Reddit Ends Secret Santa Gift-Giving Platform

Reddit is shutting down the beloved Secret Santa platform Reddit Gifts after the 2021 holiday season. Gizmodo reports: Over the years, the related forum r/secretsanta has attracted over 200,000 members and celebrity surprises such as a cat drawing by Arnold Schwarzennegger, an autographed photo of Shaq, and annual thoughtful gift packages from Bill Gates containing items such as video games, a horse blanket, and 81 pounds of books and toys. "Why the fuck would you kill this," a top comment reads. Reddit admins didn't explain much in their announcement yesterday but acknowledged that "countless acts of love, heroism, compassion, support, growth and hilarity happened through Reddit Gifts, and those memories will live on in the hearts of our community." Plus loads of free press. Why the fuck would you kill this? Reddit has not yet responded to Gizmodo's request for comment.

Or a parasite

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Probably a lawyer warning them of the tax liability from all these people not reporting it on their income, or the possibility of a damaging gift.

It's gotta be a lawyer somewhere.

Re:Or a parasite

[penguinbroker]

gifts are not necessarily income, you can give someone up to $10k worth of gifts a year without taxes coming into play

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

It probably depends on the state/country.

Re:

[pr100]

It certainly does.

I dunno if it's just me, but it seems that there's an increasing number of /. articles and comments that implicitly assume that we're always talking about the USA...

Re:

[RockDoctor]

It's in the region of 90% of articles that think they're posting on slashdot.org.us. It's been like that ... well pretty much since the years "dot". "UID 1000". However you want to phrase it.

Re:

[MBGMorden]

It's a US-based site visited by a majority US users. In this case of this article specifically, Reddit is a US-based company.

Assuming you're talking about the USA is normal. You add specificity for the exceptions not the norm.

Re:

[I-am-a-Banana]

Canadian here. Do you have data showing the majority of users are from the US? If not then likewise I could claim Reddit and Facebook are US companies and therefore majority of their users are in the US.

Re:

[NicoNet]

gifts are not necessarily income, you can give someone up to $10k worth of gifts a year without taxes coming into play

This is for the US. This limit is $15k per person per year now. Then you have to file a gift tax return, if you go over $15k to one person in a year. Then you have a single $11,700,000 lifetime limit of excess over $15k per person per year. If you exhaust that $11.7MM limit, then you can still gift $15k per person per year, but the excess is taxed at a rate between roughly 18%-40%, depending on your tax situation. The receiver never pays taxes on the gifts, except when they make a taxable capital gain

Re:

[MrKaos]

It's gotta be a lawyer somewhere.

Where there's laws, there's lawyers.

Maybe if people weren't so litigious we could have cool things.

Re: Or a parasite

[Disco Ninja]

Also assume a lawyer and a corporate executive in the decision process, but what do you expect from a company that wants to make money. My guess is it had something to do with brand damage and/or liability in case there are offensive and/or dangerous gifts.

Re:

[leonbev]

There are probably a lot of people (like myself) who got screwed by their Reddit secret Santa and didn't get anything. If I was Reddit, I would be worried about those people teaming up and filing a class action lawsuit.

Re:Or a parasite

[adfraggs]

Ah, the spirit of Christmas: where we get upset and sue because we didn't get a present.

Re:

[mobby_6kl]

Ah, the spirit of Christmas: where we get upset and sue because we didn't get a present.

My lawyers are starting the discovery process to find out why I was put on the naughty list

It's obvious

[DontBeAMoran]

They received a cease and desist letter from Santa's lawyers.

Re:It's obvious

[grub]

Forgot to change accounts, eh? How embarassing.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

Nope, I was just being stupid.

People still go to reddit?

[shm]

Reddit used to be interesting if you had a thick skin and filtered out their trolls. Especially the technical groups had some very knowledgeable people.

Now itâ(TM)s a hive of tumblr refugees who take offense at anything.

âoeUSB masterâ is enough to get some asinine dolt upset

Re: People still go to reddit?

[MysteriousPreacher]

Power mods, paedos, and political commissars. What's not to like?

Slashdot

[antdude]

People still go to /.? [grin]

Re:

[CohibaVancouver]

Now itÃ(TM)s [sic] a hive of tumblr refugees who take offense at anything.

It's not that they "take offense at anything." It's that a large number of Redditors call people out on their lies and bullshit.

This is interpreted by snowflakes as people "taking offense" when mostly it's people standing up for facts.

Re:

[MBGMorden]

Accusing those who find your righteous indignity off-putting of being "snowflakes" . . . "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.".

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

No comment = HR talk

[stikves]

It is very likely someone in the HR received a "gift" that they did not like. This kind of thing happens all the time, and "fun" is shut down immediately, especially in larger companies.

I personally ran into this several times, but for obvious reasons I cannot share (ask HR).

ROI

[RJFerret]

Looking at the announcement (so heavily downvoted I missed it yesterday) and the original user who started it before Reddit took it over has already picked up the mantle again per r/NewSecretSanta my bet is the return on investment doesn't pay off for the company.