deleted by creator

Something important to realize is, upvotes attributed to a profile was once designed to place profiles on a trust scale. A person with more upvotes in general would simply, and naturally, be more listened and trust than a person with low or even negative upvotes.

The problem is our brain can easily fall in the trap which has been used by marketing for decades now : the reward circuit.

Thus people prone to make a lot of money abused that, and even raised the problem to an other level with bots and competition. They did so because it creates addiction. And what addiction does create ? Spending money. So you really don’t want profile accumulated upvotes on Lemmy.