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
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.
https://youtu.be/gEK1G1WQM64
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.