Current Events > What's the point of the karma system on reddit? Especially downvoting

(+) Yeah! (+)

Even good posts get downvoated. That place seems super hateful and full of jealous weirdos. With those lame child-like avatars everyone comes off as a 15 year old.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5893de9f.jpg

I was on this sub farming upvotes (kinda) and one day it got taken over by a different demographic of people (they prob came over from a popular youtube channel that posted a vid related to this subreddit and got like 600k views at the time).

I started getting downvoted a decent amount every post i made after that. I got a couple more of these -20 downvote posts. Bunch more with like -5 downvotes. Anyway if I had posted these like a month or even week before they'd be upvoted instead

People were posting gifs making fun of me too btw!
Well eventually the mods made a rule about not antagonizing people with gifs and other types of comments so it got a little better. Unfortunately the sub is dead now because of this rule and a few others lol...

Ratchetrockon posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5893de9f.jpg

I was on this sub farming upvotes (kinda) and one day it got taken over by a different demographic of people (they prob came over from a popular youtube channel that posted a vid related to this subreddit and got like 600k views at the time).

I started getting downvoted a decent amount every post i made after that. I got a couple more of these -20 downvote posts. Bunch more with like -5 downvotes. Anyway if I had posted these like a month or even week before they'd be upvoted instead

People were posting gifs making fun of me too btw!
Well eventually the mods made a rule about not antagonizing people with gifs and other types of comments so it got a little better. Unfortunately the sub is dead now because of this rule and a few others lol...

That's dumb. From what I gather, some subs require a certain amount of karma to post. So someone maliciously downvoting can get people locked out of them. It's an awful system that gives trolls too much power.

LeoRavus posted...

That's dumb. From what I gather, some subs require a certain amount of karma to post. So someone maliciously downvoting can get people locked out of them. It's an awful system that gives trolls too much power.

Yeah I agree

Also there were definitely a lot of alt or new accounts that came over to the sub right after that youtube video.

When called out for them having a fresh account or low karma their response typically was along the lines of not wanting to be associated with the subreddit on their main. Super lame imo

Ratchetrockon posted...

Yeah I agree

Also there were definitely a lot of alt or new accounts that came over to the sub right after that youtube video.

When called out for them having a fresh account or low karma their response typically was along the lines of not wanting to be associated with the subreddit on their main. Super lame imo

Does up and downvoting even work with alts if you already did it on the main? I thought they had some kind of system to prevent people from upvoting their own posts.

come on, what was it? might have been a disinformation campaign.

LeoRavus posted...

Does up and downvoting even work with alts if you already did it on the main? I thought they had some kind of system to prevent people from upvoting their own posts.

Idk the mechanics of that tbh. I have tested it with just 1 other account and it seems to work (I don't actively do this at all). There might be a limit tho, yeah.

Rai_Jin posted...

come on, what was it? might have been a disinformation campaign.

Maybe some users on there participated in that type of stuff (on a different subreddit where the more extremist users migrated to) but it seemed like a larping sub for the most part.. I mean it got easily overran by the opposing party. the transition was so fast. I assume most of the larpers just decided it wasn't worth it anymore since we were all getting downvoted to oblivion

The downvote is censorship. Reddit guarantees that the easily offended will have instant gratification.

They used bot mods and you will literally get banned for posting in a new subreddit for the first time bc the bot assumes you're a bot too lol.

i hate the karma shit. it stifles actual discussion and reduces everything to quips and memes. unpopular opinions (ex: something needs a nerf/buff) get buried and eventually outright hidden, while mindless sycophantic bullshit like posting funny quotes over and over get propped up for no reason. we're rich! mushroom! rock and stone!

found the topic. Well sometimes you have to accept the less interesting explanation.

Though maybe with the newest statement that there is nothing some whistleblowers are going to start blowing.

overall I don't dislike the karma system, it's just a topic that, well one year ago I would have laughed too.

Rai_Jin posted...

found the topic. Well sometimes you have to accept the less interesting explanation.

Though maybe with the newest statement that there is nothing some whistleblowers are going to start blowing.

overall I don't dislike the karma system, it's just a topic that, well one year ago I would have laughed too.

It was fun while it lasted. I reckoned it was fake after the initial debunk on the more popular subreddit (the one with a million+ members) but still wanted to believe so bad tbh. Force myself to believe again

Have you seen the video I posted in the government statement topic, like what is that?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

@shockthemonkey

Yes. I think this is so. Please explain why it is not censorship and please explain why it is not instant gratification.

reddit was really good in like 2010, just smart people discussing things. Good point, have an upvote! Then like everything the more popular it is the more that the deplorables turned it into an agree/disagree system. A lot of doxxing, anti women stuff, hateful people that no one else will talk to. By 2012 it was such trash and then thetrump, fuck reddit tbh.

On paper the idea was to crowdsource forum moderation. It's way easier to just tell the community to police themselves than it is to maintain a body of full-time volunteer mods or actually pay people.

In practice, it's completely destroyed the basic forum concept in exchange for a popularity contest where people are more concerned with structuring their response for upvotes than they are actually responding to arguments.

This is the way

500k up votes

Rai_Jin posted...

Have you seen the video I posted in the government statement topic, like what is that?

The 60 mins Australia posted in the comments? Or the main video of the topic?

The system of up and down voting is why I quit Reddit. In theory, it promotes quality content and demotes shitposting. In reality, it promotes saying what people want to hear and discourages saying unpopular things.

As an example, let's say you visit a flat Earth "research" group. In theory it's for debating the concept of a flat Earth and making your arguments for and against it. As long as you're making a quality post, you should be able to make arguments disproving flat Earth. In reality, your post could be the highest quality post ever to grace the sub but if people don't like you disproving their beliefs you can count on getting buried in down-votes. Your quality content gets swept under a rug in favor of shitposts that say what they like hearing. You could even end up silenced just because your comments are unpopular, no matter how good they are.

That should never happen.

"dont tag me"

then dont comment in the first place genius, lol

It got EA to change the way to unlock Darth Vader in Battlefront 2

Ratchetrockon posted...

The 60 mins Australia posted in the comments? Or the main video of the topic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFmZcfAc0E

Downvotes are a badge of honor.