Yes. It can also trick you into thinking a reactionary opinion is actually a popular one. For example in my country, ireland, there's been a few incidents were people of different nationalities have done unsavoury things caught on camera. This usually results of the comment section of the ireland sub to have a debate about whether there's too many immigrants in the country. Whichever side gets more upvotes is widely perceived to have "won" and bystanders will in turn adopt that position.

I don't think I've ever changed an opinion of mine to go along with the hive mind but the karma system has definitely discouraged me from commenting things because I would been downvoted into oblivion. It's not worth getting into arguments when you can clearly see people not siding with you.

The biggest issue in some places was, even if your opinion is valid, if it didn’t fit the group speak, it would be downvoted regardless.

It wasn’t really a great indicator if your opinion was popular or not, it was more if it got that groups niche.

Yes, people definitely did. Maybe not a majority but a lot

That and also many subs wouldn't allow people to participate if they didn't have a high enough karma

Karma did limit where and how frequently you could post

I didn’t. If anything I enjoyed the downvotes sometimes. Your downvotes mean nothing

Did people actually change what they’d say based on whether or not they thought they’d get upvotes?

I'd argue anyone who did that probably had nothing interesting to say and/or didn't actually care about what they were saying. Same with the people who complained about downvotes.

I think you are envisioning something a little more intentional/thought out than it is. We do this socially all the time. You gauge the audience and you adjust what you’re going to say to better fit it. Or to upset them if you’re trolling but that tends to be more deliberate.

I bet if you took your comments from a hobby sub/forum/group/etc. you frequent, and then one from a meme community, you will find your tone and rhetoric are very different. And again this is not a bad thing! You are doing and saying what is appropriate for the context. It is very natural to do. But the point is you probably don’t sit down and calculate your exact wording. We just sort of do it, and our goal is generally to “fit in“ or get some affirmation from the community we are participating in.

Yep. I remember someone asking on a hiking sub about a backpack. It was a very fashionable and heavy canvas pack. I hike a good bit and have never seen a pack like that being used by others in the trails, so I said that I wouldn't recommend that pack. I think it had like 30-40 down votes. I never gave my opinion on a pack again.

I think the karma system on reddit had a real effect on behaviour. What you often found it did was cause people to write comments for the audience of voters instead of for the person they're responding to. This eliminates personal interaction between users and turns everything into soapboxing. You stop having real conversations with each other, instead it becomes about pandering to votes.

This then also causes people to vote based on this as well. "You're not saying what the group wants to hear" downvote is the voting behaviour it creates.

The amount of deleted downvoted comments makes me think most people at least change their minds afterwards. Which to me is the real weird part, you hide your opinion so you don't lose useless internet points..

Yes, and there's a bit of psychology at play

Reddit just shows one score on the post, it doesn't show the exact upvote/downvote number. It's easy to just say "Well everyone else voted this up/down, so I guess I will to", it encourages group think, by design it's meant to be an echo chamber.

Imagine you have a divisive opinion, at the end of an hour you have 9 upvotes and 11 downvotes, so it's at negative one. You're gonna think you're being ignored, and others will think you're unpopular and just downvote you not reading it because it's "What the group is doing"

Reddit is fucking nightmare

I agree but when a sincerly comment does not strive how I expected i delete it and take the thought about it to myself.

Obviously I am wrong, then.

You are right.

I certainly never have changed what I said based on popular opinion. If someone convinces me I'm wrong, I'll admit it, but just people downvoting me because they don't like what I have to say? Fine. That's their prerogative.