Did people actually change what they’d say based on whether or not they thought they’d get upvotes? I always just said what I wanted and used the karma to determine how popular of an opinion it was, so pretty much exactly how Lemmy works now. I don’t think I ever looked at my overall account karma on Reddit.
Yes. It can also trick you into thinking a reactionary opinion is actually a popular one. For example in my country, ireland, there’s been a few incidents were people of different nationalities have done unsavoury things caught on camera. This usually results of the comment section of the ireland sub to have a debate about whether there’s too many immigrants in the country. Whichever side gets more upvotes is widely perceived to have “won” and bystanders will in turn adopt that position.
I don’t think I’ve ever changed an opinion of mine to go along with the hive mind but the karma system has definitely discouraged me from commenting things because I would been downvoted into oblivion. It’s not worth getting into arguments when you can clearly see people not siding with you.
How does this system solve that? Comments still have vote counts and reactionary comments still make it to the top of threads, there’s just no visible count of total aggregated votes.
You’re correct, the entire system is already in place. The only thing that is currently missing is adding up all of someone’s ‘karma’ from their their posts and having it shown on their profile. Some of the apps already have this implemented since it’s easy to incorporate.
That’s not the only thing that’s missing. A total upvote count on my profile page wouldn’t be the problematic element that Reddit has. I would welcome a total upvote count on my profile page.
I’m fine being downvoted to oblivion by some anti-good astrotufing campaign, but it’s getting honest, legitimate opinions slid down and out of discussion that feels risky
I’m definitely anti right wing, but that doesn’t automatically make the left right about everything.
What is true about both sides is that some people just wanna look for a fight/argument and dehumanize their political ‘other’. It’s easy dopamine and righteous rage that drives engagement in every human.
Any good faith comment that points this out in an argument and has credible examples is always worth its salt.
I actually like finding out I’m wrong or my information is incomplete/outdated. I don’t care for unfounded opinions in myself or others regardless of how they make me feel!
It did the opposite for me. I see those threads in r/canada or other posts and I’d comment trying to get downvoted because I hated the circle jerking and manipulation of threads with cliché comment chains intent on being dog whistles. I hated karma and somehow ended up with a stupid amount of it.
The big thing for me is that I’ve seen a lot of people say they’ve had their accounts stalked and harrassed for saying really mild things. With how many times I’ve read “I read your post history and…” over even the most mild disagreements, I absolutely believe this happens on a regular basis. Dropping an obviously unpopular opinion feels like an easy way to become a victim.
I’ve had my account stalked! Right in the middle of it I switched from Kbin to Lemmy (so I could try out the apps) and had to inform my stalker about the new account.
Frustrated and annoyed at having to look for my posts in many different places, they seem to have given up 🤷
This is a clear win for the Fediverse! I was able to switch instances and get subscribed to all my previous communities in no time at all while this doubled up stalking efforts 👍
Whenever someone said they checked my post history I immediately considered it a victory and moved on.
That’s how I lost my three accounts and I have completely given up
That and the “hivemind” mentality Reddit encoruages often means you get power-tripping mods banning people, not for doing anything wrong, but for “Dissenting with the group”
The average user is probably banned from a quarter of the site over shit like this.
100%. I’d even be ok with getting rid voting mechanisms all together. The comment and responses to it should be indicative of it’s quality instead of some vague numerical value which somehow makes it better than the other because more people voted for it based on their own understanding on how a vote works.
Discussions shouldn’t be about what’s popular. Social media has corrupted our ability to have intelligent discussions because non popular viewpoints aren’t entertained anymore and people with non popular viewpoints don’t want to contribute due to the retaliatory nature of likes/votes.
It’s eroding our ability to reason and we need to stop it.
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I mean, it kind of does mean something small, which is credibility. Karma wasn’t ever a flawless way to determine credibility, but it was a decent first pass, like an online ocular patdown.
Uh, no. Lol
It maybe showed popularity. But it was frequently manipulated.
The biggest issue in some places was, even if your opinion is valid, if it didn’t fit the group speak, it would be downvoted regardless.
It wasn’t really a great indicator if your opinion was popular or not, it was more if it got that groups niche.
wasn’t really a great indicator if your opinion was popular or not, it was more if it got that groups niche.
… That’s called popular opinion lol.
Of course it matters where you say something. It’s literally no different than IRL.
Yes, and there’s a bit of psychology at play
Reddit just shows one score on the post, it doesn’t show the exact upvote/downvote number. It’s easy to just say “Well everyone else voted this up/down, so I guess I will to”, it encourages group think, by design it’s meant to be an echo chamber.
