Reddit is going to bring back the old Awards reward system

Reddit will restore the old rewards system. The social network previously removed those Awards, but now says that the alternative was 'less fun' and that it was unclear what that meant for the recipient. Users can now immediately purchase new awards.

Reddit writes in a post that the reward system is being overhauled again. Last year, the company announced that it would discontinue both Coins and Awards, which eventually happened in September. Reddit stopped using Coins and Awards because there were dozens of them, which seemed very messy and confusing. Instead, users could give 'golden upvotes', which were less intrusive but made it clear that a particular post or comment was appreciated. “Although the golden upvote worked simpler in theory, in practice it went wrong,” Reddit now writes. “It wasn't as fun or expressive as the old awards and it wasn't clear how that helped the recipient.” Reddit also says it 'messed up'.

The social network will now again have a form of rewards that resembles the old Awards system. According to Reddit, this has been slightly adjusted. Some new Awards become available and the old ones have been redesigned. There will also be a button directly below posts that allows users to purchase new Awards. On the other hand, Awards are displayed less prominently in the feed, so that it is less cluttered. Users can also no longer give rewards to posts or comments marked as nsfw.

The rewards only consist of Awards, but not Gold. That always had an important cultural status on Reddit, but the social network says that users now have to buy Gold with real money and then use it to buy Awards to spend. Gold can also be earned with enough karma, but Reddit says that earned Gold cannot be used to buy new Awards.

Reddit is further expanding the Contributor Program, including to the Netherlands and Belgium. With that program, certain users who have accumulated a lot of karma can earn money immediately. That program was previously only available to American users. Now 34 new countries have been added.

The fear that the more extensive Contributor Program will cause more karma farming or spam is unfounded, according to Reddit. The company says it didn't see a big increase in that during the first six months of the rollout.