One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

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&#x27;t think Reddit really wants its moderators to think &quot;I spent 40 hours on Reddit this month and that is worth $20.&quot; Because the next thought after that is &quot;My time is worth more than 50 cents an hour. I should stop wasting it on Reddit.&quot;<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Overjustification_effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Overjustification_effect</a>

Or just find a way to cover operating costs and let Reddit be, you don&#x27;t need to push it into a billion-user company, SV profiteering style. Maybe there is something I&#x27;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.

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.

Maybe I&#x27;m missing something but Reddit&#x2F;Imgur is essentially this generation&#x27;s Usenet. Groups for anything imaginable, bigotry&#x2F;flaming&#x2F;trolling, lots of adult material. All that was missing from Usenet was a points system and descriptive groups directory.<p>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&#x27;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&#x2F;poster. Posts&#x2F;threads&#x2F;users&#x2F;groups can be canned from the CMS side. Posts censored? Feel free to switch to a pure Usenet service but you&#x27;ll lose your points system&#x2F;community.<p>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.<p>On further reflection...this would basically be Reddit as it is now.

I&#x27;m surprised Farhad (who&#x27;s one of the best tech reporters) forgot to mention Reddit Notes (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.redditblog.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;announcing-reddit-notes.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.redditblog.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;announcing-reddit-notes.ht...</a>) and RedditMade (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;modnews&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2knh96&#x2F;announcing_redditmade_a_new_way_to_celebrate_your" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;modnews&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2knh96&#x2F;announcing_r...</a>), both of which were proposals to monetize using the very same mechanisms (giving back to the community &#x2F; crowdsourcing merchandise) suggested in the article.<p>Both failed due to bad management, unsurprisingly.

I can see this ending badly for reddit, if implemented. Farhad Manjoo uses the words &quot;worker-owned cooperative&quot; 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 &quot;employed&quot; by reddit. That employee designation isn&#x27;t working out so well for Uber in California.

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&#x27;s hate towards everybody, yet not tolerated, rightly, when it&#x27;s &quot;Muslim&quot; extremist.

Adding money to the equation is just going to multiply the problems &amp; 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...

How about let it die a 1000 necessary deaths like digg? I&#x27;d vote for that.

It&#x27;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.<p>I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It&#x27;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.<p>I mean that wouldn&#x27;t exactly be challenging and the whole site needs to be revamped anyway.