This is a theory that’s previously been stated in log/39-normie-hypothesis.gmi, but I think it’s worth expanding on as it’s become very relevant with the recent Reddit shit-show actualizing just how bad that website has gotten along with social media in general. I think the model demonstrate how the ’enshittification’ process is an inevitability with any social media that is run on a venture capital model. An online community can be like a village, where you have familiar faces, collective experiences, shared values and so forth.

Great writing on the current Reddit saga. The author put down in words a lot of things in my mind I couldn’t find the right words.

  • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
    3·
    1 year ago

    As karma mattered more you lost a whole subset of regular posters that felt kamra took a relaxing pastime and made it into a job. Karma was used as a kind of stopgap for the issue of managing the cacophony in a busy thread, which made the points matter even more and caused even more people to disengage.

    • RandomBit@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      1 year ago

      Personally, I found that karma led to self-censorship of any idea that remotely deviated from the group consensus.

      • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
        4·
        1 year ago

        Ofc! whats the point of posting anything when you have people actively work to suppress your thoughts and statements?

        Really user-based meta-moderation had been pretty much a disaster, not sure we need internet points at all, things worked great without them.

      • Honeyed Coffee
        2·
        1 year ago

        Can you think of alternatives to voting, though? Sorting always requires some curating system that isn’t random but I can’t think of any that would be robust to group consensus

        • RandomBit@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think user voting in of itself is a problem. It’s the consequences of large negative voting that causes the real problems. In Reddit, a single unpopular comment on a popular subreddit could send a casual Redditor into negative karma which effectively shadowbans them from Reddit. As a result, you see people deleting their comments to stop the bleeding. Controversial opinions are punished severely.

          • Honeyed Coffee
            1·
            1 year ago

            Fair enough. I always assumed downvotes were used to weed out/shadow-ban troll accounts more than suppress unpopular opinions but I’ve never seen that measure reduce the number of trolls in the long run