Communities are the lifeblood of the Internet. They are the places where magic happens online — where people meet others like themselves, think and talk about the same things, and laugh at the same jokes. From newsgroups and chatrooms and forums, communities have always been the centers of the Internet that draw people in.But online communities are much more limited than their counterparts in the real world. In the real world, communities are independent entities, free to choose where and how they hang out. No one tells them what to do or where to go.
Today's online communities are not like this. They are trapped inside apps and platforms, where they do not have independence or control anything of value. This limitation makes them second-class citizens, unable to chart their own destiny on the Internet. It is time to put communities in their rightful place as the foundation of the Internet.
It is time for them to take back ownership and control. It is time for a change.
putting aside the mountain of laughs that this paragraph produces ("take back ownership and control" is particularly egregious given the third-party app and subreddit takeovers), it somehow gets even better
Community PointsCommunity Points are the first step towards a better future for online communities. In order to be truly independent from platforms like Reddit, communities need to be owned by their members in ways that platforms cannot take away. With the advent of blockchain technology, we now have a way to establish this freedom in a decentralized and secure way.
that's right: reddit is now on the blockchain, baby. the future is now
one thing reddit "had" for a while was high-quality content, because outside of the basic karma there weren't specific factors around gaming the community. you just created shit people wanted to see, and ideally people would see it and toss you one of those shiny ↑s.
that wasn't good enough; because reddit is now trying to get people in on the "post to earn" fake money train, they have all sorts of new gimmicks for you to try out
Community RulesCommunities have the flexibility to set their own distribution rules for their Community Points. These rules can be designed to address the specific needs of the community.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of factors that can be used to shape distribution rules:
- Post type, such as link vs text vs image vs video (e.g., "link posts should get 50% of karma of other posts")
- Post flair (e.g., "reduce karma from COMEDY flairs to 10%")
- Posts vs comments (e.g., "double comment karma")
- Per post or per comment (e.g., "limit max karma from a single post to 1k karma")
- Posts or comments per day (e.g., "only count the first 20 comments a users makes per day")
- Post or comment body length (e.g., "comments over 240 characters should get 2x karma")
- A specific post (e.g., "don't count karma from the daily discussion")
- Making a post or comment (e.g., "making a post reduces karma by 25")
- Membership (e.g., "users with a membership get 25% bonus to karma they earned")
almost all of these are horrendous ideas that will cause people to stop posting genuine things and start posting shit specifically around these. text posts higher than image posts? people are going to start making text posts that just include an image link. using certain flairs lowers value? people will just stop using flairs or add wrong ones. content not long enough? 240chars240chars240chars240chars240chars240chars240chars
i'm one of the dumbest people on the planet (evidence: see prior posts) and even i could tell you that this is an incredible, incredible moment of "firing the entire machine gun directly into your leg". but here we are, somehow.
somebody should let reddit know they're a few years late to the grift; they should have pivoted to ai already.
