MLem (the iOS Lemmy app) was also showing the user karma (but I think it was only showing karma gained on the local instance). So I guess this is nice for people that like to know their karma.
I also agree with @nlm@beehaw.org that we should leave this as a thing for yourself. The Lemmy API should not bother with reporting user karma as It would be way too easy to cheat for people with singe person instances. (and of course the toxicity that comes with karma)
Isn’t this just what many people predicted what would happen when everybody would use adblock? Now most people use some kind of blocker and some browsers even ship with a content blocker. Now pages need to make money in another way, so that’s either subscriptions, donations. or just force people to watch the ads anyway. I doubt people would want to donate any money to YouTube so then you get this.
It is not nice for users, but without income they would have to shut the site down. The same will happen when Lemmy gets popular, people will really have to donate to instance owners or they will also be forced to get money in another way.