this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Reddit Was Fun
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Memorial to "rif is fun for Reddit" Android app, aka "reddit is fun", shut down after June 30, 2023
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Discourage people from using karma. You actually can turn off scores in your settings.
If any instance decides to put advertising on itself, leave immediately and get everyone else to do the same.
Just out of curiosity, what is your argument against using karma?
Karma is an inherently destructive thing for many reasons. For people, it is a representation of other people's approval of you, so they'll do anything to boost that number as highly as possible, even going so far as to make fake karma farming accounts, create botnets to upvote themselves and downvote opponents in arguments, and post garbage content instead of engaging in meaningful conversation with other people. For corporations, it's a marketing tool they can exploit to manipulate public opinion, by creating or buying high-karma accounts to convince people to buy shit, or to mass downvote people who point out flaws in their arguments or products, or figure out what they're planning and try to call them on it. They can use karma to discredit opponents, astroturf, and even sway elections indirectly. It's one of the reasons why civil and political discourse have completely collapsed in the USA.
That list is not exhaustive
But I like my meowmeowbeans!
I don't think karma was ever really that big of an issue, the problem was the belief that karma meant something. Mods and admins treated karma like it meant legitimacy, like a sybil test, and it's not. Also the upvote/downvote system got so destroyed by misuse and a complete disregard for reddiquette, and often gets combined with karma, but that's a seperate issue.
The points never really mattered until people decided they did.