Farming engagement has no incentive. It can’t be monetized here, there’s no karma. There would be no point.
Power users on the fediverse aren’t doing it for personal gain, they’re doing it to enrich the fediverse and make it a more attractive alternative to corporate social media.
We see so many complaints that it’s dead here, or there aren’t enough communities, or it’s hard to find the right community for something, or if the community exists it might be dead. That’s a lot of people’s rationale for not switching from reddit.
Power users here are trying to fix that. It’s an enormous task and more than a single user or a handful of users can do, but they’re doing their part and in many cases carrying more than their share of the burden. This change is kind of a slap in the face to them.
I’m not so sure as I recall a power user on Reddit who consistently hit the front page as he figured out how to engage users (best times to post, which topics, phrasing, secondary accounts for initial boost). I forget his name, but he effectively was researching how to grab attention and then I think even went to marketing firms with his research on his viral methods.
At the time I recall people saying to me “it’s just karma, it has no value” but attention was the value, and attention is something that companies can and will pay money for. Lemmy is not necesarily immune to this gamification of content
It has millions of daily users, the fediverse doesn’t.
It’s a publicly traded company with a profit motive, the fediverse isn’t.
It allows paid advertisements, the fediverse doesn’t.
There’s therefore a monetary incentive to farming karma on reddit, there isn’t on the fediverse.
Some people farm karma on reddit accounts just to sell them to advertisers or propagandists. This wouldn’t work on the fediverse for the above reasons, and because there’s no market for it for the same reasons.
Reddit feeds are governed by closed-source algorithms designed by a centralized company, fediverse feeds are not.
And lastly, you said yourself that the guy used secondary accounts to boost himself. This is voting abuse and should be dealt with whenever it can be positively identified.
Farming engagement has no incentive. It can’t be monetized here, there’s no karma. There would be no point.
Power users on the fediverse aren’t doing it for personal gain, they’re doing it to enrich the fediverse and make it a more attractive alternative to corporate social media.
We see so many complaints that it’s dead here, or there aren’t enough communities, or it’s hard to find the right community for something, or if the community exists it might be dead. That’s a lot of people’s rationale for not switching from reddit.
Power users here are trying to fix that. It’s an enormous task and more than a single user or a handful of users can do, but they’re doing their part and in many cases carrying more than their share of the burden. This change is kind of a slap in the face to them.
I’m not so sure as I recall a power user on Reddit who consistently hit the front page as he figured out how to engage users (best times to post, which topics, phrasing, secondary accounts for initial boost). I forget his name, but he effectively was researching how to grab attention and then I think even went to marketing firms with his research on his viral methods.
At the time I recall people saying to me “it’s just karma, it has no value” but attention was the value, and attention is something that companies can and will pay money for. Lemmy is not necesarily immune to this gamification of content
Reddit is different for multiple reasons.
It has karma, the fediverse doesn’t.
It has millions of daily users, the fediverse doesn’t.
It’s a publicly traded company with a profit motive, the fediverse isn’t.
It allows paid advertisements, the fediverse doesn’t.
There’s therefore a monetary incentive to farming karma on reddit, there isn’t on the fediverse.
Some people farm karma on reddit accounts just to sell them to advertisers or propagandists. This wouldn’t work on the fediverse for the above reasons, and because there’s no market for it for the same reasons.
Reddit feeds are governed by closed-source algorithms designed by a centralized company, fediverse feeds are not.
And lastly, you said yourself that the guy used secondary accounts to boost himself. This is voting abuse and should be dealt with whenever it can be positively identified.