Since not everyone is experiencing this, I'd like to understand: Is there some mechanistic model of using reddit to boost income by some form of outside-reddit outcome? is this actually a business model?

Because I cannot understand how "pay to post" works unless you are somehow bypassing the "promoted" tag which shows inline adverts, and able to achieve advertising class outcomes by being in-flow inside a subreddit.

Help me understand. What did I miss?

I can't see simple read-to-post ratio working as a filter to identify high posting users who are securing a benefit by using reddit for free. Nor, semantic analysis. It has to be something else.

Even wierder, since reddit is "if you host it they will come" the idea of asking content producers doing it for free to pay for the privilege of posting content.. I mean is that it?

I post random shit on reddit. When will I be asked to pay?

(I have nothing riding on this. I can post random shit here just fine, to meet my "post random shit" urge)

"Hi Mike, you won't be able to start organically posting until we get ads up and running, and if you stop spending, the organic side will be banned again as I mentioned previously."