I agree with this. Fake internet points ruin the internet.

Agreed. This place shouldn't be a popularity contest.

Yep this ^

The comment/article up/downvote functions combined with personal filters/ban/blacklist tools is all that's needed. Some kind of strange "karma" or global reputation over time is the detrimental to the site and discussions and encourages bandwagoning users.

There are some basic use-cases, imho. Quite a few subs required a minimum level of karma, age, and perhaps activity to reduce spammers.

I see no reason to track karma above 1000 or so, though. Even the most choosy subs never asked for that much karma, so I assume that should be fine.

agree totally, the constant reposting to karma farm was one of the biggest annoyances

I agree. People can never fully seem to grasp that upvote and downvote do not mean agree and disagree, which discourages real conversation and ferments a hivemind.

People that want to put the effort in to have real discussions also don’t tend to care about internet points. But people that care about internet points are more inclined to only post low effort content and continual reposts.

Yes, karma farming just encouraged reposting of popular posts. I can't stand seeing the same thing over and over again- across and in the same subs.

I honestly prefer the way Fark handles comment voting. Smart or Funny. No upvotes or downvotes, just whether you enjoyed the comment for its humor or its intellectual content.

Power user from Reddit here. Yeah, it helps create some of the toxicity. Definitely for not having that crap follow over to the Fediverse

I agree. The fear of losing karma gave me "posting anxiety"

God yes. Not even close to unpopular. I've been going back and forth about it because it was sold as a barrier for entry to bots but, as was already noted, they just all hung around that damn free karma sub or reposted a single meme and then it was off to the races.

I get the feeling behind including it, but its only inarguable value is sorting the feed. Easy enough to just hide it outside of articles and then we'd all be better off.

I like this idea

AMEN.

I personally liked the gold-silver awards, but felt like adding million award options really cluttered the UI. But I agree it's a great way to get some money for server hosting.

This is the thing;

I don't mind to pay for services, I don't mind to pay for extra's as long as the money goes to the people doing the work and the people doing the work increase or maintain the user experience of said service.

The whole "you just want free stuff" people were shouting on Reddit is a bunch of balony.

• Hosting costs money
• Infrastructure costs money
• Developing costs money
• Maintenance costs money

All the above also costs time.

So of course it is okay for people to donate or have some monetization possibilities to keep the lights on and getting paid for the work they do so they can make a full time living from it or use it as a part time gig.

But there is still a difference size rift between the above and trying to monetize every single thing from your platform/user base just because of greed.

Well, there is this:
https://kbin.social/awards

Doesn't seem to be an active feature right now though.

I can see that working well as long as awards don't affect the placement of comments and posts. Have it just show a icon next to the comment or post like a reaction.
If magazines can have custom award icons that'd add some charm to the feature.

I don't like the awards but I like the idea of tipping - in a private and indirectly helpful way. Specifically, being able to send a small, "that was awesome" note to the poster but directing the money to the poster's instance. The problem is that I expect it to be corrupted and monetize servers/instances to generate revenue rather than simply defray costs, which would be a net negative for the fediverse overall.

In the end i think payment for content in any form will imbalance the system. I've already donated to one of my two instances and will do so for the second if the owner starts allowing it (they’re currently not accepting any donations). We should all be responsible enough and just let our upvotes be upvotes.

If it were a way to actively support the site/servers, I wouldn't mind. This site won't continue very long without some way to pay for it

Maybe emoji reactions, calckey, and a few other 'verse services have it

Agreed, Shadowbanning is ridiculous, and fudging numbers defeats the point of the numbers existing.

Fuck, thee goes my Spez.ml instance.

That wasn't a feature of reddit. That was the mods of that sub running a bot that checked for you posting there. They had issues with people from that sub and just decided that if people participated there, then they weren't welcome in their sub.

Well, I think it's already here but with instances

i wouldn't totally mind this since it could go directly to funding the server/Ernest without ads, and people can show 'extra love' for posts they like, but i can understand why it would be disliked.

They could be a better revenue source than ads, I believe.

other parts of the fediverse have emoji reactions already. you can emoji react to kbin posts from elsewhere, but it doesn't show up on kbin.

this means that kbin may eventually get something like Awards, but if they use the same APIs as emoji reactions, they won't be paid.

Or just improve on the awards system and make it shared donations between the instance owner and app developer. The more usage, the higher contributions probably.

Any ban should be transparent to the users.

Vulcan was a victim of the Snoo Shadowbans, apparently due to usage of VPN services.

Unfortunately shadowbanning is a very useful feature against spambots, so it will probably be implemented in the fediverse as well.

This I disagree, I believe it's useful to let trolls and spam bots talking to themselves, alerting of a ban will only make them to take measures to circumvent the block. The problem would be mod abuse, not the tool.

Relay and old.reddit really kept me sheltered. I knew chat was a thing but I managed to avoid the rest. That all sounds awful.

Fuck the recommended subs bullshit. I was a frequent poster and reader of r/personalfinance so reddit kept recommending r/povertyfinance. One look through that led me to block the sub, but it kept popping up anyways. Same with subs for specific cities even though I don't live anywhere near them.

Don't forget at one point they wanted to copy Clubhouse too!

Exactly. Comments and posts/threads should have up and down votes, but those should not accumulate on an account like Karma does.

It gets people used to the idea that the more points a person has, clearly the better quality their account must be, when in reality Karma could be easily accumulated by exploiting lurkers with cute animal photos or generic/milquetoast opinion pieces literally nobody could disagree with.

Edit: milquetoast not milktoast

Reddit Karma exists to get a score of 1000000, at which point the account is worth serious money on the black market. With a Karma of 1000000, all banned subs and moderated/deleted content is visible. It's the world's biggest CP operation operating in plain sight. Always has had that reputation, but nothing ever changed.

They make it easier to see bots, at least.

I understand not liking overzealous filters but I would like a feature to allow blacklisting words in magazines, otherwise you're going to get people shouting slurs at others and getting away with it until a moderator comes to clean it up.

Probably why this stupid word unalive now exists

IIRC that specifically came from TikTok, rather than Reddit.

Oh man this was the worst. Even game subs like Call of Duty the mods would not allow anyone to talk about Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM) so they just auto-modded every single thread about it. These same mods pretty much run every CoD sub so they were all unfortunately power-tripped the same way. If a community is upset about something they should be able to speak their mind, not hide it all because it might look bad for a company.

That had nothing to do with Reddit, reddit never censored that word. The mods of that sub would have set that up.

Propaganda??? I personally like pfps/avatars and think they're an important part of any traditional forum. Identity is important in communities and I think they help facilitate that. I just wish that I could adjust the size of the on Kbin because they're way too small for me. 🥲 But you should always have the option to hide them as well.

Don't know if you mean that profile pictures hiding should be a magazine specific setting, but you personally can hide profile pictures (and magazine logos) in your side bar settings.

In the wrong hands sure, but IMO it feels like a way to get to know the person you're talking to just a little better by seeing what they chose to present to the world alongside their username

Was super annoying to have them on reddit, glad one can disable it here.

Aha, that was the complete misuse of upvote and downvotes. The point was upvote what added to the conversation/topic and downvote off-topic/troll posts.

Instead they are used as the agree/disagree buttons, with people tending to vote with the majority.

This

Both ironically, and unironically

I disagree. Profile pics IMO make each exchange feel more personal - like you learn just a little tidbit about the person you're chatting to by what they chose to put out into the world alongside their username.

They added profile photos?

the workaround for that is to use different accounts.

I personally am privacy conscious so I used a different reddit account on each device. After I was "stalked" across different subs by one particularly delightful individual after we had a disagreement, I also made it a practice to create a fresh account every 2-3 years or so. I did this consciously on my desktop/laptop, but on my phone it was easier - every time I get a new phone, I make a new account.

The downside is that you lose your karma, which... isn't a downside for me at all.

My thing about them wanting ipo is that it makes no sense to me. I don't for a second believe it is a want for the good of the site. An ipo isn't gonna actually make them profit.

If they just wanted to make the company profitable, just do that and stay private.

Sure, they could be running out of burnable funds. That could be why they want the injection. But if there plan was to get profitable then do an ipo, why bother with step 2. Go straight to step 3, profit.

Today I gathered my kids and escaped my physically abusive spouse, who often locked us in cages and sprayed us with piss and detergent. AITA? 🙃