Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies(forbes.com)
forbes.com
Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/20/reddit-is-being-manipulated-by-big-financial-services-companies/
121 comments
I'm not sure how anyone can think discussions on reddit are not manipulated at this point. If you watch carefully, you see the exact same verbiage used from multiple accounts on the same topic used to steer conversations. And as new responses come up, there will be a multi-hour delay, then new verbiage will get posted simultaneously to multiple accounts. There is clearly behind-the-scenes writing efforts going on, then being distributed to accounts. And if I see this just as a casual observer, I can only imagine what you would find if you really dug deep.
It should be feasible to write a slap-drone (nod to Iain Banks) style Reddit bot that trawls all comments in the major subreddits and minor subreddits which their mods request, and performs a fuzzy match on the comment contents. Any comments found with substantively the same content gets the account followed around. Every comment from that account for a period of time gets an immediate reply citing the findings, and a warning to others that the account is possibly a commercial astroturfing account. Monetize by offering a paid opt-in subscription where subscribers who post comments with an appropriate disclaimer don't get slap droned.
This has the advantage that even posting much the same comment into different subreddits using different accounts in each subreddit is detected.
This has the advantage that even posting much the same comment into different subreddits using different accounts in each subreddit is detected.
That sort of thing would match on some memes as well. Not necessarily a bad thing.
As a heavy user, I find myself using the same verbiage I read. I often find myself repeating, sometimes verbatim, comments I've read days, or even weeks/months ago.
This is the danger with just being in an echo chamber, because you yourself become part of the echo.
This is the danger with just being in an echo chamber, because you yourself become part of the echo.
On a news or politics subreddit? Sure. I haven't seen much astroturfing on ELI5, or Askscience. Reddit is a big place... fortunately bigger than the various news and politics cesspools that inevitably emerge and rise to popularity.
Sometimes they make no effort to hide it.
http://i.imgur.com/M6wAJ1A.png
http://i.imgur.com/M6wAJ1A.png
Agreed - my first thought on reading the headline was "duh. what companies _aren't_ manipulating reddit?"
> If you watch carefully
I thinks the problem; many browsers don't care to fact check, or even click through to the articles underneath. Indeed I just scroll through the list a few times throughout the day, and might click on anything that sounds interesting. But with the constant and obvious BS it all gets a bit tiresome. If there was an alternative site where they had rules in place to deal with the problem, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
I thinks the problem; many browsers don't care to fact check, or even click through to the articles underneath. Indeed I just scroll through the list a few times throughout the day, and might click on anything that sounds interesting. But with the constant and obvious BS it all gets a bit tiresome. If there was an alternative site where they had rules in place to deal with the problem, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Imho, the comment visibility and ordering plays a critical role in this.
It's pretty obvious first comments on HN that are generally upvotable tend to accumulate views, votes, and thereby become undisplacable from the top of the sort. In addition to drowning out lower comments as threads aren't collapsed.
From a pure game perspective, not reading the article / skimming and posting a comment as quickly as possible strictly dominates reading the article, if you're optimizing for karma.
It's pretty obvious first comments on HN that are generally upvotable tend to accumulate views, votes, and thereby become undisplacable from the top of the sort. In addition to drowning out lower comments as threads aren't collapsed.
From a pure game perspective, not reading the article / skimming and posting a comment as quickly as possible strictly dominates reading the article, if you're optimizing for karma.
Do you have an example?
r/worldnews is full of divisive commentary that shapes discussion in stupid and toxic ways.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5vwt2g/israel_de...
Top thread (minus auto-summary bot's) erroneously declares the title misleading.
The thread under that amplifies some seemingly very flakey accusations a different employee at that organization maintains ties to a terrorist organization renounced decades ago.
Derail accomplished! Threads about Russia being bad usually lead with how the US is bad. Threads about Syria often debate whether Bashar al-Assad is not so bad. I am usually annoyed I read the comments in that subreddit.
Look at this awesome 2 day old account's comments -
https://www.reddit.com/user/Supercootur
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5vwt2g/israel_de...
Top thread (minus auto-summary bot's) erroneously declares the title misleading.
The thread under that amplifies some seemingly very flakey accusations a different employee at that organization maintains ties to a terrorist organization renounced decades ago.
