[johnnyanmac]

> You would do exactly the same if you ran an expensive website.

I'd keep it from being expensive to host to begin with. I wouldn't try to roll my own video player nor image hosting since I started as an aggregator where people were okay using external links. I wouldn't grow the website to the point of 2000+ employees to do... well, whatever reddit was trying to maximize profits. I also wouldn't kick out attempts for others to provide functionality that other power users may enjoy. Heck, I don't even think Reddit Gold is a bad idea (engaged users paying for a "super vote" that puts shiny things next to a post but has relatively small effects on the actual voting algorithm. Perfect), but I wouldn't axe it and then try to make a program where people are incentivized to further spam low quality content for money.

I'm not saying you don't require a lot of staff to maintain such a site. But for some reference, Wikipedia is ~400 employees and that sounds much more reasonable to maintain a top site with very little dynamic content. But the attitude of tech companies isn't to be satisfied with modest profits. So I don't have much sympathy here.