Ok I know the title is weirdly said but I will explain more here. I tried using reddit but all of the subs and topics I wanted to speak on were gated by Karma, so I searched reddit for no karma sub so I just posted on ask reddit,nostupid questions and I made one post on r/advice which I cross posted to relationship advice after which my account glitched. Turned out I had been shadow banned and I have no clue how. My theory is I posted to much and copy and pasting a post tripped the alarm but the post was a bit different on relationship advice and I did it once, I saw reddit from like youtube videos and tiktok and people cross post to subs all the time why is that an issue ?
But to get to the main ponint of this, why is reddit run the way it is ? In the sense why do they ask so much of their users hurting both the user expirience and the site’s ability to grow. The Karma system forces you into a position where to get to the content you want you have to interact with and post content you don’t care about.So you have a ton of disengaged user’s just punching their time card to get to what they actually care about. Imagine if other social media sites did this, imagine if you wanted to listen to sabrina carpenter on spotify but to do that you had to listen to 100 hours of Conway Twitty, what sense does that make ?
Reddit’s karma and age gate systems resemble a mobile game and while annoying when it’s done there you understand why it’s designed to get you to pay to skip it, but reddit doesn’t let you pay to skip it at east not directly.
Every other social media site wants to get users the content they want as easy as possible. TikTok is the best example the reason it’s popular is because it’s the best at getting you what you want with as little work required on your part as possible. The for you page fetches you videos your interested in, if your a creator the format of the app increases your chance of being seen and going viral.
Reddit on the other hand leaves so much of the user experience up to weather or not your post on ask reddt go gets upvotes or if you happen to know if a good sub with a karma limit since subs do not disclose their karma limit
Again for the last time, why ? Even from a selfish business standpoint this seemingly makes no sense so what am I missing
For profit.
Thanks for the reply
though I fail to see how the karma system makes them money.
the only thing I can think of is maybe it’s an attempt to artificially increase how much time you post on the site.
To me it’s like business charging to use the bathroom, the reason they don’t is because for every dollar they make from people paying they lose money from people boycotting the business on principle.
Again to use my spotify example would spotify be successful if it forced you to listen to artist you didn’t care about to listen to the music you want to hear ? “I know you want to listen to the Lana Del Ray but first you have to listen to 1 hour of Limp Bizkit”
For very one user that sucks it up and uses the site anyway they likely lose people who don’t want to deal with it or are like me and get blocked from using the site.
Again if it was all about money why can’y you pay to skip it ?
Also it creates post friction since people are scared to wreck their karma so there is that.
The karma system increases engagement, which entices shareholders, resulting in an increase of share price.
I apologize but I fail to see how.
It restricts how often you can post and where you can post so if all the low karma subs do’t interest you. Then you will either not use reddit or use it less.
Again people spend more time doing things they like. To use my spotify example do you think a sabrina carpenter fan will listen to conway twitty as often as they listen to sabrina ? No they will not. So at best you get them to bite the bullet and drag their feet gettign through the hours and at worst they leave.
Again how comes no other social media site works this way ? TiktTok and it’s Chinese sister apps like Xiaohongshu and Douyin are seen by even the western tech sites as the kings of maximizing user engagement and participation. So much so it’s a meme how much TikTok is addicting, meanwhile does reddit addict the same way ? There are people addicted to reddit in the same way there are people addicted to eating Styrofoam but there are more people addicted to sugar then Styrofoam
The karma itself is the gamification that increases engagement.
The gated subs, karma limits, etc. are there to cut down on spam, low-effort content, brigading, etc. in large communities to keep the engaged users more engaged so hopefully they spend a few more dollars on silly updoot awards.
It’s all supply and demand, profit-driven decisions. If a feature like karma limits alienates a small number of users, it is still worth it if it retains and engages with more high-value users who invest money in the platform with their ad viewership and direct purchases.
https://youtu.be/gEK1G1WQM64
This guy had at one point the third highest karma of any reddit user in history.
He did everything everyone swore up and down the karma system was deigned to prevent
He stole content from imgur H used python scripts to leave his computer open and post more He talked about issues he knew nothing about focusing most of his post on us politics despite him benign a 15 year old Italian kid who himself admits he knows little on us politics
Yet Karma rewarded him
You’re not going to get an argument out of me lol. I had a Reddit account for over a decade. I was addicted to the karma system of Reddit, it was seriously negatively impacting my life. I finally deleted my account and moved here recently, it’s been one of the better changes I’ve made in my life. You can completely hide post scores here, and the communities are smaller and less active which drives a more genuine engagement vs the hot-take one-liners, memes, and low-effort post replies.
Reddit can burn to the ground and cease to exist for all I care. It’s become so big and full of hate and misinformation.
My legitimate advice is just… don’t go back and save yourself the headache.
Sub moderation and site administration are two different things. Site administration wants engagement numbers, mods want to reduce their workload.
Popular subs are run by moderators who don’t want spammers and trolls with new accounts so they put in the karma restrictions so the smaller subs can get those users first. They also have what they think is ‘spammer and troll behavior patterns’, which looks the same as a new user who wants to post in a specific high traffic sub with a karma requirement It is stupid, but they have fewer comments to moderate in their very busy subs so they consider that a win. They want long term users who have a history they can use, because they are popular.
Most reddit subs not run like that.
But the reasons that lead to that end result are wanting engagement numbers to increase shareholder value as the other two printed out. That is also reddit administration doesn’t seem to do anything significant about bots posting slop, because it inflates those numbers.
It’s control they control and manipulate the up votes and push whatever narrative and advertising they want to the top. That control makes them money.
Yep, that’s it. They massively value dollar over quality
But if Lemmy ever got anywhere near as popular we would absolutely have minimum reputation requirements to create posts.
Would we? I’m doubtful
Every traditional forum used to have limitations of that sort. Lemmy would probably be no exception, once (if) it becomes attractive to spammers and bots.