One of the things platforms use to keep us coming back and investing more of our time in building their site for them, is Internet Points. They don’t do anything, but we still crave them.

On Reddit, these Internet Points are, of course, called “karma”

In moving on from Reddit, I’m burning over 80k karma.
It feels fine. I mean, it has no real value, and bots can scrounge up that amount of karma in an afternoon, but it still represents a sizable time investment.

How much are you burning, and how do you feel about it?

4 points

200k+ comment karma, from 75,000 comments. I’ve run PowerDeleteSuite, but it hasn’t quite got everything. I think I need to use the GDPR request csv files to get the comments that don’t display in the profile, but I’m looking for something that will automate this.

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3 points

I’ll be filing a GDPR right-to-be-forgotten request, so Reddit has to do it for me.

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2 points

Make sure you do a GDPR data request first. The csv files contain a lot of stuff (although they don’t contain any associated accounts they believe you have), in particular there are links to every comment. Your profile doesn’t show every single comment you’ve ever made, and if you just delete your account they will delete the user but leave the comments up.

So you have to do it carefully. PowerDeleteSuite is good, however as I say it only has access to what’s on your profile - many older comments with lower karma will be missed.

It should be straightforward to use the csv files to extract the links and edit + delete from there, in the same way that PSD does it from the profile, but I’m still looking for something that does that.

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1 point

Yep, I’ve already requested that, and when it arrives I’ll likely build something to do it manually if they don’t comply properly with my request to be forgotten. I’d take them to court over it, but meh, I don’t have the energy.

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4 points
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I feel manipulated by the karma. It has no value and yet I care when i get downvoted. It’s a huge warning sign to get off reddit and into a healthier community.

I had like 20000 karma on some previous reddit account i deleted a few years back. Current one has 3000 karma or so. Because I post a lot, and I wrote things people agree with usually. But it’s a echo chamber, and once I start to limit myself to writing things that are “safe” from a karma point of view, I’m literally just supporting the entire karma system.

It’s something very Chinese about these points. They have this social system where citizens have a score, and if they get too low, they can’t get loans and whatnot. Pretty much what the show black mirror was showing, and China now has it.

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1 point

Are you questioning The Party, comorade?

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1 point

35k karma, 11.5yrs.

I agree, though I don’t think we should limit this discussion to ‘1984-with-Chinese-characteristics’, lest we ignore the similar ways that western countries are sliding into authoritarianism. We have a vast body of literature warning us about these dystopic futures awaiting us, so it’ll be only us to blame if we don’t heed their warnings.

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3 points

I have ~5100 karma, I’ve never really cared about the total karma amount but it is fun to see a comment or post be upvoted. They feel like social points and that makes me think of “that” episode of Black Mirror, and as @mrmanager@lemmy.today said, China has implemented that. It’s crazy.

But as I always say, in the end, the people have the power. Always.

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3 points

Yep, and we kinda get that same sort of dopamine hit here, just not the global karma, because there is no central place to collect global points!

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1 point

I think “local” karma makes more sense and I’d much rather have a point system than get hundreds of comments saying “I agree” because that’s annoying af.

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1 point

Ironically, I agree!

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1 point
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I discovered reddit not so long ago, since I am not a social kind of person I mainly lurked there for memes, info and news about my hobbies and humor in general. Never had the crave for karma points (or Internet points in general) but I can understand it. Posted a comment about world of warcraft that reached almost 5000 karma (i really don’t know why, but as I said I was not into the reddit mechanics, so maybe I am the one that cannot get the point). I think it’s quite a lot for only one comment!

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5 points

About 90k. It’s fine. I care less about the karma then I do about loosing the community’s, but they were going downhill for a long time anyway.

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