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Technology

Reddit To Tokenize Karma Points and Onboard 500M New Users, Report Says (cointelegraph.com) 67

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
American social media giant Reddit may soon convert users' karma points into Ethereum-based (ERC-20) tokens and onboard 500 million new crypto users in the process, according to a newly hired Reddit engineer. From a report: A series of tweets made by Reddit engineer, Rahul, highlights Reddit's efforts to improve user interaction through various cryptocurrency initiatives. As Cointelegraph reported in July 2021, the platform had launched its own layer-two rollup using Arbitrum technology for its rewards points, named Community Points.
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Reddit To Tokenize Karma Points and Onboard 500M New Users, Report Says More

Reddit To Tokenize Karma Points and Onboard 500M New Users, Report Says

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  • ERC-20 just means a token on the ethereum network, not a ethereum cryptocurrency itself.

    What value will this token have?

  • Yes please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JorkutSind ( 8712287 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:12PM (#61969249)

    This should be the final nail in the coffin for using reddit as an honest, open discussion forum.

    Reddit itself, may continue and become even more successful. But the content quality will devolve to that of TicTok.

    This should create a lot of demand for a better discussion forum for serious long form discussion.

    I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Ostracus ( 1354233 )

      Since when has it ever been anything different than any other forum?

      • Re:Yes please (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:49PM (#61969379)

        The karma system, more than in any other online forum, rewards group-think and herd behavior.

        • More specifically, the unlimited upvoting and downvoting rewards the group-think echo-chamber circle jerk that reddit is.

          • I think humans due fine with group think all on their own. It's an ingrained part of the human brain.

            • it's tough to create villages and metropolises without having at least some things in common with your neighbors.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by lazarus ( 2879 )

            Completely agree. That said, they do support Unicode...

          • It's also incredibly easy to get perma-banned even from really mainstream reddits like r/politics. I got banned for a post that was, at worst, contrarian.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
              Well r/politics might be a risky olace since prople tend to feel very pacionate about it, and the them vs us thinking is also very strong there. Personally I have not experienced a lot of what people say ate the big problems of reddit, I'm not saying they don't exsist, just that for one reason or the other I haven't experienced them. Maybe the reason is that r/zfs,r/Postgrespql and r/csharp does not suffer to much from them.
        • I’m curious, in your opinion, what would be the best approach to reward well thought out comments and disincentivize trolls, general meanness, and spammy comments?

          • Interesting of you that you put this question here, as I have given this a lot of thought since, at some point, I want to run my own online forum.
            Sadly herd mentality is a human problem and no amount of code can fix that. If people see a high-rated post, they will either rate it positively as well, or comment on it, disregarding the rest of the discussion. This happens quite often on /.
            I think an ideal forum would combine slashdot's ratings system (with several ratings meaning different things, and the rati

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          Also the moderators for each subreddit are a bunch of people who either started the subreddit or became friends with those who did, which means they tend to hold the same views. I still remember when r/animemes went apeshit over mods banning the word "trap" and ended up splitting the community. If mod selection was a more democratic process that would've never happened.

          • Democracy ends up selecting tyrants. After such tyrants get elected, they give themselves infinite power.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

              Democracy ends up selecting tyrants. After such tyrants get elected, they give themselves infinite power.

              How the heck would that work on Reddit?

              Mod elections would be something Reddit engineers implement. Mods wouldn't be able to cancel elections or gain "infinite power", whatever that means.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's "TikTok", Grandpa

    • Re:Yes please (Score:4, Insightful)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:26PM (#61969305)

      But the content quality will devolve to that of TicTok.

      It’s floor discovery; with the right perverse incentives we may even find it’s actually possible to sink deeper than TikTok.

    • This should be the final nail in the coffin for using reddit as an honest, open discussion forum.

      Meh, I've been fairly active on Reddit for 8 years.

      It has never been that.

      You can post exactly the same comment three times in a thread - In one case it will be +123, in another -11 and the third it will have no votes whatsoever. The fact that Reddit can't afford to show the entire thread to all users means it was never an "open" discussion forum, because you can't read everything posted unless you pay.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Ahh, so thst's the reason I never hit that peticular isue, I donated once about 5 years ago, and can still read evrything. It might also have something to do with the fact that I eade shore to keep reddit classic, so whatewer tricks rge new design empleys are prity irrelevant to me, thenk you for filling me in the info was appreciated.
    • as long as your mods ban everything political when you're not on a political forum. The Gundam forums are amusing and useful (keeping in mind there's separate forums for general discussion and modeling). The Guitar forums are alright too. The AAA gaming forums are dead, but that's not reddit's fault, there's so few releases coming out there's just nothing to talk about.

      the politics forums are a pointless circle jerk. r/Conservative has to be so heavily moderated to keep the racists, Qanons and anti-vax
      • The bass guitar and music theory subs are absolutely packed with fools, blissfully unaware of their own ineptitude.

        The last straw for me was when some dink told me how to match my cab and head *directly* against manufacturers specs.

        Like, thanks for the advice, kid, but I've been a literal professional for nearly 20 years. Here's your upgoats, now get farked.

    • This should be the final nail in the coffin for using reddit as an honest, open discussion forum.

      Why? Reddit is full of subs with minor niche interests where people couldn't give a flying fuck what their karma score is.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Captivale ( 6182564 )

        It's the opposite. There's plenty of people posting commercial ads, clickbait, misinfo, lies and/or stolen content. While it's always been annoying, their only direct gain was karma. If karma becomes monetized, now they're profiting off it, leading to much much more garbage.

        • If karma becomes monetized, now they're profiting off it, leading to much much more garbage.

