Social Media (something I never really got into as it is entirely extractive) you don't need quality code to be a stand out. How they convinced people to pay actual money for gilding makes me think that video game producers who moved to micro tx business models were actually way ahead of their time, prophetic even, in predicting what this demographic will tolerate. I can't imagine how they're going to handle having such a lax approach to security when actual money is on the line (assuming they tokenize or create NFTs) and with adversaries from all sides trying to rip them off. It will be comical if a spin off of REvil was created just to screw over Reddit, I'd like to to see this materialize only to see that happen. Sidenote: you used to be able to tip in bitcoin on Reddit via tipping bot, now you can only do it with small sums (bits) via LN, but this has been possible for a long time now. "All in" sounds a bit of a leap based on one job posting. The crypto job is most likely related to Community Points. Sounds like a blue sky project to explore possibilities. It's more likely to go nowhere than not, but it's a reasonable thing for Reddit to put some money into. So Reddit wants to make more money off its users, not surprising.