Just like Reddit, PieFed keeps track of how many upvotes and downvotes your posts receive and the net value of all the votes received is called your “reputation” (Reddit calls it “karma”). This is not shown in the UI anywhere (except to administrators), to dissuade the karma-farming behavior common on Reddit. Reputation is not a game or status symbol, it is a mechanic for enhancing trust and safety on PieFed.
Some people have criticized PieFed for this, calling it a “social credit system” similar to the one in China so I thought it’d be good to explain exactly what it does so people don’t need to guess or rely on hearsay.
Well, it is certainly a social credit system, but we need to learn to not just think China when we think about it. the US credit rating system, most countries individual court files, all those are social credit systems, but some rules make some of them useful and some of them are tools of oppression.
Slashdot had an interesting system to dissuade karma farming. They would be capping karma at 50.
And mostly the only impact it had would be that you would have your publication start at minus one when you had negative karma. And above 10, you would get some moderation point, if I recall correctly (in slashdot, you don’t get inifinite votes automatically)
The devs considered that most users who were contributing honestly would end up between 40 and 50 pretty quickly, and that it was okay to be downvoted a bit from time to time.