I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium
I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.
Haha. This is where the Fediverse can take over if people don’t take the piss.
Some years ago, my favourite tracker (The Box) went kaput - and I’ve known many others go down due to various issues - one of which is usually financial strains.
So people can donate - for someone earning 300 a week, it’d be trivial to throw 30 in the pot just one time in a year…
So sure, To be valued by Reddit, you must pay $50 per year - and if you don’t, then you’re not a customer, you’re a commodity. Creators do so because they feel compelled to create and share, Mods do so because they have a personal need to contribute whether they get paid or not.
So the ONLY answer is to say ‘Sure, we’ll carry on - but it’s clear we aren’t valued by Reddit - so we’ll do it outside’.
Mods don’t contribute financially to Reddit, or at least they don’t have to. (I’d be less likely to trust a mod who did, actually, but that’s me.) Mods are used and abused by Reddit. They provide value/work for which they are not compensated.
Reddit will allow you to remove ads for $50 a year but they don’t actually value their users at all. We already knew that of course but it became blatantly obvious during this whole situation.
Reddit provided the servers, the infrastructure, and built functionality to allow communities to form on Reddit and for that they do deserve credit. However, the value from Reddit doesn’t come from commodity servers but rather all the content that the users have contributed over the many years.
Ol’ Spez talks about that content as if it was his, as if Reddit created it. They have zero respect for you whether or pay $50 a year or not.