Comment by abhiminator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abhiminator | Hacker News Reader

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One good thing I commend reddit for is their business model centered around the user-funded 'gold system' (now called reddit premium [0]).

Kind of like a win-win: You see a great post or a comment by a random user, you buy gold (or awards/coins as it's now called), reddit gets the money, post or comment's author gets the recognition in that thread via a special badge (aside from a host of other experience-enhancing benefits) -- everyone's happy.

I'm aware of the fact that they run ads, but one can choose to evade all of it by going premium -- pretty neat, imo; Imagine Facebook or Twitter giving users this choice!

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/reddit-gold-silver-platinum-premium...

Their ad platform also, as far as I'm aware, only spans their own website. Admittedly, given the ungodly amounts of time I'm spending there, that's still a significant amount of profile-building they'll be able to do, but it's still far less invasive tracking than e.g. Facebook's.

The new "reddit premium" feature is a downgrade, though. The original "gold" model is a lot smoother - there is a single token of reward, the gold coin. If you want to increase your visible appreciation for the post/comment, just pay more and award them more gold. Yes, the new "premium" model is more palatable to investors, but it's still very clearly giving up a nice, win-win innovation.

I'd love to see something similar for Twitter. Perhaps with better moderation support as one of the perks.

"Gold" systems that actually pay the content creator, patreon-style, are an interesting idea too. But they have considerable potential downsides.

Content is constantly being reposted on Reddit with zero attribution. You're better off trying to create a new community with these types of pay-the-creator systems built into it, than shoehorning it into Reddit where the incentive systems would be completely warped due to the Wild West nature of 'content ownership'.

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