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Reddit Tests Tipping Users (cnet.com) 64

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Reddit is experimenting with tipping users, starting with the shittymorph subreddit, a group dedicated to the man who has memorably bamboozled many a reader with sneaky comments ending in a reference to a famous pro-wrestling match called Hell in a Cell. A Reddit admin with the username "internetmallcop" posted a thread on Tuesday announcing the experiment, calling it a "new feature to support u/shittymorph." Anyone in the group can now tip shittymorph for content he posts in his own subreddit.

A "tip" option appears below shittymorph's content. Clicking on it opens a window with suggested $3, $5 or $10 tips, or the choice to select another amount. You can input your credit card number directly into the window. The payments are handled by processor Stripe. Shittymorph responded to the admin post by saying he is "super grateful and honored" to be picked for the launch and beta testing. As of this writing Wednesday morning, the comment shows a $75.00 tip total in green above it. Internetmallcop explained in a comment how the tipping breaks out: "If you were to tip $100, about $78.5 goes to u/shittymorph, $18.5 to Reddit, and $3 to Stripe." It's unclear if Reddit plans to expand tipping beyond this experiment, and if it might extend to all users, or just certain content creators.
As for why Shittymorph was chosen to test the feature, it "may be due in part to the Hell in a Cell writer's infamy and extensive fan base on the site," reports CNET. "Shittymorph's intriguing backstory to his creative Reddit comment efforts stem from the tragic loss of his father. He's also known for occasionally posting about his rescue dog Scooby."
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Reddit Tests Tipping Users

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  • by FFOMelchior ( 979131 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:21PM (#58191446)
    working with some of the old reddit techs as a contractor. This was way before spez, by the way. Even then, there were ramblings about adopting a tip system. Of course, this was still back before social media website had found ways to monetize by selling data, so it seemed like a desperate grasp that would never work. I'd only be venturing a guess, but the deciding moment this all changed was probably in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of Mankind as he fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why Mankind had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

    • Every.damn.time.
  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:40PM (#58191514) Homepage Journal

    Tipping is for cows. Silly cows. Reddit users say moo. moo. moo!

  • "Struggling" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:42PM (#58191518) Journal

    Between $6 avocado toast or Starbucks coffee, kickstarter, and stupid crap like tipping people for bloviating on the web, I'm starting to doubt that millennials are struggling quite as much a they claim.

    Ps: where is my tip for this puissant wisdom?

    • I can send you a bag of avocados and a loaf of bread, how's that?

      • I can send you a bag of avocados and a loaf of bread, how's that?

        Will they ever ripen? Are they stringy AF? Most of the avos in my local super (in Fort Bragg, CA) are crap. Every so often they have some good ones, but most of those must be going to Whore Foods or something.

        • LPT: if the avocados you bought are hard, rubbery & stringy, then it means they're not ripe yet. Let them hang out a bit on your counter until they ripen.
          • LPT: if the avocados you bought are hard, rubbery & stringy, then it means they're not ripe yet. Let them hang out a bit on your counter until they ripen.

            I've been making food with avocados since before my age got out of the double digits. They didn't used to send the super stringy ones to supermarkets, and ripening has no effect on the stringiness whatsoever. Also, lots of these avos never actually ripen, they just go bad.

      • As long as you call it deconstructed you should be able to get away with it.
    • Yeah I too was on the up and up but then I drank a coffee with my avocado breakfast and the bank decided I couldn't afford a $500k house. Now I sit on reddit begging for tips to try and make ends meet.

      #missunderstoodmilenial.

  • good content.

    Are people still using reddit? I have 3 or 4 subs I look at a couple times a week but I haven't posted anything there in 8 years/

    • by Speare ( 84249 )
      I often say the same thing about Slashdot, to be honest. This used to break news stories fast, but now it plays catch-up to C|NET for gosh sakes.
    • They are in the top 5 most visited sites right now actually. That is why they had the massive cleanup a few years ago for questionable content. So they could look attractive to advertisers. The place is one big echo chamber and the comments are terrible as ever. Voat seemed more interesting but their demographic now is dim bulb conspiracy theorists. Slashdot used to have funny and clever trolls but now its 100% copy and pasted spam.

