The initial purpose of karma is to serve as user reputation and indicate that the person with tons of downvotes as trolls. It used to be a good system until spez realised the importance of engagement in social media, and then karma became a dopamine-inducing instrument to keep users on the site.
When I was on reddit, some users would tell me my karma or comment is only going down for going against the grain. I hit back that they are the losers for caring about imaginary points. I also hate that if you are logged into new reddit, it would notify you of new upvotes on your comment. I don’t care! I’m not a kid anymore to revel on receiving participation trophies. The new reddit design is clearly for children who don’t know any better and this is why I think reddit will last longer than we would wish it not to be. If I want a dopamine hit, I’d prefer being notified of new responses, or I would look at some of my upvoted comments if I am feeling that shallow.
It used to be a good system until spez realised the importance of engagement in social media, and then karma became a dopamine-inducing instrument to keep users on the site.
Of course that’s what sells – being engaged as much as playing an MMORPG.
That given enough karma, the account can then be sold to anyone with money.
Your point about going against the grain and being downvoted is a great point. Maybe reddit wouldn’t be so one sided if almost everyone wasn’t so concerned about karma points.
It depends on what commuy you are in. Others are better and more open minded.
It also depends on the time of the day whether you get upvote or downvote. You could express an opinion and it will get massive upvotes. But post the same opinion on another day and time and it will get downvoted to oblivion. You get different audience depending on the time and day.
Agreed on the time of day. My guess was always that older people went there after work and during the day it was mostly school age (college and high school) kids. Though I don’t know if that’s true
Considering you will often get permanently banned for saying the wrong thing in the wrong sub…I would say the problem goes far beyond simply counting Karma.
Totally agree about banning at reddit. You have to be a complete uncivil clown to get permanently banned with Lemmy. At reddit if you stray just a bit outside the narrative there you are probably going to get a site wide permanent ban
That’s why you search the last time it was posted, vopy the top comment and compete with the bots for the top spot.
This doesn’t only apply to Reddit. Applies everywhere someone can be banned for something, even here on Lemmy.
You can get banned for voting on Lemmy.
There are some subreddits that REQUIRE a specific Karma level to post or comment. So I understand that and I think that is bullshit. Imagine posting something relevant on reddit but you get massively downvoted so you run like a little baby and delete it because you have to protect your karma total. Best thing about Lemmy is no karma bullshit. I have some posts or comments (that of course don’t violate Lemmy rules) but that get lots of downvotes and I couldn’t care less.
“I said what I said”
Sometimes I wanna tell people what I really think about them but it’s not the karma/vote counts that stop me. It’s usually the rules about being civil. But god damn some people are infuriating.
Yes - you can’t reply to people with comments like “you fucking asshole” or even worse wishing them harm or even death. I think all social media platforms should have that rule. Geez it’s nameless people on the internet wasting time why get emotionally involved with an opinion you disagree with?
Some people–like tankies and fascists-- don’t deserve respect.
I turned off my inbox notifications amd my experience got dramatically better lol
True
