in what ways do you think kbin should strive to be different from Reddit?
The reality is those restrictions/gates just became goalposts and frequently moved fairnebough that it was easier for the spammers to get past with a repost bot (or kharma farming sub)
Spammers are not the only thing this is meant for. One example would be the give-away subs. /r/SteamGiveaway etc. Their requirements don’t prevent every malicious post, but it did keep people from just easily creating dozens of accounts to game the system.