Reddit

There's a lot of trash on Reddit. But the reason why I stayed as long as I did was also because there were a lot of nice people swimming among the trash. And those few made it worth it. Always someone willing to help, to empathize, to laugh and find comfort with.

I've bumped into trash here on Lemmy as well. But the ratio of trash to nice people seems to be far lower here, luckily. I am grateful for that.

One thing that hasn't changed is the up vote/down vote lottery you play in the comments. When people see "0" or "-1", they seem to jump and smash that down vote button, too. Human nature, I guess.

Lemmy lacks on users and content that's a fact. But you get no engagement at all from Reddit.

I can post a comment there and see another 800 people posting comments. You rarely get replies from anyone. I don't care about likes and awards. But it's nice to see someone agreeing or disagreeing with you.

Karma whoring is the oldest profession on Reddit.

A global score (karma) is one of those ideas that sound great on paper: you're encouraging people to post better stuff by associating it with some score.

In practice though OP shows why it's a bad idea, on multiple levels. And why I'm glad that Lemmy doesn't have karma.

On some subreddits, we ask to have a Karma in comments good enough [...] (it happened to me on /r/iOSBeta).

Issue #1: enabling shitty moderative practices. Some assumptive = braindead mods think that karma is a viable heuristic to keep trolls and morons at bay. It is not.

Contrast OP's user experience with mine: when still using Reddit I often had a shitposting account, that was never locked out any subreddit due to karma. Why? Because I was willing to game the system and farm karma before shitposting.

And that leads to issue #2: gamified systems are made to be gamed. It's actually easier to farm karma without contributing than to post shit that contributes with Reddit. Repost old stuff, replying comments with shitty one-line jokes (nowadays I'd probably use ChatGPT for that), sticking to high-activity subs (i.e. the worst of Reddit)... you get the idea.

Another problem is users who feel superior to others because they have a better Karma. [...] « You’re a fresh 0-Karma account, you bring proof ».

Issue #3: karma is yet another thing that distracts users from what is said, towards who says it. A user with more karma... has more karma, that's it - anything else is assumption.

In short, I stay on Lemmy.

Welcome back. Lemmy isn't perfect but it's less worse than the options.

Karma was used as a means to prove you’re not just an astroturfer or a bot.

That’s what they were gate keeping you over.

Don’t get your panties in a twist in the way you did, the power you’re cowering from only exists in your head.

Nothing new about karma or age threshold to post in certain communities, that's been a thing for years and years...

Let the garbage have Reddit. It's not like corporate reddit really cares anyway because they're still getting their sponsor money regardless of how their site is. It's lousy with censorship, hypocrisy, and superiority complexes. People talk to each other like they've never talked to another person before.

To be fair 0 karma accounts are often trolls and or bots.

Why am i sitting here on Lemmy, getting frustrated over reading about something that is happening over at reddit and is the reason why i am on lemmy...

I don't understand folks wanting more users on the federation. Its at a pretty good level now. If it grows great but if it doesn't that may be for the best as those who do come I bet are a bit higher quality than average reddit.

Well, I think its not right to think that Lemmy is better than Reddit. Its just different. Both are susceptible to similar problems, and both suffer because of these.

For example, that this one community I once saw related to conservative American politics. Before I blocked it (I block all political communities regardless of what it is about), I took a look and every single post there was sitting at like -80 to -120 votes. And there were a lot of posts, like at least 75+. It is very clear that particular community was a victim of constant, repeated brigading, and the fact that it stayed like that must mean that either the instance admins have no power to stop brigading or they approve of brigading that particular community. Surely you can see how this is not a great concept if it suddenly gets applied to a community you happen to like or post in.

Additionally, in the not too distant past there was a problem with users spam posting CSAM all over Lemmy. Fortunately, the moderators were very fast to clean that up and remove the bad actors, but unfortunately because of the sheer volume of posts and limited number of moderators, some of us saw things you would actually never see posted on Reddit, and would probably not even see posted on 4Chan. Reddit, as unsavory as the place has become, has significantly more moderators that could work much faster to clean that kind of thing up, and they have more tools built into Reddit to prevent that. It was a growing pain for Lemmy, and likely one that Reddit had in its past as well. In the end it was a good learning experience for Lemmy instance owners and moderators alike, but when it happened it was not a fun time.

Lemmy still has the same problem Reddit has with its vote system. It can still be manipulated, it can still make people feel superior or insecure. The only difference is that SOME ui frontends have the option to hide vote scores. And from what I know communities cannot limit posts based on account vote score (but I may be wrong).

Lemmy is a nice alternative to Reddit, particularly of you are a politically left leaning person that has an unreasonable obsession with either Karl Marx or Linux, but to say that it is better than Reddit in every way completely ignores the fact that it suffers from the same problem Reddit does:

Humans can post basically whatever they want and can hide behind near complete anonymity.

That will always bring out the worst in people. It already happened here (as I mentioned before, and especially when Hexbear was going psycho on every other instance before they got majorly defederated), and it will probably happen here again. Just like Reddit.

Finding the few spaces that had no karma restrictions for new users has been an issue for years.

There might've been 3 subreddits left that regularly made the front page that didn't ask for a karma threshold when I left reddit.

It happened because mod tools were so bad, that moderators had to come up with other ideas to get a hold of the bots and trolls. I think they turned it to an official feature a couple years ago.

Reddit is actually more or less a mirror of society at large now. I hate it. For all intents and purposes, we live in a Black Mirror episode, the one where the like ratio determined your lot in life. We HAVE that, with a few extra steps.

On the r/privacy discussion, I was on Reddit almost ten years and I never once had an interaction like that over karma. I barely even remember seeing it in discussions. People can get prickly when being asked for evidence, so how you ask is also important (and for good reason, sealioning is a thing).

I think the takeaway here is what's asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and not to worry about conversations with people obsessed with imaginary numbers. It's not worth giving it this kind of headspace.

I still search old reddit posts whenever I have a general question about something, or about The Sopranos.

Lemmy uses a Karma system too though...

That’s always been a thing to prevent bots / new accounts created just to spam or ask basic questions without searching the sub. You will be able to comment but you need some karma to post. If you are a regular user of the sub, you’ll most likely not make a post about a basic question discussed everyday in the sub.

sadly, nothing on reddit can be trusted anymore. Not only AI bots, but mods ban and delete users who do not espouse a narrow view, Basically, if you do not fit into their "reddit/facebook/whatever/commerce IPO reddit world", then you are banned. Reddit has become a massive echo chamber of people and bots rubbing each other's backs.

Lemmy FTW

Reddit is a complete cesspool. I don't remember it being 4chan levels bad but today someone linked this thread from the asmongold subreddit about LGBTQIA+ writers in video games and the comments are vile.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/1dzqstb/dark_times_for_cdpr

You’re a fresh 0-Karma account, you bring proof

“You’re a non-zero, karma-holding account, you should know better.”

And you have blackbox AI censoring you.

It make link back to your device, perhaps your Facebook account, because those shared cookie.

So, if you was flag once, there are no escape for average user.

But professional spammer always be able to spam with link and scam.