83 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Karma for text-posts (AKA self-posts)
What's not to understand?
They are trying to present this as, "Hey, look, now you can get karma for text posts! It's an additional reward/incentive for taking the time and effort to generate those awesome self posts that get so much attention!"
But, since reddit is an aggregator, and an aggregator is only as good as its content, they are trying to encourage more people to generate more content. Why? There will be a lot of shit, but they don't care about that. They don't actually have to do any of the moderating themselves. As long as there are at least a few more of those legendary-status self-posts in all the crap, that means more attention for reddit, which draws users, which means more people to advertise to/buy reddit gold (and to potentially generate content/spread the word to their friends).
Which is good for reddit, becauuuuuse, as per the user agreement:
You retain the rights to your copyrighted content or information that you submit to reddit ("user content") except as described below.
##***By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.##***
You agree that you have the right to submit anything you post, and that your user content does not violate the copyright, trademark, trade secret or any other personal or proprietary right of any other party.
Please take a look at reddit’s privacy policy for an explanation of how we may use or share information submitted by you or collected from you.
(Emphasis mine)
So, yeah. They are incentivizing more posting because when you self-post they own your shit.
IMO they are downplaying the reason why some of those great posts were generated in the first place: they came from a place of inspiration and effort and not necessarily from a place of greed or attention-seeking. But now reddit is trying to generate artificial inspiration with karma.
Tsk, tsk.
Comment by Scherazade at 19/07/2016 at 20:08 UTC
19 upvotes, 1 direct replies
That bolded bit has been what's been pushing me to maybe avoid posting full stories to writing prompts, now I'm seriously working towards a short stories ebook I can sell for moneys on the internet.
Yes, others have done it successfully, and the legality seems ok, but I'll probably limit myself to see if odd ideas for stories I'm not certain abour work as something people find appealing rather than as a medium to write full stories to entertain people for free.
Comment by emergent_properties at 19/07/2016 at 19:39 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
What's really jarring for me is the difference between what is said and the motives behind what is said.
Comment by Phate4219 at 19/07/2016 at 20:27 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I feel like boiling that paragraph down to "they own your shit" is misleading.
IANAL, but doesnt "non-exclusive" mean that while they have the right to do all that, they dont prevent anyone else from also having those rights?
From my perspective it seems like they're giving themselves the option to use content from their site however they see fit, but they aren't preventing the content creators from doing the same.
If I made some awesome painting that was displayed at an art gallery, said gallery could use essentially the same paragraph to allow themselves to use photos of the painting in their gallery for promotional purposes, etc.
I feel like non-exclusive rights arent quite ownership. I feel like when you "own" something, you have exclusive rights.