"Reddit launches moderator rewards program amid sitewide discontent"
You know what? I doubt that this will work. Dan Ariely in the book "Predictably Irrational" has a chapter dedicated to being paid for a service versus providing a favor.
AFAIK (and I could be wrong about this) most of the moderators that Reddit pissed are volunteers. They are not paid.
Now, the thing is that some people are willing to do volunteer work, for the betterment of humanity.
The problem comes when you want to start compensating them for the work they were doing for free. If you want to compensate them for the amount of work they are really doing, you'd go bankrupt. So you reason that you can give them a modest amount of money. You don't go bankrupt, and them getting something is better than them getting nothing.
Except that when you start giving them something, you've moved outside the gift economy and into the realm of pecuniary interest. People start comparing and they are not happy. So you lose more volunteers.
Reddit is apparently not going to pay moderators... so they may not actually move from the gift economy to some pecuniary realm. Still, it remains to be seen how their overture is received. I'm not convinced that "gifts" of digital trophies cannot be seen in a pecuniary manner. In his book, Ariely was looking at situations that were much simpler than the mess that Reddit made.
I'm still skeptical that this is going to make a difference.
#Reddit #RedditBlackout #DanAriely #PredictablyIrrational
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/reddit-mod-helper-program-update-moderation-protest/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
