It looks like they're wanting to do a full rebrand as more of an actual social network, I think. Monetizing every single aspect of the platform sounds like a terrible way to go about it.
how could they even have the cashflow to support that?
I'm guessing new deals with advertisers. These changes will incentivize more neutral, advertiser-friendly comments on their platform. I imagine that's going to make them more lucrative to advertisers going forward, so that their ads are shown next to harmless memes instead of bad-faith political arguments in cat pic subreddits.
Pretty sure that's exactly what they want. Those are way more neutral/marketable qualities to advertisers than "Sometimes your ad will be shown next to a 10-page, expletive-ridden tirade about poop-knives, and no, they won't explain what it is".
It's rumored that Reddit is about to launch a new "creator program" that will pay Redditors for high-karma activity on the site. This change is probably meant to accommodate this new feature.
Just tested it on your comment, from Kbin. My upvote syncs over to OP's linked instance, but not the downvote. Not sure if that's specific to that instance, though.
On some level, it's probably not that important that people understand all this stuff
Maybe not the average user. But the ones who are very vocal with their outrage should definitely have an understanding of what these processes actually entail. Thanks for taking the time to write this, I hope people actually take the time to read and understand!
My understanding is that most instances are currently being either self-funded (sort of as passion projects), or accepting donations to cover hosting/maintenance costs.
