
One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/technology/personaltech/one-way-to-reform-reddit-give-users-a-share-in-profits.html
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slg
Paying users or even just moderators is a dangerous idea due to the
overjustification effect [1]. Once someone is paid for an activity they
previously did for free, it shifts in their mind from a hobby to a job. The
joy they previously got from participating in that activity is reduced and
they will then reevaluate how they spend their time. I don't think Reddit
really wants its moderators to think "I spent 40 hours on Reddit this month
and that is worth $20." Because the next thought after that is "My time is
worth more than 50 cents an hour. I should stop wasting it on Reddit."

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)

~~~
roflmyeggo
Collary: similarly, switching from social norms to market norms would decrease
the motivation of the user base to help each other out. The intrinsic
motivation to do a social favour comes with its own rewards - you take that
away by switching to monetary payment (even if they could pay an equivalent,
fair price).

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orthoganol
Or just find a way to cover operating costs and let Reddit be, you don't need
to push it into a billion-user company, SV profiteering style. Maybe there is
something I'm fundamentally missing, but Reddit is great right now and has
been the last couple years. Just cover costs (Reddit Gold is effective) and
leave her be.

~~~
sharkweek
Prior to taking on a $50M round? Maybe.

Now they owe it to their investors to offer the biggest return possible. And
there are some big names on the cap table:

[http://i.imgur.com/BSALe7M.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/BSALe7M.jpg)

~~~
rgbrenner
They sold 16% of their company. Are you saying the interests of minority
stakeholders--no matter how small-- outweigh the interests of all other
stakeholders in the company?

~~~
smeyer
Did those minority stakeholders get disproportionate representation on the
board as part of the investment?

Edit to add: Also, Advance Publications may also be pushing for big gains.

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danieltillett
Reddit faces the problem of competing in a marketplace dominated by businesses
losing money that are being supported by VC money (well really the limited
partner’s money). It is very hard to build a business in an industry where all
your competitors don’t care about profit and are only interested in growth.

~~~
nathancahill
This is the essence of why it's incredibly difficult to bootstrap a profitable
startup in a market that already has one of more funded players in it.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes this is why you should avoid these markets if you are a bootstrap
business.

The positive is there are lots of markets out there that are too small to
attract external funding, but large enough that a good $10 to $20 million
dollar business can dominate them profitably - I run exactly this type of
company in this type of market. All I can say is it is very nice to have no
outside investors to answer to and to see a nice positive balance sheet each
month :)

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icanhackit
Maybe I'm missing something but Reddit/Imgur is essentially this generation's
Usenet. Groups for anything imaginable, bigotry/flaming/trolling, lots of
adult material. All that was missing from Usenet was a points system and
descriptive groups directory.

Make a CMS with a points system on top of Usenet (tied to message-ID) that is
sponsored by embedded ads instead of requiring a paid subscription. Block
binaries with the exception of say, images - that way you're avoiding the vast
majority of pirated materials. The points system would be similar to Reddit so
that posts are ordered by rank but can still be sorted by date/poster.
Posts/threads/users/groups can be canned from the CMS side. Posts censored?
Feel free to switch to a pure Usenet service but you'll lose your points
system/community.

By starting out on Usenet you already have content to begin with. Recall that
Reddit started with fake user accounts with some quality content to get the
ball rolling.

On further reflection...this would basically be Reddit as it is now.

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minimaxir
I'm surprised Farhad (who's one of the best tech reporters) forgot to mention
Reddit Notes ([http://www.redditblog.com/2014/12/announcing-reddit-
notes.ht...](http://www.redditblog.com/2014/12/announcing-reddit-notes.html))
and RedditMade
([http://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/2knh96/announcing_r...](http://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/2knh96/announcing_redditmade_a_new_way_to_celebrate_your)),
both of which were proposals to monetize using the very same mechanisms
(giving back to the community / crowdsourcing merchandise) suggested in the
article.

Both failed due to bad management, unsurprisingly.

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rrss1122
I can see this ending badly for reddit, if implemented. Farhad Manjoo uses the
words "worker-owned cooperative" in the article. If moderators start being
compensated by reddit, even if only with shares, I can see them using that as
an argument that they are "employed" by reddit. That employee designation
isn't working out so well for Uber in California.

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boards2x
One way to reform Reddit is to not allow white suprimist terrorist groups, or
any other, for this matter to exist there. It has nothing to do with free
speech and it seems one sided right, when it applies to Christian's hate
towards everybody, yet not tolerated, rightly, when it's "Muslim" extremist.

~~~
rrss1122
Christian's hate towards everybody?

Stop and think, you're incoherent.

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Havoc
Adding money to the equation is just going to multiply the problems & attract
a lot more people specifically looking for gaps in the system. Reddit already
has people doing wild stuff for imaginary internet points...lets not go for
money here...

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swagv
How about let it die a 1000 necessary deaths like digg? I'd vote for that.

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Kequc
It's a little bit ridiculous that a webpage serving millions of unique
visitors every day cannot manage to turn a profit. A savvy business person
would do a lot for a head start like that.

I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily one
of the worst designed popular sites on the internet. Open a new one as a
subscription service, leave the old one open for free as it is right now.

I mean that wouldn't exactly be challenging and the whole site needs to be
revamped anyway.

~~~
Nacraile
> It's a little bit ridiculous that a webpage serving millions of unique
> visitors every day cannot manage to turn a profit. A savvy business person
> would do a lot for a head start like that.

Care to elaborate on how a savvy business person would extract a profit?
Unobtrusive ads obviously don't make enough money. Obnoxious ads are going to
push users away / to use AdBlock. Sneaky manipulation of rankings will get out
eventually, and when it does, is also likely to lose users.

> I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily
> one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet.

Really? I find it quite functional.

> Open a new one as a subscription service

Yeah, a reddit paywall is going to go over real well. (And if the free version
doesn't compromise basic functionality, good luck convincing anybody to pay
for frills)

~~~
joshuapants
> Yeah, a reddit paywall is going to go over real well. (And if the free
> version doesn't compromise basic functionality, good luck convincing anybody
> to pay for frills)

Reddit is already addictive. I'm sure they could take a bit of inspiration
from the variety of addictive "free to pay" games and work in
microtransactions and perks.

