I remember Reddit in its early days (it was founded in 2005). The conversations were intelligent and I participated in a lot of them. When they introduced karma, I noticed that people were using it as a badge of honor. People started posting shitty one-liners to get upvotes, but those posts had no meaning.

So I started posting less and less. Lemmy/Kbin reminds me of the early days of Reddit, and I hope it stays that way.