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I hope this is a step on the road of phasing out "likes" entirely. I really hate the concept. Even on HN, where it works comparatively well (comment score isn't

I hope this is a step on the road of phasing out "likes" entirely. I really hate the concept. Even on HN, where it works comparatively well (comment score isn't directly visible, new users can't downvote etc) it bothers me, softly nudging me towards making comments that I know will get easy upvotes or not expressing controversial sentiments. At the end of the day you can't really get around the fact that these systems encourage people to post "popular" content. That helps filter out the true trash, but ultimately leads to monoculture, in my opinion.

austincheney 7y ago
I don't know if the 500 karma rule for enabling downvotes is enough any more with the number of throwaway accounts I see on here. If would be nice if the vote history were visible for a given account to see if people were using temporary accounts for trolling the vote system. A single user with several throwaway accounts, each over 500 karma, could add a false perception of actual user activity.
- kuu 7y ago
  I'm not sure is that easy to achieve 500 karma with a throwaway account... Not to mention with many
  - austincheney 7y ago
    Here are 2 of them with 4000 and 7000 karma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051459 Acquiring karma is a game. If you know how to play to game you can get a 1000 in a week easily. Its much easier to gain karma than lose karma though.
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Idk.. I'm only at 357 and it's been years!
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  I only got 500 karma quite recently myself, though getting from 500 to 750 took no time at all. I think you could get karma pretty quickly if you really try hard for it by trying to get to posts as early as possible and saying the obvious thing that everyone is thinking, but I don't think you could really scale this up to a meaningful number of accounts. I don't think you could really do much damage, also because posts themselves (as opposed to comments) can't be downvoted (unless that's behind some other karma milestone I can't reach yet).
dkrudy 7y ago
Thank you, well put and I agree with your conclusion.

austincheney 7y ago

I don't know if the 500 karma rule for enabling downvotes is enough any more with the number of throwaway accounts I see on here. If would be nice if the vote history were visible for a given account to see if people were using temporary accounts for trolling the vote system. A single user with several throwaway accounts, each over 500 karma, could add a false perception of actual user activity.

kuu 7y ago
I'm not sure is that easy to achieve 500 karma with a throwaway account... Not to mention with many
- austincheney 7y ago
  Here are 2 of them with 4000 and 7000 karma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051459 Acquiring karma is a game. If you know how to play to game you can get a 1000 in a week easily. Its much easier to gain karma than lose karma though.
rwmurrayVT 7y ago
Idk.. I'm only at 357 and it's been years!
Smithalicious 7y ago
I only got 500 karma quite recently myself, though getting from 500 to 750 took no time at all. I think you could get karma pretty quickly if you really try hard for it by trying to get to posts as early as possible and saying the obvious thing that everyone is thinking, but I don't think you could really scale this up to a meaningful number of accounts. I don't think you could really do much damage, also because posts themselves (as opposed to comments) can't be downvoted (unless that's behind some other karma milestone I can't reach yet).

dkrudy 7y ago

Thank you, well put and I agree with your conclusion.