FINANCE

You can now convert your Reddit gold into cash! Through Reddit’s new Contributor Program, you may exchange the gold that users have awarded your posts for actual currency. As part of its new “Contributor Program,” Reddit announced on Monday this September that it will allow users to convert Reddit gold into actual money. It also provided information about the new system that would replace Reddit Gold, which allowed users to express special thanks for particularly helpful or popular postings. Since the Reddit Gold upgrade is so important to the Contributor Program, that’s where we’ll begin. In the new system, users can purchase gold by either long-pressing the upvote button on mobile or hovering over it on desktop. Six alternative gold purchasing choices will be available on Reddit, ranging from $1.99 for one gold to $49 for 25 gold. Your “golden upvote” will appear next to the remark or post on Reddit. The previous system lets you give a bunch of different awards in addition to Reddit gold, including awards custom to individual subreddits. But Reddit Coins officially went away as of September 12th, so you can’t use them to award gold under this new system. I asked Reddit why it didn’t let people transfer over their coins to spend in the new system. “In the past, there were both paid and free coins that had been distributed, making it incredibly challenging,” spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said. “After a lot of consideration, we determined it was better to start from scratch.” Crucially, if you earn a golden upvote, it might contribute to your ability to earn real money from the Contributor Program. If you’re eligible for the program and go through a verification process, you’ll get monthly payments based on the gold and karma you earn on “eligible contributions.” According to Rathschmidt, “eligible contributions” are as follows: Unless they contain explicit sexual content, graphic violence, or other mature topics (such as alcohol or gambling), posts and comments are eligible to receive gold. Content posted in a community designated as Not Safe for Work (NSFW), quarantined, or trauma support will not be eligible for gold. Similarly, you can’t buy gold for something on someone’s profile page; it’s only available in communities, feeds, and the post page. Rathschmidt told The Verge how the Contributor Program’s rewards would be distributed. You must be 18 or older, a resident of a “supported location” (currently, only the United States), and in “good standing” to participate in the Contributor Program. According to Rathschmidt, if you qualify, the verification process will take up to a few minutes. Participants might range from regular users to moderators. A stranger’s gift of gold has new significance with the launch of the Contributor Program. The method is set up so that users may make money off of their Reddit posts (the good kind that others use Google to find). But the system may alter the Reddit community. The fact that most helpful contributions to Reddit are done without any hope of financial reward shows how much value individuals place on the site. As a result, I have more faith in them. The promise of actual currency in exchange for contributions could significantly alter the site’s culture, as evidenced by the evolution of X (previously Twitter) in part as a result of the obnoxious posts from verified X members attempting to make cash via the site’s revenue-sharing structure. I’m also concerned that bad actors may figure out how to take advantage of the Contributor Program to make a buck without making any real contributions. Reddit’s internal safety signals, Know Your Customer screens, gold purchase restrictions, user reporting, and audits by admins (Reddit staff) are some of the measures Rathschmidt mentioned when I asked how Reddit may stop bad actors from using the system. When I questioned how Reddit planned to prevent moderators from abusing the new scheme by enforcing their restrictions on community posts, Rathschmidt stated that eligible moderators would be required to follow the Moderator Code of Conduct and the contributor monetization policy. You can see which communities are included in the initial rollout of the new Reddit Gold system in a post from a Reddit admin, and the system will be available for “eligible content” on Reddit’s native mobile apps in “the coming week.” The web version of the feature will be live “later this year.” On Monday, Reddit’s Contributor Program will be live across desktop and mobile platforms. If you want to see if you can be validated for the program, you can do so by checking your profile. Some Redditors were unhappy with the decision to eliminate the old Reddit Gold system, and this anger was compounded when the company began charging developers based on their API usage, which caused some large third-party apps to cease operations. While complaints over API fees have generally subsided, some users took the opportunity presented by the recent r/Place interactive canvas to vent their frustrations to CEO Steve Huffman. RELATED: