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
I think your fundamental misunderstanding is how many people just scroll, lurk and at most comment. Let’s call those passive users. They are many and therefore worth catering to. Reddit, especially the big subreddits, are engagement generators. Their point is not to answer the questions that you as an individual might have. Their point is to maximize engagement. Providing the kind of content that keeps thousands of passive users engaged in the app has more monetary value than letting you as an individual post your personal question. So it’s geared towards letting users with a solid track record of creating engagement post easily, while being careful with users who don’t have that track record.
You can see this in supermarkets too. Hundred different types of sweets but if I simply want nuts roasted without oil, I’m out of luck? Why? Because there’s orders of magnitude more people who will buy stuff without reading the ingredients. The people who care about not having oil added to their nuts are so relatively few that they’re not worth catering to by a mass-appealing supermarket.
At least those are my theories, not that I have any inside knowledge.
Reddit is riddled with bots and has been for years, and they don’t care, so moderators went ahead and implemented Karma limits to prevent them from growing hundreds of accounts a day.
You also had people trying to get around bans by creating new accounts, since new accounts are free. A way to prevent brigading was to institute a minimum age and karma score to participate.
Fuck Spez.
But to get to the main ponint of this, why is reddit run the way it is ?
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.
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.
Reddit is a platform that was plagued by its success for the longest time. It’s not really a platform looking for new information. It’s profiting off of the information it already has. Due to the influx of bot accounts that are on the platform, they have a bit of protection on major subs
Basically to answer your question, it’s a combination of they’re trying to make the platform look decent for an IPO that they’ve already missed their window for. And now they’re desperately trying to claw every little bit of information they want and bot accounts that are just spam or don’t add interest to the platform such as a lot of copy-pasting are generally automated out of the service. This is exponentially increased if you’re adding competitor links or links that Reddit has decided are malicious.
Sadly, they’re trying to get something which will never happen. But, because they’re trying so hard to appeal to advertisers and that IPO,
This issue was multiplied about a year and a half ago when reddit decided to remove free use of their API and then had massive blowback on it they doubled down, claimed their volunteer moderators were entitled and not needed which caused a mass exodus from the platform that it never recovered from. Why does this matter? well when any labor leaves, they also take experience with them which never fully recovered. Subs in order to lessen on that locked their requirements down using karma.
these issues are dampening the future Reddit experience. So if you’re not established, You end up leaving the platform again before you start trying to actually add content to it.
as a TLDR: Reddit is actively chasing financial value that no longer exists, and the users are punished for it.
Was there really a massive exodus? If so, where to? It definitely wasn’t Lemmy / Fediverse and I don’t know of any Reddit/Lemmy-like site.
Was there really a massive exodus? If so, where to?
Investors understand what it looks like when the early adopters have left, and the early adopters have left Reddit.
Some came to Lemmy. Many were already on Discord.
There was a pretty large exodus yea, especially among people who created content and the moderators who were insulted during the event.
Being said, many didn’t have a suitable replacement to go to. Lemmy became the replacement for a chunk of them but, if you can find where the rest went, you have gotten further than I did. I assume they either went to discord like Pinball said, or just stopped posting in general. It’s a big reason that a lot of the more niche subs stopped having posts, and the reason that reddit as a whole is so much more toxic(interaction wise) now.
It’s not fun the way it is. That’s why we came here.
That’s not a reddit rule, but a rule that subreddit moderators introduce to lessen their workload. Requiring a minimum karma means less spambots and trolls to deal with.
Right but reddit created the karma system and allows mods to set karma limits. Why did they allow this ?
Does it though ? Because a bot can post more and by virtue of being a bot has nowhere to be and nothing to do. Let’s say it takes 1 hour to get 10 karma. A human with school and or work can only to deal with might only have like 2 hours to post a bot can post 24/7 365.
If that is really the issue then why not just have a captcha on post ? I know bots are better at dealing with captchas but those are still expensive.
Right but reddit created the karma system and allows mods to set karma limits. Why did they allow this ?
Reddit relies on unpaid moderators to manage the subreddits. Antagonizing them by taking away their options for moderation is not a great idea for Reddit (as the API changes have shown).
Does it though ? Because a bot can post more and by virtue of being a bot has nowhere to be and nothing to do. Let’s say it takes 1 hour to get 10 karma. A human with school and or work can only to deal with might only have like 2 hours to post a bot can post 24/7 365.
Bots have ways to get around karma limits, for example by just reposting some popular memes for a few days after account creation and only starting to post spam a few weeks later. But that still means there’s an additional difficulty to posting spam and that there’s time for automated systems to possibly kick in before the bot gets the chance to post spam.
If that is really the issue then why not just have a captcha on post ? I know bots are better at dealing with captchas but those are still expensive.
That sounds like a nightmare TBH, I’d take a Karma limit any day over having to do a captcha every time to post.
I’m also curious, which subs did you want to post in where Karma limits are so high you couldn’t reach them? I’ve never seen them be much of a hurdle. You can easily get 1k karma on a single comment just by echoing a popular sentiment or making a mediocre joke.
The thing is though the captcha takes like what a minute to solve meanwhile there is no way to gaurentee you get karma.
I don’t want to have to spend all day posting snarky replies on ask reddit to maybe get lucky and get karma.
You can’t easily get 1k Karma on a single post again there is no way to gaurentee kamra you can post until the end of tie and there is no way to gaurentee anyone up-votes your post
IME it’s very easy to get 1k kharma through commenting if you do it regularly. It’s practically guaranteed unless you’re actively trying to get downvoted or are only commenting in subs with extremely low engagement.
I think the issue is you are posting too early for Reddit, you should be commenting for the first week at least.
