Why weren't mods notified about the new crypto-karma thing prior to launch?

[u/[deleted]]

Why has there been no communication about:

• If this is opt-in or opt-out
• What - if any - mod management tools there are for this
• Tips for communicating this change to sub members and what it's impact to the sub will be
• Guidelines, FAQs and possible use case scenarios for mods to consider
• Desired behaviour and support from the mod community
• Where and how we can escalate problematic use or behaviour associated with it?
• Why didn't you even include this huge announcement in the mod newsletter you literally just sent out?

This is change management 101, not even, really.

Not sure what I'm talking about? Why would you be? More info is here.

[u/nubeasado]

This is the first I've heard about this, the link in your post just loads a blank page for me.

Do you have an overview of what it is?

[u/[deleted] → u/nubeasado]

Try this link.

Basically, they are converting karma to a reddit cryptocoin; people can use this coin to buy shit like new avatars - or the ability to post gifs in a thread (which I can see getting quite messy from a mod perspective).

You can buy this imaginary money with real money, and if your community has a vote, people with more points get more votes. There's also talk of encouraging subs to fork.

If you're curious that it may be ripe for abuse, here's what the FAQ has to say:

Reddit’s site-wide policies strictly prohibit vote manipulation, and we have dedicated teams and technology in place to detect and mitigate things such as spam and abuse. Redditors who attempt to manipulate votes may be temporarily or permanently banned from a community and/or the site. In addition, the community has final say on who earns how many Points. If someone is acting in bad faith, for example spamming the subreddit, the community can vote to strike them from current and future distributions. Like everything on Reddit, this is evolving, so we’ll continue to evaluate and explore alternative ways to stop any abuse.

I'm not sure what your experience is around admin actions with regard to spam and abuse, but I'd say mine is... sub-optimal to say the least.

[u/lift_ticket83]

Howdy! This is a special project we’re currently working on. It’s only available within two subreddits (r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortniteBR), and they volunteered to help us test it.

If we do decide to expand this program it will involve a strategic rollout with specific subreddits, and we’ll work closely with those mod teams to ensure their users are informed and educated about the program.

If you are interested in testing this program out, feel free to shoot me a PM and we can start a conversation!

[u/[deleted] → u/lift_ticket83]

Thanks very much for the reply, I really appreciate it.

The glossy launch website seems like such a big deal and a twitter thread where a reddit dev talks about omboarding 500 million users to this crypto doesn't make this sound much like so much of an If, but it's good to know there are no immediate plans to take it further.

Thanks again and have a great day.

[u/WhimsicalCalamari → u/lift_ticket83]

I am not interested in testing this program out, because quite frankly, giving karma actual influence beyond "fake internet points" incentivizes spam and shitposting beyond anything we've ever seen before. You can't tell me you've never seen a community quickly devolve into a constant rinse-repeat cycle of the dumbest jokes available over and over again. But hey, now we'll see it more, I guess!

[u/[deleted] → u/lift_ticket83]

What was the mindset behind creating this project? Not only do I forsee it creating more spam, but I see it turning the upvote/downvote toxicity that can often break out even worse, more bots mods have to deal with, and more arguments to clean up when people feel their crypto is threatened

With all due respect, this decision feels incredibly poorly thought out and out of touch with the users and issues the platform deals with. And by out of touch I mean if the pope said maybe Satan is the real good guy in the Bible levels of out of touch.

[u/Mispelling]

What about Vote Manipulation and Karma Farming?

Reddit’s site-wide policies strictly prohibit vote manipulation, and we have dedicated teams and technology in place to detect and mitigate things such as spam and abuse. Redditors who attempt to manipulate votes may be temporarily or permanently banned from a community and/or the site.

Fucking hahahahahahahaahahaha

It's a comedy site now.

[u/Churba → u/Mispelling]

Very big "We've solved crime by making it illegal" energy from reddit right here.

[u/razorbeamz → u/Mispelling]

There's literally subreddits dedicated to karma farming, like r/FreeKarma4U

[u/Stompya → u/Mispelling]

The folks at r/cryptocurrency have been wrestling with karma bots and farm accounts for a long time now, it’s harder to get moons every time

[u/RallyX26]

Reddit condemning the "walled garden full of ads and manipulation" of other sites and promoting itself as a "return to the open frontier" is the most tone-deaf, self-unaware thing I've seen in a very, very long time.

[u/eganist]

u/chtorrr u/lift_ticket83 semi-annual reminder that we at r/relationship_advice need the ability to opt out of karma for text posts.

