>Sounds like they are proposing reddit shouldn't make money through the content, and die if that is the only path.
I think if you did a deep dive on reddit that covered everything you would see that they have struggled with this issue since they launched. It's really not my problem to solve. I add content. Some of that content has value.
They have lots of gifted supporters in the Y-Combinator family who could think of lots of ways to monetize things and I don't worry about how they end up doing it until it reaches the point where it is not possible to trust that you are interacting with a thread posted by a live person or one that is a repost from a bot farm.
Reddit is over-run with bots now and the average user has no way to know which users are live humans versus bots used to drive traffic. I've always been a "don't piss down my neck and tell me it's raining" type of person. Credibility is key. Reddit needs a way for ordinary users who would like to contribute content - free or paid, I don't care - to recognize bots and other artificial traffic like paid adverts or sponsored posts. Camouflaging users wastes my time when I need to look at post history to decide whether they are real or just karma farming.
In the end I agree with the part about dying if this is the only path for reddit. All good things come to an end. That's why corporations can live forever.
I think if you did a deep dive on reddit that covered everything you would see that they have struggled with this issue since they launched. It's really not my problem to solve. I add content. Some of that content has value.
They have lots of gifted supporters in the Y-Combinator family who could think of lots of ways to monetize things and I don't worry about how they end up doing it until it reaches the point where it is not possible to trust that you are interacting with a thread posted by a live person or one that is a repost from a bot farm.
Reddit is over-run with bots now and the average user has no way to know which users are live humans versus bots used to drive traffic. I've always been a "don't piss down my neck and tell me it's raining" type of person. Credibility is key. Reddit needs a way for ordinary users who would like to contribute content - free or paid, I don't care - to recognize bots and other artificial traffic like paid adverts or sponsored posts. Camouflaging users wastes my time when I need to look at post history to decide whether they are real or just karma farming.
In the end I agree with the part about dying if this is the only path for reddit. All good things come to an end. That's why corporations can live forever.