Ms. Penny Oaken
About a month ago, as a result of a discussion with some other Reddit moderators, I came to a conclusion — it was not wholly inaccurate, but it was wrong.
Jul 13, 2023 at 9:02pmMastodon for iOS
Show threadMs. Penny OakenJul 13, 2023

The discussion came about because Reddit has been steadily stripping away “Gilded” as a feature of the site — the “Gilded” feeds for users, subreddits, home pages, Popular, and All were still present on old.reddit.com, but were entirely missing from new Reddit, and from the Apps, and they had been increasingly resulting in timeouts when fetching them — “We took too long to make this page for you”.

Those timeouts started about a year ago; Gilded being missing from feeds, maybe two years back.

Show threadMs. Penny OakenJul 13, 2023

They’d also announced that they wanted to make Reddit “simpler” for people, & awards apparently weren’t simple enough (??).

Something we’d also noticed starting as far back as 2019 was that awards were often used to harass people, as a vector for delivering anonymous messages. The Free awards they piloted as a way to get people into subscribing to hand out awards were used *extremely* often to harass.

Then there was a specific intersection —

Show threadMs. Penny OakenJul 13, 2023

The intersection of Virtual Currencies and “Reddit Coins”, and other Reddit awards, like Reddit Gold,

VERSUS

New US Internal Revenue Service regulations on Virtual Currencies.

Something along the lines of “if it’s fungible, it’s a currency, and therefore you have to collect PATRIOT ACT PII tracking / report the movement / prevent laundering / report them as taxable”.

Because they were purchasable directly with US funds / any national currency, Reddit Coins = Virtual Currency (?)

Show threadMs. Penny OakenJul 13, 2023

Maybe, maybe not. But Reddit doesn’t want to be a test case and wants to eliminate liabilities.

A mo th ago, with the very bad, bad handling of the API TOS changeover and shut down of third party apps, as well as their apparent movement to maximizing revenues from advertisement, I thought they were going to ditch Reddit Premium altogether.

But they’re keeping it.

There just won’t be any “coins” or awards from those coins.

The IRS regs on virtual currencies may have killed Reddit Gold.

Show threadMs. Penny OakenOct 15, 2023

And now, three months later, the situation is that they sunsetted Reddit Premium altogether and replaced it with a “tip the user, company takes a cut” system which they branded Reddit Gold.

All the finances are handled by Stripe and/or third party financial services vendors.

So All Of The Above appears to be correct, w/r/t the causes of the change.

Show threadMartin SeegerOct 15, 2023

@PennyOaken A lesson learned a long time ago: if it smells like shit, looks like shit and it is traveling fast toward a fan: just cut your losses and run. I really don’t are what happens to Reddit any more.

Treat them and X as if they were already dead, bankrupt and shutdown.

Unluckily I have problems of translating the germanic concept of “Acht” (not the number, but the punishment) into English. We need something like that for businesses.

Show threadMs. Penny OakenOct 15, 2023
@masek The best English expression I’ve encountered for _Acht_ is the notion that there’s a social contract & that those who demonstrate a practice of violating the social contract, cannot avail themselves of appeal to it when society moves against them — or the legalistic proverb that Equity Serves Those With Clean Hands.
Show threadJollyOrcOct 16, 2023
@masek @PennyOaken you mean shunning?
Show threadMartin SeegerOct 16, 2023

@jollyorc @PennyOaken "Shunning" is based on the social aspect while the "Acht" was primarily a legal instrument (or "Friedlosigkeit" as it was called in the nordic languages, "friðleas" in old English).

You automatically lost all your posessions, everyone was allowed to take them. You lost all civil rights, all oaths towards you were undone. That was a fearsome instrument.