      • by kalpol ( 714519 )
        Once you drop all the default subs and subscribe to what you like, it's just like Usenet but with voting. There are some really epic subreddits, like /r/askhistorians that are really almost a national treasure due to the huge amount of work put in to make it so.
    • by Terwin ( 412356 )

      I know of a couple of subreddits that are quite productive. /lfg (Looking for group)has a huge number of groups and players looking to play RPGs, with the most recent thread rarely more than a few minutes old (mostly D&D 5th however) /hfy (Humanity F- Yeah!)seems average more than a dozen original content stories posted per day

      Not too sure about the rest of it, but the bit where I dipped my toes in seems to be quite lively.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:57PM (#58191580)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @09:07PM (#58191626) Homepage

    I stopped logging in and now just use it to cruise the most popular stories. My stress level went way down and I spend far less time there.

    Life is better without Reddit.

    • Life is better without Reddit.

      Reddit is just communicating with other peop... oh I see what you did there.

  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @10:12PM (#58191840) Homepage Journal

    Hi, I'm Bruce Perens. If you know me, you know that I don't usually post anything entitled "WTF". But really, "WTF"? Why would anyone mind want to encourage this person and his documented behavior? It sounds like tipping an anonymous coward on Slashdot. Which might make sense if it's tipping them over the edge of a tall building. But really, WTF?

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      It's an experiment on a (presumably) mostly uncontroversial Reddit personality, who has enough of a following that he'd likely get some tips. I imagine not many Redditors have their own subreddit that actually gets frequented.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Oh common Bruce, you know what this is about and are being coy. Continued commoditization of micro-user interactions on the web. They are applying the smartphone / lootbox / DLC / microtransaction / upgrade fee / recurring service revenue / etc model to everything on the web. If there is a part of human interaction that can be leveraged for a fee, major corporate entities are going to find a way to capitalize on it. The icing on the cake is that all of their backends are riding on linux, and they are making

    • Because /u/shittymorph is a genius at stringing people along with plausible prose, and often you don't know what is going to hit you until the last line. It wasn't just a few times either--he was quite prolific for a while, and even if you knew in the back of your mind that he existed, he'd still get you.

      You might not find that entertaining, but a lot of people did. He really has a unique kind of talent.

      It's a bit of Barnum, I suppose. "This way to the fantastic egress", and when you realized what happen

    • You probably weren't expecting a serious response to a post entitled "WTF". But then again, you're a self-confessed neophyte of alphaghetti grunticons, tip-toeing tentatively into a Brave New World of soon-to-shatter Spanish dominion.

      As all pre-modern narratives do, this story begins at the beginning.

      ———

      Once upon a time there was a coyote. Legend has it that he was a solitary, Edisonian ne'er-do-well. But this is not entirely true. Solitary, yes. Somewhat crackpotty, indubitably. Persisten

    • Don't worry Bruce, I'm also an older here and even if I go on reddit for 10 years, I don't understand all this is about :)

  • Because there isn't incentive enough for Reddit users to come up with the most intricate lies to get as much upvote karma as possible, we will now offer monetary incentives for the most interesting (aka fabricated) content. Fakes news levels will sky rocket, fake personal stories, fake pitty stories, fake everything all to get as much traffic, and as much freely donated money, as possible.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      You forgot: banning rising submission and reposting it from own account.

  • a group dedicated to the man who has memorably bamboozled many a reader with sneaky comments ending in a reference to a famous pro-wrestling match called Hell in a Cell. A Reddit admin with the username "internetmallcop" posted a thread on Tuesday announcing the experiment, calling it a "new feature to support u/shittymorph." Anyone in the group can now tip shittymorph for content he posts in his own subreddit.

    Even as someone who posts to ./ from work, I feel somehow completely justified in saying that some people have way too much time on their hands ...

  • a new way to launder money for propaganda subreddits like r/politics. "Oh, isn't this comment declaring AOC a misunderstood genius just marvelous? He're a $20 tip, random user I've never met" *wink wink*.
  • Is this just a clever way to get everyone's money? Do the rollout and make it so everyone can tip and be tipped, get their bank details and permission to debit/credit them, wait six months till its at peak and everyone who will sign up has. Then rinse all the accounts and do a runner. Clever girls.
  • see: https://www.reddit.com/r/tippr... [reddit.com]

    Reddit doesn't control it or get a cut. Works well.

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