• @[email protected]
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    1872 years ago

    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.

    • StrikerM
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      2 years ago

      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.

      • Queen HawlSera
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        12 years ago

        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.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        Interesting. How do you know this? That the bystanders looked at the upvotes and decided their opinion on immigration based on this? Were there polls or something?

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        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.

      • @[email protected]
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        432 years ago

        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.

        • Hopps
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          122 years ago

          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.

          • Orphie Baby
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            32 years ago

            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.

      • @[email protected]
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        92 years ago

        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.

        • Lith
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          82 years ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years ago

            Yea there’s some psycho’s out there. I picked a few up. Nothing really crazy from them and surprisingly most of them had poor infosec so I was never too concerned that they were anything to worry about. Really emotionally invested people who don’t like when they read things they disagreed with

          • trashcan
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            2 years ago

            Whenever someone said they checked my post history I immediately considered it a victory and moved on.

          • gimpchrist
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            11 year ago

            That’s how I lost my three accounts and I have completely given up

          • Riskable
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            72 years ago

            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 👍

      • @[email protected]
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        172 years ago

        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!

      • 𝙣𝙪𝙠𝙚
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        62 years ago

        Y’all act like that can’t happen on Lemmy. The total score is already visible via API. Nothing’s stopping a community from running a bot that auto removes anyone below a threshold. It’s entirely possible right now to write that code.

      • @[email protected]
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        122 years ago

        And that makes sense to some degree. I used to mod a large community on re**it and usually rage bait/flaming/troll accounts got filtered out by our automod which was set to 50 karma iirc. Most communities that use a karma filter have it set really low so farming a lot of karma is really unnecessary

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      I agree but when a sincerly comment does not strive how I expected i delete it and take the thought about it to myself.

      Obviously I am wrong, then.

      You are right.

    • Move to lemm.ee
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      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        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

        • Move to lemm.ee
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          52 years ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            The weirdest part is the interactions, I swear to God people is hell bent on their conversations being pre-tainted with assuming the worst possible take on the others side.

            It’s like people can’t no longer have different thoughts on the matter without going full civil war in the comments

            • Move to lemm.ee
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              22 years ago

              To be honest I’ve gotten used to that and have had that here with “you glorify Lenin blah blah blah 100gorillion deaths gommunism no food”. I think that’s a specific type of person issue.

    • Flying SquidM
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      12 years ago

      I certainly never have changed what I said based on popular opinion. If someone convinces me I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, but just people downvoting me because they don’t like what I have to say? Fine. That’s their prerogative.

    • hoodatninja
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      I think you are envisioning something a little more intentional/thought out than it is. We do this socially all the time. You gauge the audience and you adjust what you’re going to say to better fit it. Or to upset them if you’re trolling but that tends to be more deliberate.

      I bet if you took your comments from a hobby sub/forum/group/etc. you frequent, and then one from a meme community, you will find your tone and rhetoric are very different. And again this is not a bad thing! You are doing and saying what is appropriate for the context. It is very natural to do. But the point is you probably don’t sit down and calculate your exact wording. We just sort of do it, and our goal is generally to “fit in“ or get some affirmation from the community we are participating in.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      The amount of deleted downvoted comments makes me think most people at least change their minds afterwards. Which to me is the real weird part, you hide your opinion so you don’t lose useless internet points…

    • Queen HawlSera
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      12 years ago

      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

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        That Rick quote is like the wojak where he’s got the smirking mask but is crying behind it. It always cracked me up when I saw people use it. If the downvotes mean nothing, why mention them at all?

      • Flying SquidM
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        62 years ago

        I always thought it was amusing if I got into an argument with someone and they downvoted each of my comments before replying as if that meant something. Dude, I already get that you don’t agree with me. Why are you bothering?

    • @[email protected]
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      Did people actually change what they’d say based on whether or not they thought they’d get upvotes?

      I’d argue anyone who did that probably had nothing interesting to say and/or didn’t actually care about what they were saying. Same with the people who complained about downvotes.

      • blanketswithsmallpox
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        2 years ago

        /me watches some dude post hateful contrarian bullshit on a light hearted comic.

        "It’s not even funny and this shit comic comic has been done before. Quit self promoting on reddit bitch!

        Edit: Why am I being down voted!? Fuck you know it’s true! Mods temp banned me apparently. I don’t care I’m never going to block her so I can always down vote!"

