Excerpts from the link:
Fake internet points are finally worth something!
Now redditors can earn real money for their contributions to the Reddit community, based on the karma and gold they've been given.
How it works:
- Redditors give gold to posts, comments, or other contributions they think are really worth something.
- Eligible contributors that earn enough karma and gold can cash out their earnings for real money.
- Contributors apply to the program to see if they're eligible.
- Top contributors make top dollar. The more karma and gold contributors earn, the more money they can receive.
Not just anyone can be a contributor. To join and stay in the program, contributors need to meet a few requirements:\
- Be over 18 and live in the U.S.
- Only Safe for Work contributions qualify
- Earn xx gold and karma each month
- Provide verification information. You must have at least 10 gold and 100 karma to begin verification.
- NSFW accounts aren't eligible for the Contributors Program
Here's my take on this. Since this is from the latest version of Reddit's ~~broken browser for a single site~~ "official app", it's likely a recent development, triggered by recent changes in the platform. Reddit Inc. is likely worried about contributors leaving due to the app-pocalypse, and is trying to counter it by throwing them some spare cash.
And I'm going to be honest: holy fuck this sounds like a Bad Idea®. For three reasons.
The first one is demographics; since 47% of the users are Americans, and 21% of them are 10-19yo, it's safe to say that ~60% of the users are ineligible, and thus will only contribute for free.
Will they? People often don't mind contributing for free, as long as the others are in the same page. The picture changes once you get at least someone making money out of it - odds are that those 60% will disengage further.
The second reason is that Reddit Inc. is disregarding the fluff principle. If the money threshold is the number of upvotes and awards that someone gets per period of time, why would the person bother with high quality content? Or even quality content at all - it's easy to make up for lack of quality with quantity. For example, setting up a simple bot to scrape the top posts and repost them. (Is Reddit expecting the mods to delete those reposts? OH WAIT)
The third and final reason is who you expect to give awards to those people, before they feel pissed and discouraged and leave the program, breaking even further their trust in the platform. Who would even buy Reddit gold on first place? The Reddit community has been outright mocking Reddit gold for years, and the suckers actually buying it were the ones who were the most engaged and emotionally attached to the platform, to the point that they're willing to "help" it. (As if corporations need help, but whatever.) It would be a shame if Reddit happened to piss off exactly that demographic... like it did.
So all those people who rip videos from youtube (not linking to them but download and reupload, usually with intro/outro and watermarks edited out) are now going to get paid for it?
How is that not theft, again?
B/c it lines spez's pockets with money.
Yeah, it does not make sense to me either. :-| I wonder what happens when these situations are reported -> who even gets blamed, and what consequences should they face? And importantly, will that change in the future, as the number of such violations trends upwards and become more extreme? Will we see entire TV shows, movies & such posted to Reddit now? Anyone could create a community, like "{showname}_123" and start posting links to ~~pirated~~ streamed content, and what would Reddit admins do - forcibly remove the NSFW label from it!? :-P
It's not going to be unpaid mods anymore haha they're fucked
Its watched on their lawsuit, Pirate bay lives on, lol
There are enough COPPA supporters in a lot of governments to make that sound verry illegal
It is illegal - at least, it is in violation of their own ToS where they said it would be up to communities to decide. So for GoT for instance to be marked safe for work against the wishes of the community strains credulity.
The new law that spez is pushing is that you can do whatever you like, so long as you can get away with it. I don't think he realizes the full extent of the ass whooping that he has signed on for, by ditching the moderators that he "does not need", thus opening up the door to all manner of let's just leave it at "file sharing needs" that would just LOVE to make use of an entirely unmoderated website?