
After the latest unrest at Reddit, sparked by its controversial determination to extend its API costs, the platform remains to be cleansing up the mess, and making an attempt to determine a greater method ahead, which can maintain its volunteer moderators completely happy, whereas additionally enabling Reddit to take care of extra management over how its platform operates.
This might assist.
At present, Reddit has introduced a brand new system, which can change its Reddit Gold gift-giving course of, with a brand new means for Reddittors and moderators to earn direct earnings for his or her in-app efforts.
First off, Reddit’s revamping its Reddit Gold course of, as a way to make it simpler for customers to buy and ship rewards in-stream.
As defined by Reddit:
“To buy and award with gold (or “gild”), redditors can lengthy press the upvote icon on cell (or hover over it on desktop) immediately inside the publish or remark they wish to reward. A collection of six gold awarding choices will seem, beginning at $1.99 for one gold, and as much as $49.00 for 25 gold. A golden upvote will seem instead of a daily upvote after gilding.”
So as an alternative of the outdated Reddit Gold system, which allotted cash to Reddit Premium subscribers, customers will now have a brand new method to buy and donate in-app rewards to folks whom they wish to help.
However the subsequent factor is an even bigger deal:
“Individually, we’re additionally introducing a brand new Contributor Program the place qualifying redditors, together with mods, might be rewarded with actual (fiat) cash for the content material they share and contributions they make to Reddit.”

Underneath this new system, redditors who meet the eligibility necessities (18+, account in good standing, and so forth.) will be capable of make precise cash from their content material and efforts within the app, versus simply in-app credibility by karma factors. All customers will nonetheless be capable of achieve karma factors, however for these in this system, they’ll additionally be capable of trade their Gold for money.
So how a lot cash are you able to make?
In line with Reddit’s program overview, there’ll be two tiers inside its Contributor Program: “Contributor” and “High Contributor”.
“A Contributor earns 100 – 4,999 karma in a 12-month interval. A High Contributor earns 5,000+ karma inside a 12-month interval. There’s a regular payout fee for Contributors ($0.90 per 1 gold) and an enhanced payout fee for High Contributors ($1.00 per 1 gold).”
So it’s based mostly on how lively you’re within the app, with the extra lively contributors getting a better fee per gold donation. Basically, High Contributors will take house 50% of the donation granted to them by customers, whereas common contributors will achieve barely much less.
“As soon as enrolled in this system, redditors will obtain funds on a month-to-month foundation. The earnings a redditor receives are calculated based mostly on the quantity of karma earned and gold acquired on their eligible contributions.”
So together, permitted contributors might be receives a commission out every month, which sounds much like X’s new advert income share program, which isn’t stunning, given Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s famous admiration for Elon Musk’s administration model on the app previously referred to as Twitter.
Certainly, again in June, Huffman famous the inspiration that he’d gleaned from Musk’s reformation of Twitter, explaining that:
“My takeaway from Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we will construct a extremely good enterprise on this house at our scale. Now, they’ve taken the dramatic street, and I suppose I can’t sit right here and say that we’re not both, however I feel there’s quite a lot of alternative right here.”
That was primarily in help of Musk’s determination to boost the costs of API entry, with each Reddit and X knowledge getting used to gasoline varied generative AI initiatives. As such, growing entry costs is smart, however the issue is that this has additionally priced out many teachers, small-scale app builders, group initiatives, and extra.
In Reddit’s case, it has brought on the shutdown of fashionable Reddit app “Apollo”, amongst varied different impacts. That’s what initially sparked its moderator protests, whereas ongoing revisions of its mod guidelines have led to additional unrest inside its group.
May this be the answer? May there be a method for Reddit to re-route a few of its income to its moderation and creation parts, as a way to appease these key gamers in its course of?
If it really works out, it may very well be a very good answer, although whether or not customers might be overly eager to buy gold in-stream, and donate that to contributors, is one other query altogether. Up until now, Reddit Premium subscribers have been given an allocation of gold to donate to contributors every month, however now, they’ll must buy these rewards individually, and it’ll be fascinating to see if this catches on.
As such, I wouldn’t be relying on seeing massive payouts from Reddit right away. But when it really works, it’ll allow Reddit to get its high contributors paid, with out having to chop into its personal advert share to do it.
Reddit says that its new Contributor Program will start rolling out as we speak within the US, on each internet and within the cell app. Logged-in redditors can discover out extra about this system through their profile menu. You’ll find out extra about this system right here.