Derail accomplished! Threads about Russia being bad usually lead with how the US is bad. Threads about Syria often debate whether Bashar al-Assad is not so bad. I am usually annoyed I read the comments in that subreddit.
Look at this awesome 2 day old account's comments -
https://www.reddit.com/user/Supercootur
I saw a bunch of examples just like this:
https://i.redditmedia.com/C87zcWzT3KPN0Sdo4YfMIe2Rd0oLWTwBsX...
Sometimes the fake accounts will even have identical comments and only post in each others comment chains.
https://i.redditmedia.com/C87zcWzT3KPN0Sdo4YfMIe2Rd0oLWTwBsX...
Sometimes the fake accounts will even have identical comments and only post in each others comment chains.
Yeah, even the CEO got caught editing comments, and nothing happened to him. What do you expect, at this point?
It's a shame this has happened. It used to that aggregated news was the best news because it wasn't opinionated. It also didn't need to focus on the big ticket items (murder, sex, drugs) like newspapers, as sales weren't a concern, so you have science, tech, and I kid you not, actual good news to read about!
But now with the pay-to-get-upvotes scams going on, we get utterly biased and even ridiculous stories constantly on the front page. And how to even start on the comments, which just read like blurbs to the title. A great example on the front page at the moment:
"Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy' says Navy Seal who brought down Osama Bin Laden".
I almost feel like this stuff is AI generated at this point, just throwing together keywords that get clicks. As someone across the pond looking in, the bias is laughable obvious. I just hope that more people realise that manipulation is present, and remember not to believe everything they read.
But now with the pay-to-get-upvotes scams going on, we get utterly biased and even ridiculous stories constantly on the front page. And how to even start on the comments, which just read like blurbs to the title. A great example on the front page at the moment:
"Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy' says Navy Seal who brought down Osama Bin Laden".
I almost feel like this stuff is AI generated at this point, just throwing together keywords that get clicks. As someone across the pond looking in, the bias is laughable obvious. I just hope that more people realise that manipulation is present, and remember not to believe everything they read.
The political subreddits are almost a weird case study of trends and tactics right now. If you pay close enough attention to /r/politics over the last month or so you saw general tones of the stories being raised to the top: "Trump is being manipulated like a puppet", "Trump is too stupid to be president", "Trump is sabotaging ____".
And neither title is all that surprising withing the context of the echo chamber that exists there, but for a little while you'd see the same types of posts just circulating the page for days when suddenly the entire direction went to the next phase or tactic, there was actually quite little variety in my opinion.
And neither title is all that surprising withing the context of the echo chamber that exists there, but for a little while you'd see the same types of posts just circulating the page for days when suddenly the entire direction went to the next phase or tactic, there was actually quite little variety in my opinion.
This might just be a reflection of the media echo chamber?
Reddit is largely regurgitated news stories. The news entities are all famously easy to manipulate and care more about speed and quantity over quality. A lot of news organizations are shamelessly partisan too, more so than ever.
I avoid the political subreddits even when they align with my political ideology because they are mostly filled with controversy driven stories rather than any useful political debate. You can't fill 24hr news cycles without filling it up with useless drama, so it's better to not get caught in that trap and just wait for the actually good stories float to the top.
Reddit is largely regurgitated news stories. The news entities are all famously easy to manipulate and care more about speed and quantity over quality. A lot of news organizations are shamelessly partisan too, more so than ever.
I avoid the political subreddits even when they align with my political ideology because they are mostly filled with controversy driven stories rather than any useful political debate. You can't fill 24hr news cycles without filling it up with useless drama, so it's better to not get caught in that trap and just wait for the actually good stories float to the top.
> "Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy' says Navy Seal who brought down Osama Bin Laden".
What is this an example of? This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that I would expect on the front page if there was no vote manipulation.
What is this an example of? This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that I would expect on the front page if there was no vote manipulation.
It comes from the politics sub, which - to put it mildly - is one of the most suspect subs for manipulation on Reddit. They let that sub appear on the homepage, yet they ban a lot of other similar subs that are on the other side of the spectrum. It's one of those issues where I look at Reddit and think... something isn't right.
>something isn't right.
Is that a pun? Because obviously reddit has a leftist bias.