Imagine you have a divisive opinion, at the end of an hour you have 9 upvotes and 11 downvotes, so it’s at negative one. You’re gonna think you’re being ignored, and others will think you’re unpopular and just downvote you not reading it because it’s “What the group is doing”
Reddit is fucking nightmare
I think the karma system on reddit had a real effect on behaviour. What you often found it did was cause people to write comments for the audience of voters instead of for the person they’re responding to. This eliminates personal interaction between users and turns everything into soapboxing. You stop having real conversations with each other, instead it becomes about pandering to votes.
This then also causes people to vote based on this as well. “You’re not saying what the group wants to hear” downvote is the voting behaviour it creates.
This so frigging much. People are not having conversations, they are posturing.
It’s like going into a debate prepared for discussing ideas, and the other debater is going for discussing emotions.
Truly fucked up and patently divisive
Yeah it’s annoying. Things are far more pleasant when people are actually talking to one another, it creates a more human interaction and you don’t get the kind of bad-faith engagement associated with trying to pander to votes. People self-censor far less as a result as well, aside from instance rules.
how do people on this site not realize that the points next to your posts affect how your posts are sorted and are literally the exact same system as reddit? am i just so blind that i can actually see the numbers next to my posts or is everyone here just trying to be so anti-reddit they’ll make up bullshit that isn’t reality?
They are talking about karma as a thing you could collect, point totals for all posts added together displayed on your profile. Not the voting mechanism itself.
Lemmy also has this and everyone’s point totals are visible from the API. If you’re not seeing it, that’s because your client is hiding it, not because it doesn’t exist.
The nice thing is though, it’s different for every server and from every server, so unless you follow a convention to say the user’s homeserver vote total is the definitive amount, then there’s no true karma.
My beehaw account is a great example. I made some comments on Lemmy world before it defederated. World and shitjustworks users can still vote on the old comments but they won’t count to my home total, and from Lemmy.world my vote total won’t change for that account significantly from that point. The vote totals on this lemmy.ca account will be different from lemmy.ca, beehaw.org or lemmy.world’s perspectives because the servers defederated can’t see the karma I earned on each comment on the other server, while lemmy.ca can see both.
Downvotes are also disabled on beehaw, so any downvotes won’t affect my total at all but could show on other servers.
Lastly, there are some servers with 40000 accounts and 3 active users (who post and comment), vote botting is feasibly a thing. Imagine if I made a Lemmy server at Rentlar.org and as the admin I made 20000 accounts who upvote me every where I post. I’d be the first user on Lemmy with 1M total votes, but would that mean anything other than I’m a somewhat tech-savvy narcissistic loser? No.
Wait why is downvoting disabled on beehaw?
because being negative isn’t allowed there.
You are pretty much correct. Although the moderation is very strict, it makes for a more laid back and friendly experience.
Sounds kinda boring actually.
its real laid back because there’s so few people there.
Lemmy also has that bro. Some clients display it and some don’t, but when I click on your name I see that you have 510 total comment score and 0 total post score.
https://i.imgur.com/NxSyRDg_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand
I believe the devs have said they aren’t going to make it officially visible, which is all I care about. If you want to make value judgements on people based on a number so bad that you had to find a client that shows it, more power to you.
And that system was irrelevant on Reddit just like it is here. You still have a total karma number in the API, every app I have used shows it, even if it is broken right now. Only the default theme on the web page hides the number. The only people who saw value in karma are the people who farmed it and the people who bitch about the people who farmed it. Either way, making posts that get a lot of upvotes specifically to get a lot of upvotes happens here just like I does on Reddit so idk what this OP is trying to say because they’re farming karma lol.
There were many subreddits that did not allow participation unless someone had a karma over a certain threshold. For many of them the threshold was pretty low, only meant to stop brand new accounts and trolls, but still.
Additionally, the “people who farmed it” often did so because a reddit account with a high karma score was literally worth money to adspammers and people running bots.
The karma system contributed to what made reddit bad.
You only lost 15 karma on any mass downvoted comment and 0 for posts. The only person who cared about people’s karma was you dude.
I don’t see how that addresses any of what I said. If anything this seems like this would mean the subreddits that blocked people with no karma weren’t even doing it to block trolls, just new users.
I didn’t care about my karma or any specific persons, I like to get into arguments about stuff and that is how you get downvoted. I just don’t like the behaviour a karma system motivated.
If you’re getting downvoted in an argument, guess what, that means you’re bad at making arguments. And this system is exactly the same, regardless of if you can see it or not, sorting by top will still sort by the net sum of votes.
If you’re getting downvoted in an argument, guess what, that means you’re bad at making arguments.
I pretty much agree with your second sentence/point, but this is bullshit. I got so many downvotes on reddit for literal descriptions of my perceptions and experiences as a gay woman. Half the time there wasn’t even a debate or argument happening. As reddit culture skewed more and more conservative, many technical and nerdy communities became actively hostile to the basic facts of my existence. Then there are all the downvotes I got for believing in human and minority rights while downthread with some bigots. My more visible posts on the same topic would be solidly upvoted, while everything below the arrow was smashed below zero because only angry little shits followed the discussion that far. I agree that the system on Lemmy isn’t meaningfully different and will inevitably have the same effects, but sorting by voting over-centralizes the meta and destroys real discussion and diversity of experience and opinion. It literally only works in limited circumstances within subjects that have objectively correct answers. Anywhere else it introduces so much chaos.
