[deadso]

One thing that people miss out on when they complain about guilding/awards is that being guilded or buying premium will credit your account with reddit tokens that you can use to guild other posts. So there's a chance the users are just using tokens that they have in their accounts already. I purchased premium back in the day to sync visited pages, and I have around 10+ platinum awards I can give out, a lot more if I use a cheaper award.

See here: https://www.reddit.com/coins/

[stereolambda]

Thanks for clarification. I'm not really complaining, just found it amusing. Still using the awards looks a little like tacitly supporting the system, and I even wondered if they help the submissions in the algorithm (if so, gilding would make more sense in that case).