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You can influence the general sentiment in the thread, have the last word everywhere when terms/companies and so on are mentioned. Manipulation goes way beyond just "score goes up", sometimes introducing a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt is enough to derail entire submissions.

[bryanrasmussen]

OK, but does the Karma help those goals?

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Yes, apparently some people (like stymaar) do look at user's profile and look at those numbers to decide how they feel about things. Sometimes high karma can be a sign of trust or a established profile, sometimes (like in this case coupled with relatively recent registration date) it comes of as a signal of suspicion.