Karma is the total of upvotes and downvotes a user receives over time not just single posts and comments. It leads to discrimantory moderation and users tend to whore themselves out for upvotes to boast.
Ever heard of gallowboob?and this site has that exact mechanic in the API.
Reddit bad lemmy good, you are not allowed to say otherwise.
Edit: Bruh people on lemmy don’t get sarcasm either 😭
You can on reddit say what you want. If you really care about the number next to your name you’re just a victim
I never changed my opinion just so I get more karma on reddit either.
Lemmy’s system is no different from Reddit’s and my original comment was sarcastic. I’ve noticed sarcastic posts without /s get downvoted more easily on Lemmy for whatever reason.
There’s a lot more good faith here. On Reddit you could safely assume anything ridiculous was meant sarcastically, and usually be correct. Here, the sarcasm is not assumed so your comment is more likely to be judged as having been spoken sincerely.
Which is actually really nice, even if it gets a comment misunderstood from time to time. Reddit just feels shitty and hate-filled anymore. But Lemmy feels a great deal more emotionally neutral, and if I dare say so, human – which is to say, not attempting to increase emotional involvement and generate clicks by being provocative and antagonizing by design.
EDITED for clarity
Karma system was a horrible feature on reddit.
This is why I keep asking for downvotes sometimes, just to rig the system. I even downvoted myself.
By the way, can you help me shame myself?
I’ll dissent. I like the karma system. It gives me a quick read out of who’s a troll and who isn’t.
I don’t care about post karma so much, but the comment karma was an interesting stat.
Edit: An important caveat. We MUST keep downvotes visible. MUST. Having just a positive score breeds absolute insanity.
Negative karma doesn’t necessarily indicate a troll, any unpopular opinion can get down-voted to hell while similar but differently expressed ideas get up-voted in the same thread. I’m not against karma system though, just think it’s quite useless in most cases.
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You forgot about the baby eaters in your list of people you dislike.
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I find it funny you had a list instead of just saying harmful people. It was a joke.
All comment karma tells you is who was first to a thread basically in my experience, and I had over 500k of it lol it’s nothing though I could go troll for days before making a dent in the 10k you get from an obvious joke on the new tab and then the thread takes off
Best way to tell if someone is a troll is just to look at what they say imo 🤷🏻♂️
I had my third party app and browser extensions set to automatically hide comments by people with very low karma and very low comment scores. I’d only ever see hateful comments if I clicked to unhide them and I liked that
What are these upvotes? Here, take one.
idk, I say the same stuff regardless. Sometimes people like what I say, sometimes they don’t
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Pretty sure karma isn’t properly federated since nobody cares about it
I like being able to say what I want without being banned by a power-tripping mod, or downvoted into irrelevance by a circle jerk. We need to be able to point out that the Emperor isn’t wearing clothes.
I like being able to say what I want without being banned by a power-tripping mod
There’s currently nothing stopping a mod from creating a bot that deletes comments below certain threshold or that bans users for commenting on communities they don’t approve like they did on Reddit. Only site policies can prevent that.
Does karma change that? We still have upvotes and downvotes, and you can sort comments by how well they do, and mods can still ban people not only from a community, but from a whole instance.
Yes
How so?
Doesnt lemmy have a karma system already? I can see up votes on my posts, and a sum total on my account page.
Or do you mean something else by “karma”?
Literally seen 0 people asking for karma system
You need Karma, in so many subs. Not only comments karma, also posts karma and all that stupid shit
Why are u getting downvoted?
Probably people from Reddit defending the idea of a karma system, they always say that they’re made up internet points but the fact that Karma restrictions exist and are enforceable proves that wrong.
It’s so useless that I actually feel better having that minus symbol next to the number in any post/comment that I make. Because I love the felling of shame. Yeah, I’m f***ing weird.
I’m against any sort of gamification on social media. Not even achievements/badges or awards. That is the start of dark patterns and addictive design.
Not one time on reddit did i consider or care about my karma
What’s karma, i was on reddit for 12 years and never looked into it.
Karma was pointless. Nobody cared at all. Upvotes and downvotes are fine and useful to be able to see both. Karma is a worthless system and encourages spamming low-effort garbage memes and endless reposting of the same shit.
Nobody cared at all
The mods cared. There were many bots used by moderators that relied on karma, the main one being automoderator.
NGL for me at least it was a good system to sort out the low effort users by putting a minimum karma points
The karma also added points from all the awards on reddit. So a troll comment with lots of awards received more karma points than the actual post with real good content.