Essentially, the coarse-grained spam-filter assumes that anyone that has a whole bunch of posts ready to go the day they sign up is a bot spammer. Even here on Lemmy, if you sign up then immediately try to copy and paste a post 10 times to different communities, you will get reported and banned for spamming.
The principle behind it is like any social space online or offline: if you are a legitimate new member, you will start on the fringes and slowly settle in, from introducing yourself to a few members, attend events, to then asking questions, before making any influential speeches or going into a leadership position. Anyone trying to fast track that will be met with suspicion from members.
Reddit and Lemmy are similar in a sense. you start as a lurker, become a commentor, then you are well-adjusted enough to post.
Again that is my issue with reddit, there is a lot no one tells you they just expect you to know
Redit wants you to use the site in a super specific way that is one disconnected from the way most people use it and two not obvious to new users
I think reddit still wants you to use the site like a link aggregator despite that format dying and mot people seeing reddit as a social community focused site.
The reason reddit beat dig despite dig being a more true to form link aggregator is because of it’s community features
Well, here’s hoping you have a better time with us on Lemmy! My Reddit account is 8 years old, but I stopped using it and have been on Lemmy full time for 2 years now.
In many ways, Reddit has evolved into what it is. Much like biological evolution, there’s all sorts of things about it that are vestigial, or poorly designed, or don’t really make sense if you don’t understand natural selection. Its also become a publicly traded company so in recent years the quest for profitability has been rapidly transforming it in new and specific ways that only make sense from that perspective.
Have you found !reddit@lemmy.world that might be useful to you
Sucking the chubby of ol’ capital, that’s why.
Again the issue with this being a greed focused business decision has a big issue.
first off reddit just no went public like last year yet the karma and cqs systems were still there before they needed to please investors.
Second reddit didn’t have a profitable quarter until 2024
Third how comes no other social media site has a system like karma despite them being dependent on the same capital interest.
It’s such a massive platform that managing the flood of spam accounts must be nearly impossible - but they’re still trying. I think it’s kind of like how AI got so good at solving captchas that they had to make them too difficult for even humans to figure out. I’m guessing the system they use is probably fully automated. Someone creating a new account likely behaves very differently from a genuine new user, so people like that get flagged. I don’t think you’re shadowbanned from the entire platform - some subs just let you post without notifying you that your posts aren’t visible to anyone.
But how concerned is reddit about bots and spam really ?
Think about it, I know bots have gotten better at solving captchas but captchas still stop a lot of bots especially cheaper ones so why hasn’t reddit even tried intridocuing a captcha on posts or at least the option to do so ?
Reddit also signed deals with open AI and google to harvest reddit data to make bots. So if that was really the concern why make it easier ? Maybe you could have money if you didn’t shoo away all your new users
I didn’t experience that when I still used reddit; I think this was already a thing to some extent, but it was very dependent on the specific subs (could be that non-English subs were just more lenient about this in general). Maybe there has been a policy change that made this more widespread? I didn’t get the impression that the admins actually care about bot accounts that pretend to be people as long as they’re not too obvious from the common user’s perspective (same as any other commercial social media site), but reddit is a popular target for web scrapers, and AI scrapers have been a plague recently that directly impacts a site’s ability to function without providing any benefit whatsoever.
that is the other thing being a new user. A lot of people are blind to how oppressive the karma system is for a new user because they are grandfathered in ad used reddit when karma restrictions were lower and people tended to hand out upvotes more
I didn’t get the impression that the admins actually care about bot accounts that pretend to be people as long as they’re not too obvious from the common user’s perspective
I agree 100%, First off reddit singed a dea with open ai and google to help them train bots so they can’t be that concerned, they don’t block data center ips or even have captchas on post. Also most of the reddit bots are in specific places. They are in like crypto subreddits and nsfw subreddits and the people in those spaces don’t mind them. That is most of reddit’s bot activity.
“grandfathered in” makes it sound like I’ve been using my account since 2010 or something. I made a new account every couple of years and never encountered an issue, though I always avoided the really popular subs.
Right but you had reddit experience most people don’t have and knew of subs without karma limits
I am just not possible it’s possible to use reddit organically with no regard to karma in the modern day for most people.
If none of the low karma subs interest you and you know of no subs without karma limits you are just going to post on the popular subs, again reddit doesn’t make subs disclose karma limits and there is no way to search by “new user friendly”
So I got an idea, did you ever write comments or did you go straight to making posts? I think that might make a big difference; my main reddit interaction was always writing comments, not making posts.
That doesn’t necessarily refute any of your points about Reddit not being welcoming to new users, but at least it’s an explanation for why I never encountered the issues you had even though I never actively tried to avoid anything.
I tried to do both and my comments got more upvotes then my post I had like 3 post karma and 20 comment karma (that is another issue them being separate means if you only want to do one you are forced to do the other).
This was before I got shadow banned but that is a story for another day I still have no idea why I was.
Fair enough, I guess that wasn’t the issue. Most user’s comments getting more upvotes than their posts is kind of normal, though, even if I’m not quite sure why. Lemmy has worked the same for me so far.
How did you determine that you were shadowbanned from Reddit, anyway?
I filed a shadow ban appeal and reddit will not let you do that if you are not shadow banned.
I admit I freaked out because I was manic and wanted to use the site.
also the way you know, so you know those little reddit avatar things, if you are shadow banned in the top right corner your avatar wlll not show up it will be a generic color block silhouette
second every time you click on like anything you get a “we had a server error” warning message appear in reddit
third your post all say “removed by reddit’s filterS”
Bots are all over Reddit, you likely only noticed the obvious ones. There’s nonstop campaigns to manipulate people via Reddit and all sorts of groups have armies of bots posing as users.
They run it this way to create a massive smoke cloud to hide the way it’s really run. Purely dictatorially, for profit, manipulation and a safe space for advertising.