Is that a pun? Because obviously reddit has a leftist bias.
It was an accidental pun. I noticed it before posting the comment and almost rewrote it. I'm not one of those people who say "no pun intended", so I just let the pun go free for others to discover.
According to the right, basic concepts like logic have leftist bias
> They let that sub appear on the homepage, yet they ban a lot of other similar subs that are on the other side of the spectrum.
Perhaps I'm not familiar with the situation. What similar subs have been banned?
Perhaps I'm not familiar with the situation. What similar subs have been banned?
r/The_Donald is banned from being a default subreddit while /r/politics is not. That matters because users without accounts or who aren't logged in will see content from r/politics if an article is trending but not an equally trending(?) article from r/The_Donald.
The reasoning behind this is that r/politics doesn't ban people or articles that the mods disagree with. It's the community itself that downvotes pro-Trump stuff. r/The_Donald, on the other hand, bans people who make comments critical of Trump and people who submit anti-Trump articles. Similarly, r/enoughtrumpspam or r/communism should also be banned from making it to the default front page (I don't know if they actually are).
The reasoning behind this is that r/politics doesn't ban people or articles that the mods disagree with. It's the community itself that downvotes pro-Trump stuff. r/The_Donald, on the other hand, bans people who make comments critical of Trump and people who submit anti-Trump articles. Similarly, r/enoughtrumpspam or r/communism should also be banned from making it to the default front page (I don't know if they actually are).
The very large Donald Trump subreddit.
(I dare not link to it. It is quite toxic.)
(I dare not link to it. It is quite toxic.)
I just took a quick glance at it and it doesn't seem to be similar. Here's an item from its from page.
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5vx3af/ (NSFW)
I don't think I've ever seen anything like that on the politics subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5vx3af/ (NSFW)
I don't think I've ever seen anything like that on the politics subreddit.
That has not been banned (yet)
Because being an elite soldier does not make your opinion on democracy particularly newsworthy? It's obviously a clickbait headline. I would also add to that those "Pope says [insert political commentary]" articles.
I think he means the headline seems generated to get clicks and the underlying implied article isn't expected to contain any news.
Seems to me like the headline is generated to convey a message without requiring clicks, not to get them. The article doesn't add anything because the headline is the content.
Spot on. It's like going to a vegetarian restaurant and being upset there's no meat on the menu.
I don't understand all these people complaining that reddit does not have enough differing opinions. What the hell? Do you expect users of a site to conform to your beliefs?
Why don't you go find a different site that reflects your beliefs.
I don't go on HN and complain there's not enough discussion about camping.
I don't understand all these people complaining that reddit does not have enough differing opinions. What the hell? Do you expect users of a site to conform to your beliefs?
Why don't you go find a different site that reflects your beliefs.
I don't go on HN and complain there's not enough discussion about camping.
Just because you don't like a headline is not evidence that it was paid for. The main organic bias in crowdsourced news sites are clickbait headlines and it affects all political view points.
... this is a former Navy Seal who oversaw the operation that lead to the killing of Osama Bin Laden AND he said that Trump's sentiment about the media being the enemy of the people is the greatest threat to democracy in his lifetime. The article backs it up with video footage of a portion of his speech.
Every single part of the title is true.
Every single part of the title is true.
Link to this post in three years and ponder in its prescients... Web 3.0 will be born in the death of the heavily botted social networks. Reddit, Facebook & Instagram, Twitter... are all basically pay-to-win schemes at this point, benefiting greatly in terms of adoption from the grey market pay-for-likes botnets, where marketers and propagandists know they can make their content highly visible if they're willing to pay.
People pay very little attention to the fragility that has arisen in the Web 2.0 economy. Once there is widespread understanding of the gaming, cheating, and botting, these social network institutions will crumble. There will be piecemeal attempts to reduce botting, but they will annoy end users, and annoy investors and shareholders as they come to realize XX% of their user base never existed.
Web 3.0 will be the death of anonymity, with social networks and APIs that are, by design, hard to automate, and even harder to hide your true identity from. There will be CAPTCHA-like systems (possibly tied to hardware) that facilitate this. This will of course promise to fix the problem of botting, while heavily benefiting surveillance, for state, and for advertisement. There will be a new breed of social networks built around ensuring the content you are seeing is genuine or "organic", and yet the incentives will be much more perverse, and their networks, much more invasive.
