Reddit to Give 10% of Its 2014 Ad Revenue to Non-Profits Picked by Its Users

So a not yet profitable site is going to start giving away revenue. Very happy I'm not an investor in that company.

I&#x27;m always suspicious of people proudly announcing that they&#x27;re giving something to charity. We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of their money for the public good: taxes. As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good.<p>Why, then, is it laudable if an org decides to give to charity instead of paying taxes? This takes the decision of how to spend for the public good away from the public and instead the company decides. Is it because in practice we distrust the government and our decision-making procedures too much and we trust private companies more?

Right... that&#x27;s not going to trick us into advertising on Reddit again, which is one of the biggest wastes of ad dollars out there. You couldn&#x27;t sell Makeup to the &#x2F;r&#x2F;makeup forum. They just don&#x27;t click on ads, let alone buy anything. We joked about how you&#x27;re probably better off advertising on a gay porn blog. I actually tried it. And I got more sales than on Reddit. I&#x27;ve tried 3 separate times and all three were wastes, I&#x27;ve read articles about others trying and they found it to be a waste as well.<p>They&#x27;re doing this to try to get their (often stereotyped as snarky and condescending) users to click on ads for the &quot;good of the world&quot;. It won&#x27;t matter because their audience&#x27;s clicks don&#x27;t convert into sales.

Ad revenue needs to die as a business model for websites. I will continue to block all ads on all websites because I can and they are ugly.

That&#x27;s very cool. Allowing the users to have meaningful input will really set them apart. I don&#x27;t do reddit much, but this is very noble and generous of them!

This is cool, I wonder why they are using part of the ad rev though. Advertisers want to advertise no matter what, like it&#x27;s _basically_ just a formula for $ &lt;-&gt; traffic. But I&#x27;ll bet users would be more pumped to buy each other reddit gold if part of that purchase went to charity.

Does anyone else feel like this is extremely suspicious (classic misdirection) given the negativity surrounding the moderation of Snowden&#x27;s latest leak?

I wonder if it will be the EFF... ;-)<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/why_reddit_moderators_are_censoring_glenn_greenwalds_latest_bombshell_partner/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;why_reddit_moderators_are_ce...</a>

This is a double-edged move. I will boycott Reddit if it donates to non-profits I do not wish to support.

Link: company x gives to charity, 5 hours ago.<p>4 comments responding directly to the link, 3&#x2F;4 negative.<p>117 comments responding to randomAnonymousUser[1-4].<p>(Internet (Hacker News)) culture at its finest.

And down goes the click-through validity rate.

Non-profit == noble cause?

isn&#x27;t reddit a non-profit?

Reddit has ads?

This move is so people on Reddit stop using ad blockers, which is clearly effecting their bottom line.<p>I don&#x27;t think it will work, since Reddit already uses non-intrusive ads and the majority of people block ads on principal alone.<p>Users don&#x27;t want ads (because it&#x27;s somehow intruding on your space), nobody would be willing to pay for the site, and Reddit gold was seen as class warfare (haves and have nots).<p>Anything that even seems like Reddit wants to bring in money is shunned immediately by the user base.<p>Like most anti-capitalist Utopian groups, it&#x27;s doomed.