Back in the Elder Days, I had a four digit user id on slashdot. Slashdot was the first social media site that I had seen that implemented a karma system. At some point within the first few years (iirc), they capped karma at +5 per post.

I decided to try an experiment where I’d see how much karma farming I could do, and simply started making pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft posts multiple times a day. As someone exclusively using Linux (this was probably around 1996-1997) and who hated MS, this wasn’t a big stretch. I got a massive amount of karma in a very short time with intentionally fluff posts, which forever changed how I’d look at social media.

Now the posts I enjoy writing are mostly long form ones, of which I actually hit post on less than half. I easily get pages into a post before deciding I just don’t care about it all that much and just don’t bother submitting it.

There’s several things social media sites could do in order to cut down on fluff and encourage more engaging posts, but it means walking away from the easy karma models.