People pay very little attention to the fragility that has arisen in the Web 2.0 economy. Once there is widespread understanding of the gaming, cheating, and botting, these social network institutions will crumble. There will be piecemeal attempts to reduce botting, but they will annoy end users, and annoy investors and shareholders as they come to realize XX% of their user base never existed.
Web 3.0 will be the death of anonymity, with social networks and APIs that are, by design, hard to automate, and even harder to hide your true identity from. There will be CAPTCHA-like systems (possibly tied to hardware) that facilitate this. This will of course promise to fix the problem of botting, while heavily benefiting surveillance, for state, and for advertisement. There will be a new breed of social networks built around ensuring the content you are seeing is genuine or "organic", and yet the incentives will be much more perverse, and their networks, much more invasive.
I think strgrd must be from the future, I strongly agree with your prediction of the future.
There feels like there is an analogy to our civilization. We existed as very primal beings operating in a world of high anonymity. A real world with high anonymity meant a more dangerous environment (theft, murder, assault, etc). In order for us to congregate & live a collectively improved life, we decreased anonymity. We did this with the idea of names, roles (sheriff), & printed records.
New complexity emerged from this. We needed to collect funds via taxes, make and enforce rules. We needed to know who each other were in order to give the rules some repercussions. Eye witnesses were crucial because of their "ability" to remove anonymity.
These steps of stripping anonymity were done with the intention of improving society. This point here is debateable, feel free to challenge.
We're at a unique moment in time where there's a highly dense "locale" that has full anonymity. What's even more interesting about this locale is that it's permeated across our "real world" society. The implications of this reality are immense, we live in two worlds that are interwoven — one that has little anonymity & the other with abundant anonymity.
As technology increases in power & importance (it will) this is tipping the scales. In general, I don't have much faith in humanity's ability to live within an anonymous world without devolving into very primal pre-civilization behavior (see: 4chan /b/).
I'm not sure this is a stoppable (or advisable to stop) process.
There feels like there is an analogy to our civilization. We existed as very primal beings operating in a world of high anonymity. A real world with high anonymity meant a more dangerous environment (theft, murder, assault, etc). In order for us to congregate & live a collectively improved life, we decreased anonymity. We did this with the idea of names, roles (sheriff), & printed records.
New complexity emerged from this. We needed to collect funds via taxes, make and enforce rules. We needed to know who each other were in order to give the rules some repercussions. Eye witnesses were crucial because of their "ability" to remove anonymity.
These steps of stripping anonymity were done with the intention of improving society. This point here is debateable, feel free to challenge.
We're at a unique moment in time where there's a highly dense "locale" that has full anonymity. What's even more interesting about this locale is that it's permeated across our "real world" society. The implications of this reality are immense, we live in two worlds that are interwoven — one that has little anonymity & the other with abundant anonymity.
As technology increases in power & importance (it will) this is tipping the scales. In general, I don't have much faith in humanity's ability to live within an anonymous world without devolving into very primal pre-civilization behavior (see: 4chan /b/).
I'm not sure this is a stoppable (or advisable to stop) process.
> I don't have much faith in humanity's ability to live within an anonymous
I can imagine being comfortable with an anonymous free future. This future would require much strengthened privacy protections, and even a very different looking government before I'd be comfortable however. I don't see those institutions giving us the protections we'd need.
I suppose this thread has made me realize that an anonymous world is only required when our laws and institutions don't fully protect us as individuals.
I can imagine being comfortable with an anonymous free future. This future would require much strengthened privacy protections, and even a very different looking government before I'd be comfortable however. I don't see those institutions giving us the protections we'd need.
I suppose this thread has made me realize that an anonymous world is only required when our laws and institutions don't fully protect us as individuals.
chad, in regards to history and how the internet will play out, I think you have to look at the power accumulated by information disparities. These online social networks have integrated population-scale monitoring into their design. For the most part, the entire internet has adapted to monitoring the individual in terms of groups and populations. This population-scale knowledge has created a huge information disparity between the people, the social network businesses, and their governments. For the governments especially, the social networks provide a bird's-eye view of the world with macroscopic detail. This amount of knowledge is unprecedented, and the implications of governments operating on this knowledge in secret, I think, are not yet understood.
