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:<p>"""
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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
I founded the /r/cryptocurrency subreddit<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/n2vrer/my_sad_attempt_at_trying_to_promote_litecoin_8/gwn5ask/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/n2vrer/my_sad_att...</a><p>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.<p>I was just pawned off, demoted and was forced to forget about it.<p>Well now its a default subreddit and one of the most profitable for reddit.<p>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.<p>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.
Here's a similar Reddit job post from October 2021 (3 months ago) regarding NFTs: <a href="https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/3454478" rel="nofollow">https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/3454478</a><p>""" 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.<p>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. """
> more decentralized Internet where people, not platforms, have real ownership and control<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
The crypto job is most likely related to Community Points.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/community-points" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/community-points</a>
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.