[dgritsko]

A couple of years back, it was announced that the trailer for one of the new Star Wars movies would debut during halftime of Monday Night Football. There's always a rush to post stuff like links to new movie trailers "first" on Reddit, so as to get the most fake internet points.

I guessed that the trailer would probably get added to the Star Wars YouTube page at around the same time it aired on TV, so I wrote a script to scrape the YouTube page every few seconds, and if a new video was added, submit the link to one of the big subreddits.

Sure enough, my hunch was correct, and my submission of the trailer on YouTube wound up being the first. The upvotes and comments poured in, skyrocketing the post briefly to the #1 link on Reddit's front page. This felt pretty cool and resulted in several thousand post karma. I didn't use the program after that, having satisfied my curiosity as to whether or not it would actually work. But it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit, and how useless it is as a proxy for "trust" or "reputation" or anything other than what it is - fake internet points.

[grawprog]

>But it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit, and how useless it is as a proxy for "trust" or "reputation" or anything other than what it is - fake internet points.

I have to say, do people really take karma, upvotes, credit, fake internet points etc. As a measure of trustworthiness? I know reddit pushes this idea but do people actually participating in communities with point systems see those with high karma points or whatever as trustworthy?

Personally, i've always assumed people with high amounts of karma or stars are just people who've spent a significant amount of their lives on a site and participated a lot.

[nsilvestri]

"Trust" in this context means that you can be more certain that there is a real person with a certain level of time investment and legitimate intent behind the account. Compare that to an new account whose only purpose is to post an ad before getting banned.

Karma thresholds are highly effective spam filters.

[MayeulC]

> Karma thresholds are highly effective spam filters.

And that's the reason why a lot of sites sell high karma accounts, whether those were hijacked, or karma farmed farmed for that purpose. People can make quite a few bucks if they find an effective way to farm it.

[grawprog]

Not necessarily. There's a site I use with a star based karma system. A bunch of years ago there was a glitch in the site that led to a bunch of random members getting ridiculous amounts of stars.

People still ask questions about it to this day as to why there's random members with this.

[devteambravo]

You'd be surprised. Even if you're aware of it, you may start noticing a post you like made be a high-karma person. Confirmation bia sets in, and very soon, your subconscious is engaged. This stuff was build that way by design.

[grawprog]

I dunno, I usually go out of my way to avoid looking at people's scores on places like that. Even my own if I can help it. HN is hard, it's right in the corner there, but I really don't tend to look at anyone else's scores. Same with reddit or other sites I use with those systems.

Don't get me wrong, I get the little dopamine rush and enjoy getting points and stuff, but I look at the whole thing the same way as a high score board on a video game or something.

[rjyoungling]

Maybe it's also because you guys know how to write scripts like that. I don't know how to do that so I earn my karma in the way it was intended. If I happen to notice someone's karma on Reddit, usually their history will quickly show you what's up.

Now you made me curious about your opinion of karma on places like stack overflow.

[grawprog]

Stack overflow i've got mixed feelings about. I've seen it work well sometimes, with the highest quality answer being voted to the top. Other times, it seems the top answers are not the best or just a bunch of pointless arguing.

I've never participated much in any of the stack overflow communities other than passively. I tried asking a question once that I hadn't seen on there but I got downvoted and told off so meh...I just stick to searching and passively reading mostly. I have thought of updating some older answers but they were usually locked and closed to discussion.

[rjyoungling]

Interesting. Seems like a complex problem to get a community right as it scales.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

[thisisnico]

I've never looked at anyone's points. It's pointless. Pun intended. It's not a descriptor of anything of value. Essentially I take information on reddit as it is, and use my own critical thinking skills to judge the opinion or value the opinion has to me. Sometimes there is great information, sometimes it's just people trolling. Everything is taken with a grain of salt.

[philbo]

Tangential, but one of my stock interview questions is to ask candidates how they decide whether to use a new dependency in production code.

The vast majority of people say GitHub stars and leave it at that. Occasionally they also mention checking how active the project is. Very, very rarely, someone will say they scan the code, maybe run the tests, check the open issues etc.

This is production code!

[fomine3]

Sadly it's no surprise after we experienced left-pad case.

[popinman322]

On Reddit it depends on how the karma was obtained.

Example questions:

- Did they gain all their karma in one post, or was it gradual? Gradual karma is better because it implies that they're probably not a troll.

- Did their karma come from the current subreddit or a different one? Just because you have karma from a popular sub doesn't mean you're a good contributor to a niche sub.

- How frequently are they downvoted? Frequent negative karma in even-handed subreddits is a bad sign.

- Does the user have good reputation in related subreddits?

So it's usually not the number that matters, but the context around that number and how it came to be. That said, usually these things only matter when a user is misbehaving: if you're a mod you need to know whether they're having a bad day, or if they have a history of breaking rules and trolling.

[Gunax]

You get karma for posting pithy and non-controversial (pessimists might say groupthink agreeable) comments or posts.

As much as everyone claims the system is for rewarding on topic discussion, in reality it is used to award points to people who echo whatever is popular and to put wrong think at the bottom.

[popinman322]

You can convey unpopular opinions on Reddit without getting downvoted. It just takes good wording and replying to the right post-- essentially what's required in real life: timing and tactfulness.

[avereveard]

most mod positions are offered first to contributing members of a community, so with fake points might eventually come real fake power. see for example the gallowboop story, he farmed points literally stealing other people content, and went to be a mod on a lot of subreddits

[Fjolsvith]

Years ago, I saw an auction website where bidders placed bids in penny amounts. Supposedly, you could win an item at a fraction of the price of the product. Bidding was real time, and you won the auction if you held the bid for 15 seconds. You "spent" your bid and never got it back if you lost the auction.

