[userbinator]

Could you explain the significance of karma for those of us who don't use Reddit?

I know HN has karma too, but besides perhaps a tiny amount of bragging rights, it doesn't signify much.

[technion]

Accounts involved in obvious karma grabs often show up sometime later with product "recommendations", noting that they are an established high karma account and definitely not a marketing person.

[kqr]

People will expend a lot of effort to optimise any metric that is seen as desirable by their social group. On Reddit, it's karma points.

[_zooted]

It's worth mentioning Reddit uses the Karma system as part of the rate limiting. If you have a lot of karma you'll virtually never get the dreaded "You're doing that too fast" error message, but if you have a low karma account you might only get to post/comment once every 30 minutes.

[seanhunter]

It doesn't signify much as you say, but there is a minor industry of farming reddit karma and then selling those accounts for use by people who want to astroturf.

[donatj]

> tiny amount of bragging rights

Hit the nail on the head.

On Hacker News it's actually more significant because you unlock more powers the higher your karma like downvote

[dane-pgp]

> it doesn't signify much.

Nice humblebrag, Mr. 57305. ;-)

[Anon4Now]

For most people, it measures how much time they waste on the internet.

[s_dev]

>Could you explain the significance of karma for those of us who don't use Reddit?

The accumulated internet points you gain from upvotes.

In other words atomic level validation.

[cute_boi]

Not everyone is logical in this world. Karma is like dopamine inducer to many people. High karma might make somebody feel good. It is just like a game where reaching high score generally do nothing but you know that some people want little bit of satisfaction ..?