Voyager

That was the official line, which was classic doublespeak, because it's technically true, but also total bullshit. Even with the vote fuzzing it was easy to tell when a post or comment was heavily downvoted. Advertisers and astroturfers hated this, because it meant that when users recognized their posts as trash and voted accordingly, it was that much harder to make them seem organic and innocent. When reddit obscured the vote tallies, it also destroyed transparency and made it easier for bad actors to game the karma system to push their own agenda.