          Since actual value loss could give someone legal standing to sue, won’t someone please think of the lawsuits?!?

        • It's the opposite. There's plenty of people posting commercial ads, clickbait, misinfo, lies and/or stolen content.

          Between you and I the reality is that Reddit is a vast place with very different subs and very different purposes for them. I can't say I've ever seen any of the posts you mention, but I have little doubt they exist.

          If those get killed as a result of this then I'm sure no tears will be shed.

      • This, you can't pigeonhole Reddit. There's a lot of high quality subs, highly moderated that keep out the crap. There are some that take this so seriously they're almost hard to even use.

        One you get out of the large/default subs, the signal to noise ratio improves a lot and even moderating isn't all that necessary except in the case of limited abuses.

        The only other way to improve Reddit would probably be more intensive screening of the users or their posts. I'd be interested to see a screening system bas

  • I was wondering how the karma system situation could be made much much worse, but was coming up short on ideas. Just as an example, now there is real material loss with reposts, mods deleting posts, brigading, etc and it can be taken to the courts. All the underage posters are going to have a super fun time with the new crypto tax reporting laws too. No your honor, that’s not my crypto, it’s the cats crypto. Why yes, of course I’m employed full time, I post on the internet from my mom

  • If they want to improve user interaction, they can stop fucking up their mobile app and video player.

    • Allow me to mention their awful browser website that harasses you for not using their slow as fuck app as well.

  • Purpose of adding karma value to blockchain? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aryeh Goretsky ( 129230 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:29PM (#61969313) Homepage

    Hello,

    I am trying to get my head around this, but the one thing that I do not understand is, simply, what problem does this solve for Reddit's users? Is it simply for Reddit to create an imaginary market?

    Reddit's attempts to generate additional sources of revenue beyond advertising seem to have largely fallen flat, is this some way to get its customers to increase their advertising spend?

    The other concern that pops immediately into my head is that Reddit has consistently been very poor at handling various forms of abuse and fraud on their platform. The 16-year-old company only stood up a trust and safety team about 4-5 years ago, if I recall correctly, and the results of their activities had largely been reactive and ham-fisted, at least when there are results.

    So, I have to ask myself, who exactly is this entry into the blockchain for, and who does it benefit?

    Regards,

    Aryeh Goretsky

    • Users are rewarded for unimaginative parroting of popular catchphrases and reposts of tires memes and Travis Scott posts (that isn't going to get tired)

    • Maybe they're working on a system where karma scores can be used on other sites, a distributed ledger for that could be preferable for that. One could link their /. account and get Reddit karma for their posts here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Wolfrider ( 856 )

      > Reddit's attempts to generate additional sources of revenue beyond advertising seem to have largely fallen flat

      --I would say Reddit Coins is probably fairly successful, you can "award" emojis to main article posters and commenters. $5.99 for 1800 coins is not that bad and you get an additional ~700 coins refilled for free monthly with a $5.99 Premium subscription.

  • lol (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RegistrationIsDumb83 ( 6517138 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:35PM (#61969329)
    You know Reddit is bad when they have to pay people to use it.
  • Becomes Queen of reddit?

  • And Nothing of Value Was Created (Score:3)

    by GlennC ( 96879 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @04:05PM (#61969427)

    I think the Subject line covers it nicely.

  • How to identify Liars pretending to be smart (Score:3)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @06:04PM (#61969771) Homepage

    Jargon has one intended use and one corrupt use. The intended use is to be extremely specific when talking to other experts that share a common specialized language. Doctors do not say broken leg bone, they say simple fracture (bone breaks but does not penetrate the skin) of the tibia (thicker lower leg bone). But when I talk to my friends I say broken leg.

    Why? Because none of us need the specificity that is required when giving medical treatment, they just need to know why I can't go jogging this morning (OK, I was never going to jogging, I am a nerd). Moreover, not everyone may know that the tibia is in my leg, or what a simple fracture vs a compound one is.

    But why for god's sake did the article writer decide to use the word 'onboard'? They were not trying to be specific, and there was no reason to think that most people would know what that means?

    You see, the other reason to use jargon is to sound intelligent. Wow, that guy uses "onboard" in a sentence, he must be tech savy guy that talks to other tech savy guys. No, he is a shmuck trying to sound smart. They could have said "created 500 million new crypto users", or "gained 500 million new crypto users", or more accurately "gave crypto to 500 million users", because there is a significant chance that some of those 500 million users already have crypto and are not really 'new' users.

    Do not use jargon to sound smart, it just makes you sound like you have poor English skills. Do not let poor saps go around thinking they sound smart, when it really sounds like they live in their mother's basement and never spoke to a real person.

    P.S. Tokenized at least had a real reason to exist, as it adds something to the sentence, but should be left off a headline. Headlines should be short and sweet giving an idea of what the story is about and understandable by smart teenagers.

  • For users in some countries, this shitty cryptocurrency may actually be a massive amount of money, which means the platform will be overrun with users reposting, karma whoring and otherwise cluttering up the place. I would say it was good while it last but I missed the glory days, bit like this place!

  • That should make playing the Reddit Game even more fun!

  • Plainly, karma whoring on that platform wasn't a big enough problem already. /sarcasm. I don't recall exactly when I deleted my reddit account... but I definitely deleted it. It lived and died in a relatively small fraction of time that I've had an account here. I played with Bitclout too... for all of a month or two. All of these things, it's just going to be blatantly incentivizing whatever gets the most "up-doots", and it doesn't take long to become banal.

    Of course that's why it will probably become

  • Reddit is made up of SO many bots. Makes me laugh when they say half a billion new users.
  • Sounds like the owners of reddit made a cryptocoin and wants to bump it before selling it.

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