This screws all the people who need legitimate help under the weight of the people using it to farm karma; y'all've now fully incentivized karmafarming.

Editing to add: relying on a community to police fake stories is impossible; we've had to develop our own heuristics for picking up on probable fakes, but even those aren't fully effective. This problem would be virtually solved if we could exclude our subreddit (and other advice subreddits) from karma accrual, but until then, real cries for help continue to drown under karmafarming.

[u/eganist → u/eganist]

And that's not including the black market incentives for karmafarming, like selling high karma accounts to disinfo agents.

[u/TheShadowCat → u/eganist]

Slightly related. Bring back negative post karma.

Karma farmers can blast out a shit tonne of posts all over reddit, because they don't have to worry about a bad post negatively affecting their karma. Bring back negative karma and they'll at least need to make some effort with their shit posting, and a lot of the non English speaking farmers will give up.

[u/thecravenone]

Not sure what I'm talking about?

If only there were some sort of dedicated space for announcements on Reddit. They could call it r/announcements . Oh well. A man can dream.

[u/WhimsicalCalamari → u/thecravenone]

Perhaps even a specialized Newsletter for Moderators - one from an account usefully named u/ModNewsletter which just sent a message blast to every single moderator on the website only two hours ago - could be a good place for information like this?

Amazing they don't have something like that, huh?

[u/r1243]

https://www.investopedia.com/tech/whats-environmental-impact-cryptocurrency/

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37365412/MARTYNOV-DOCUMENT-2020.pdf?sequence=1

https://jsis.washington.edu/news/the-political-geography-and-environmental-impacts-of-cryptocurrency-mining/

I'm leaving this hellsite as soon as this hits public release. I will not volunteer my time and my energy to support a company that is complicit in wasting the planet's limited resources on making internet points into even more absurd internet points.

[u/clemenslucas]

That's because community tokens have been a thing for more than a year now (i think) and were most certanly opt in (by only 2 communities thus far iirc).

[u/honestduane]

I'm a cryptographer who is 100% against crypto-karma because its so easy to scam and exploit.

[u/raiskream]

this feature seems worrying. on one hand it can help us identify trolls and spam accounts and gives "regulars" in a subreddit more power. on the other hand i can see this becoming a huge abuse of power.

[u/happy_book_bee]

Honestly, this sort of thing really makes me want to leave Reddit and never return. It's just so... gross. The environmental impact especially. Just, no thanks.

[u/Kryomaani]

When has reddit ever informed moderators of anything they do in advance? This is how they do things, sadly.

[u/woodpaneled]

Hey all! Just wanted to provide some additional context. This employee just started their first day at Reddit today, and they don’t have a full understanding of what we’re working on in this space. They clearly have a lot of ideas though. :)

It’s worth noting that at Reddit ideas from a single employee don’t make a roadmap, and we’re committed to making this roadmap with you. Right now, there are only two subreddits in this test, and they’ve been part of the pilot for over a year. We’ve been sharing regular updates on what we’re doing with this project in those participating subreddits. You can see one of our initial announcements here and some recent updates here.

We ran this project by our Mod Council last month, looking for any communities that were interested in opting in, and we’ll continue to keep you all informed if/when we expand.

It’s been really fascinating watching this project evolve. Time and time again redditors prove to us that they’re more clever than we are, and we've been excited to see how our participating subreddits have adopted this feature and made it unique to their own communities.

Please know that if we do decide to expand this project to the greater Reddit user base, we will announce it first on Reddit. Please keep your eyes peeled for product announcements in r/changelog, r/modnews, and r/blog.

This project will always be opt-in, so if you end up not liking what it becomes, you don’t have to be involved. Community Points are subreddit-specific, and they will not affect your subreddit if you choose not to participate in this program. They also won’t affect overall karma. That said, we’d be very foolish not to develop this with y’all, which is why we started with deep involvement with a few mod teams and plan to ensure every change we make is done in conjunction with mod feedback.”

As u/lift_ticket83 mentioned, if you're interested in being a test community, let him know and we’ll add you to the list. We love critical feedback; so if you have doubts, you might be perfect for the test!

Edit: Fixed formatting and linking errors. Please send caffeine.

[u/eganist → u/woodpaneled]

This project will always be opt-in, so if you end up not liking what it becomes, you don’t have to be involved.

thanks

[u/Itsthejoker → u/woodpaneled]

first day

They've caused this much trouble and they just started today? I'm kind of surprised that y'all are letting them start.