Golden upvote… Reddit is rolling out a program that pays users for popular posts. Meet Reddit Gold: a currency users can buy for $2 apiece to award their favorite OPs (original posters). Redditors will soon have the option to “golden-upvote” posts to select how much coin they want to give. In July, Reddit phased out an earlier version of Gold that couldn't be cashed out.
Karma is your bf: To cash out gold for real moolah, posters need 100+ karma/year (Reddit awards karma to people who actively post and comment), and gold is worth more for creators with 5K+ karma.
AITA for lurking… Social-media platforms are encouraging users to post, not just scroll, by introducing ways to earn $$. TikTok has a suite of monetization opportunities, including live-streaming “gifts” and special pay-to-access posts. X (fka Twitter) introduced revenue sharing in July, allowing top users to earn a slice of revenue from ads that appear in replies to their posts. Reddit’s reportedly planning to IPO this year, at which point its S-1 filing would disclose its financials and user metrics to the world.
Incentives shape the platform… TikTok influencer Pinkydoll probably wouldn’t say “ice cream so good” a hundred times if she weren’t making $7K/day from users sending her cash gifts in the form of ice-cream icons. Meanwhile, X’s revenue-sharing program has been criticized for encouraging users to create controversial, click-baity content. Some Reddit users are concerned that the new monetization model could mean fewer selfless anons posting cat jokes and more trolls riling users up with “engagement bait.”