Did people actually change what they’d say based on whether or not they thought they’d get upvotes? I always just said what I wanted and used the karma to determine how popular of an opinion it was, so pretty much exactly how Lemmy works now. I don’t think I ever looked at my overall account karma on Reddit.

Absolutely. People thought karma actually meant something.

I mean, it kind of does mean something small, which is credibility. Karma wasn’t ever a flawless way to determine credibility, but it was a decent first pass, like an online ocular patdown.

Uh, no. Lol

It maybe showed popularity. But it was frequently manipulated.