You never got to see how many people was bidding against you, and I always wondered how you could know it wasn't the website jacking up the bid.

I am reminded of that scam every time I see a karma/upvote system.

[ASalazarMX]

> But it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit, and how useless it is as a proxy for "trust" or "reputation" or anything other than what it is - fake internet points.

More than fake internet points, it's a distilled popularity contest, and we know popular people isn't necessarily trustworthy. Reddit calling it karma gives it more credit than it deserves.

[IggleSniggle]

Reddit calling it karma is a throwback to its early days when "upvote posts that meaningfully contribute real value to the discussion, even if you disagree with the content" was a closely held ideal of the reddit community. Sort of closer to how Stack Overflow upvotes are currently intended.

[FalconSensei]

> even if you disagree with the content

yeah, the intention was good, but that's not how it works, unfortunately.

[read_if_gay_]

I get unreasonably annoyed at seeing posts get downvoted just because they don’t fit the mainstream opinion, especially if the author clearly put in a lot of effort to articulate their views. Bonus points if there are zero replies too.

Anyone who downvotes like that is just lazy, close minded and cowardly. It’s sad that it happens so often.

[Shared404]

> Bonus points if there are zero replies too.

This frustrates me to no end. If someone can type out a long comment explaining their position, the least you can do is reply with why you disagree, in addition/instead of hitting the downvote.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Yeah, I tend to upvote in this situation, even when I disagree.

[jcelerier]

> Reddit calling it karma gives it more credit than it deserves.

I remember PhpBB and vBulletin forums having karma plug-ins back in 2005, this isn't something invented by reddit at all

[mixmax]

Slashdot had something similar many years earlier

[ryandrake]

I think they even called it Karma--back in the late 90's. I bet that's where the term originated.

[masterofmisc]

Gee, Slashdot. That brings back memories

[dredmorbius]

Slasdot had karma, Kuro5hin had mojo.

[scollet]

I wonder how many people are popular among the automated audience.

[dredmorbius]

Whuffie.

[jrockway]

I am not sure this is such a bad thing. You did good work for the community -- they wanted the link to the trailer as quickly as possible and you engineered a solution to give them that. They said "thank you" in return.

I understand the "anyone could have done that" or "they could have just waited 3 seconds longer" arguments... but you actually did it, and did it 3 seconds faster than anyone else, so they got a better "product" and you got some internet points. Not a bad deal, in my mind. It's almost a little heartwarming.

[handmodel]

Very cool - but in a lot of ways I think that if you believed in the system of Karma then it worked?

You posted a high quality post (being first) and assume if you wrote the script you also took time to write an accurate title.

While it is arbitrary and noise you beat out those you posted 30 seconds ahead of - the same hours a bunch of people posted home videos, self-promotion, or old clips and didn't get any karma.

It is imperfect but the karma system had some desired effect.

[MaxBarraclough]

> it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit

I think you put in far more effort in writing that script, than the average karma-farmer puts in.

Far easier to just repost photos without attribution.

[jeromegv]

Yep. Early on during the famous Rob Ford drug controversy (in Toronto), I realized that any time an article on him would drop with new details on his shady dealings, this would easily gather thousands of upvotes on reddit as the most controversial thing of the day. Soon enough, I started just posting on reddit every time a new news drop would come. Journalists typically share their own articles on twitter as soon as they are online so it wasn't hard to be the first.

Ended up with thousands of points in karma for something as easy as copy pasting the URL on reddit as soon as it was available. Never cared about posting articles on reddit before or after those events, but I figured this was an easy way to make my score way high and keep it that way for the next few years.

[libraryatnight]

Reddit etc are basically games.

[pmiller2]

Thank you! I said this on Reddit just a few days ago and got downvoted for it. Specifically, I said that karma was an element of gamification. Of course, they did not like that. :P

[gadders]

I'm sure you could do similar with certain blogs and posting to HN. EG PG's blog, anything written by Patio11 etc.

[Jtsummers]

HN is small enough that timing matters even more than on Reddit. So a script would have to take that into consideration. HN also works against duplicate posts, so a post at midnight US eastern time wouldn't see much activity, and then reposts later in the morning would only add to its upvotes rather than getting new (better timed) listings.

[gadders]

But if you were polling, say, PG's blog and posted it here within minutes of it being published you'd accrue all the benefits of the dupes, no?

[Jtsummers]

Yes, but limited. It'd depend on whether the mods reupped the post the next morning so it could have a chance of hitting the front page or if a dupe managed to get through (which does happen). Either because the system permits it, or because the submitter added a #nonce to the end.

If the mods reupped it, then it'd work out really well for the original submitter. If karma mattered, I suppose it'd be worth trying a few times to see how it worked out.

[gadders]

Yeah, I'm not going to bother with it just for imaginary internet points, but I bet if you wanted to take it further you could analyse the top sites that hit the front page and poll all of them.

[raxxorrax]

It "works" as long as it isn't taken too seriously by everyone. I also believe that you can become addicted by karma and some people seem to completely compromise their character in the hunt for more points.

[sporkologist]

Are HN karma points fake too? I hope not

[SuperGent]

I think that they are a measure of how much you participate in the community here. I've been a member for 6 years, but as I usually lurk, my karma is low. I don't use karma as a measure of other posters but I can see why the management locks certain features for those with higher points.

[criddell]

> I hope not

Why?

[sporkologist]

I appreciate karma points as a measure of how much my thoughts resonate with others, or don't... They are real enough for me.

[wdr1]

> fake internet points

What are real internet points

[adtac]

I only trust posts on Reddit from usernames that are > 5y old and have less than 3000 karma (unfortunately, this means I wouldn't trust my own account(s) lol). Similar to how 4 star and 2 star reviews on Amazon are infinitely more informational to understand the real pros and cons.