        Somehow everyone who commented on his parent comment has every comment in their profile down voted for the last 50 comments…

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      Yep. I remember someone asking on a hiking sub about a backpack. It was a very fashionable and heavy canvas pack. I hike a good bit and have never seen a pack like that being used by others in the trails, so I said that I wouldn’t recommend that pack. I think it had like 30-40 down votes. I never gave my opinion on a pack again.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        Bro you are welcome to elaborate here I mean what can be so controversial about a fucking backpack

          • SapienSRC
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            12 years ago

            Genuine question, and I don’t mean any disrespect, if down votes are intended to mean people disagree with you, and you don’t know these people, why did you care so much that you won’t share your opinion on things again? I’ve never understood this way of thinking. Maybe I’m just weird but I for the life of me can’t imagine caring that much about what strangers think.

    • SendPicsofSandwiches
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      152 years ago

      That and also many subs wouldn’t allow people to participate if they didn’t have a high enough karma

    • @[email protected]
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      202 years ago

      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.

      • blanketswithsmallpox
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        112 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          If I’m on Reddit it’s to Reddit, it’s not to change my vocabulary and content to fit each individual subreddits niche.

          Imagine being in a country bar and a table only wants to talk about and listen to rap music. The rest of the place shouldn’t have to bend to their will or create some safe place for them.

          • 𝙣𝙪𝙠𝙚
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            62 years ago

            There’s an old saying to “read the room”. It’s the same online and offline. The reaction you get depends entirely on the audience present.

            • @[email protected]
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              2 years ago

              Reading the room is about the tone you set, not the words you say.

              People just don’t like hearing that they’re wrong, or that popular opinion is wrong. Questioning themselves makes people uncomfortable.

      • eric
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        212 years ago

        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.

          • @[email protected]
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            72 years ago

            Example: replace this entire comment with a portion of a highly upvoted comment below from this same thread, combine that with an official experience that only shows one or two top level comments and those copies can also get lots of upvotes. Reddit was rife with these kinds of bots.

          • @[email protected]
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            32 years ago

            In ideal situation downvote should not be used for disagreeing but topic relevant and quality. In ideal situation…

        • @[email protected]
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          62 years ago

          Bro I’ve never for a second thought that gallowboob had any credibility whatsoever and the motherfucker had like, all the KARMA

          • eric
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            52 years ago

            You’re completely missing my point. I’m not saying you should worship the guy, but he has more credibility than a troll with negative karma or a 3 month old tshirt bot with a few hundred karma from plagiarized comments.

            • @[email protected]
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              02 years ago

              Both those cases have 0 credibility from any sensible person as they are functionally equivalent

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years ago

            Hi I’m necrocommenting this old comment, sorry.

            You’re conflating post karma and comment karma. Post karma is shit and almost everyone on reddit with super high post karma is awful. Comment karma however is often a decent measure of credibility. The problem is people conflate the two, or worse, inappropriately value post karma over comment karma.

  • @[email protected]
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    512 years ago

    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”?

      • kamenLady.
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        52 years ago

        Color me confused …

        I’m on connect for lemmy and also have a total count on my profile page.

        Actually, isn’t it up to the client? The dev can decide what to feature in the profile page. The fact is, every user has points for posts and comments. Maybe they are just adding the numbers up? Afaik Reddit had some other maths behind the karma count

    • @[email protected]
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      122 years ago

      Reddit has a karma sum which is used to deny access from posting altogether. Here if you say something unpopular, you don’t get the dopamine hit from upvotes, but you’re also not silenced, unless the mod explicitly bans you.

      • hoodatninja
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        2 years ago

        While I agree unpopular opinions often get shouted down, i think people often forget that sometimes what they consider an “unpopular opinion” is unpopular because it’s abhorrent or just wrong lol. Not every comment/idea is valid and deserves to be entertained.

        Being anti-vax is unpopular in a lot of circles and I am perfectly happy with seeing those comments downvoted/ removed and the users banned.

          • hoodatninja
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            2 years ago

            I understand what you’re trying to do, but I am not interested in playing this game.

            On a sidenote: I saw Oppenheimer recently as well, but let’s not shoehorn quantum physics into a discussion to make your point seem more elevated than it is.

        • diprount_tomato
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          22 years ago

          Why banned? The downvotes are definitely deserved but why TF ban them on a sub about a topic not related to vaccines or medicine?

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        I’d argue you still can get that dopamine hit.

        Even if the numbers don’t carry elsewhere in a meaningful way, seeing the high positive number next to your post still means that other people agreed with/liked what you said on that particular post/comment. And that alone can give a mild dopamine hit.

        Less useful for bots trying to farm rep for nefarious reasons, more useful for real people who can feel the joy of a moment.

        • hoodatninja
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          2 years ago

          Yeah, I found people always made a bigger deal out of that than it really was. I think folks just assume other people are having trouble even though they didn’t personally.

        • @[email protected]
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          02 years ago

          Some places had a thousand karma before being able to comment or post, that’s not an easy hill to climb, especially if you say the wrong thing somewhere and people take offense to it for no reason.

          • hoodatninja
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            42 years ago

            I love how in these examples it’s always “for no reason“ and yet we never see the context.

            • @[email protected]
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              -22 years ago

              Well it’s for no real good reason I should say, why is it always just the fourth comment in a chain that gets downvoted, because of the tropes and circlejerks.

              • hoodatninja
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                22 years ago

                Sorry I’m having a little trouble following. Are you asking me or are you stating that?

                • @[email protected]
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                  -12 years ago

                  Expanding on some needed context I thought. Or were you agreeing that sometimes there is seemingly no reason?

                  Now I’m confused.

      • DMmeYourNudes
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        12 years ago

        How are you not silenced exactly like you would be on Reddit? People downvotes posts and comments they don’t agree with exactly like reddit, but here if the admins disagree they defederate entire instances over it. Hot page is completely useless compared to reddit, so only the most upvotes posts from the most popular subs are visible, and comments have the exact same issues reddit comments had. Nothing about this system is mechanically different from reddits system, baring how votes get totaled because of federation, (also the hot sort is uses).

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Where does it show the sum total? I don’t see that in my profile or yours. Maybe it’s instance-dependent?

      Either way, upvotes serve the same purpose here so I think the incentives are the same.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      some third party clients sum up the upvote count of your posts to make a count turns out the lemmy api does send it to you

      but lemmy itself will never get a proper karma system in the ui as has been said by the main people working behind it multiple times

      • MentalEdge
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        132 years ago

        The apps aren’t “summing it up”, while the lemmy webUI does not display it, it’s perfectly accessible via API.

      • hoodatninja
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        42 years ago

        Kbin has “reputation” unfortunately. I like Kbin enough to ignore it and I’m hoping others will do the same.

        • CMLVI
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          52 years ago

          I use it the same way I did on Reddit; it’s a decent gauge in how willing I am to engage with that person. If their history is littered with downvoted posts, then I’m less likely to engage because it’s more likely they’re being inflammatory on purpose.

          Karma systems don’t make places worse; the value placed upon them by the users does. It’s not meant to be a counter for how liked you are, it’s supposed to be representative of how you interact with the community; bad karma for bad interactions. But people use downvote as a disagree button, and people spam posts cause “big number make feel good”. Good idea, difficult implementation given how humans work.

          • hoodatninja
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            12 years ago

            I agree that’s what it supposed to be, but nobody really treats it like that. Downvotes are treated as a “dislike” button, despite the fact that it should be “this does not contribute meaningfully.“

            Regardless of what we want, that’s just how people operate.

            • CMLVI
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              22 years ago

              If it weren’t for the humans, humanity would be pretty cool.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years ago

            Karma usually doesn’t work because it is used, as you said, a like button and not a quality button. Disagreeing with the majority is considered a violation.

      • @[email protected]
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        92 years ago

        Wow you’re right. I’ve gotten so used to Memmy and Wefwef that I didn’t realize the main site didn’t have it lol

  • Metal Zealot
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    152 years ago

    But I LOVE fake internet points, how else am I supposed to know if people like me or not??

    • @[email protected]
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      02 years ago

      It rally speaks to the new system and community that this comment landed at the bottom of this thread. No offense to your comment. It’s just a case in point haha.

  • Crass Spektakel
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    22 years ago

    While I don’t need a Karma System I would like to have some statistics to brag about or at least to look at.

  • @[email protected]
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    192 years ago

    But isn’t there a karma system? At least I’m seeing points on posts and comments and that’s what karma is/was on Reddit right?

  • Cool Beance
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    I agree but my dude this meme format is for being intensely sarcastic about things you hate, not saying how much you actually love something

    It’s cool though

  • Obinice
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    82 years ago

    I said what I wanted anyway, the karma system didn’t affect your ability to say what you want. But yes, the karma system wasn’t perfect, nooo way.

  • @[email protected]
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    142 years ago

    I’ve been using Connect for Lemmy, and it lists all your points on your profile. I didn’t even realize that wasn’t included on the website until right now.

  • ikiru
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    232 years ago

    I always hated those subs that prevented you from posting unless you had a minimum amount of karma.

    I used reddit for nearly a decade, but sometimes I wanted to make a throwaway for a specific, non-trolling purpose but was unable to do anything because of stupid, worthless karma.