I find it hard to believe people will complete captchas or give up anonymity in order to vote.
The bot vs captcha arms race will continue, but I would be very surprised if the captchas started winning.
The bot vs captcha arms race will continue, but I would be very surprised if the captchas started winning.
What will make Captchas valuable in the future is their ability to act as signatures, verifying you, the owner of the account, were physically present when you did whatever action required verification. They will not just be roadblocks, but checkpoints verifying not just that you are human, but that you are the person you claim to be.
You don't have to employ AI/human differentiation (e.g. captcha) if you statistically mine user actions. I think that's where resolution is more likely to come from.
By definition, shill accounts have different patterns than normal user accounts. Step 1) Deal with new accounts (preferably in an anonymous way). Step 2) Mine the actions of older accounts to detect patterns that point back to shilling.
Not insurmountable.
By definition, shill accounts have different patterns than normal user accounts. Step 1) Deal with new accounts (preferably in an anonymous way). Step 2) Mine the actions of older accounts to detect patterns that point back to shilling.
Not insurmountable.
I can only see one cure to this pervasive issue that affects every website on the internet that allows for user comments:
First, verified accounts, like Twitter, are visually separate from non-verified accounts. The distinction has to be visible on every place the username is displayed or when their post is displayed.
Second, only verified users have upvote/downvote privileges. To me it is downright foolish to allow any jackass or botnet to make a ton of accounts and up/down vote the conversation as they please.
I have seen this forum management all over the web and it's turning me off from social media more and more by the day. Newspaper comment sections used to be insightful, and now they are generally cesspools of shills and bots. Double or more for forums like Reddit. I even see it on Hacker News.
We can have open discussions and we can have discussions free of paid influence, but I do not believe it is possible to have both.
First, verified accounts, like Twitter, are visually separate from non-verified accounts. The distinction has to be visible on every place the username is displayed or when their post is displayed.
Second, only verified users have upvote/downvote privileges. To me it is downright foolish to allow any jackass or botnet to make a ton of accounts and up/down vote the conversation as they please.
I have seen this forum management all over the web and it's turning me off from social media more and more by the day. Newspaper comment sections used to be insightful, and now they are generally cesspools of shills and bots. Double or more for forums like Reddit. I even see it on Hacker News.
We can have open discussions and we can have discussions free of paid influence, but I do not believe it is possible to have both.
Trend to watch in next few years: Phony Actors
This same thing happens on all social networks - facebook, instagram, reddit, twitter, etc all have accounts on them that may have naturally grown and are now paid to post / influence content on their respective platforms. I've seen this first hand on Instagram how large of an effect it can have in promoting apps, products etc. Previously disclosing affiliations / paid promotions was limited to a much smaller set influencers. Now, these platforms give anyone from a kid with spare time to a professional marketing agency a means to build accounts and leverage the vast reach of these networks for their own gain. Facebook is _starting_ to realize this and clamp down on it for fake news. But there are many more avenues and it'll be interesting to see how this really gets solved if at all.
This same thing happens on all social networks - facebook, instagram, reddit, twitter, etc all have accounts on them that may have naturally grown and are now paid to post / influence content on their respective platforms. I've seen this first hand on Instagram how large of an effect it can have in promoting apps, products etc. Previously disclosing affiliations / paid promotions was limited to a much smaller set influencers. Now, these platforms give anyone from a kid with spare time to a professional marketing agency a means to build accounts and leverage the vast reach of these networks for their own gain. Facebook is _starting_ to realize this and clamp down on it for fake news. But there are many more avenues and it'll be interesting to see how this really gets solved if at all.
This is a lot more serious than most people think. And a lot farther along technologically. Most of what has been exposed in the wild so far just falls under Level 0 Character.
If you asked me how we could potentially combat this coming information implosion? I would say you fight fire with fire.
http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Persona_Development#Persona_...
If you asked me how we could potentially combat this coming information implosion? I would say you fight fire with fire.
http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Persona_Development#Persona_...
or it could be the next trend in the work from home movement! get paid to shill on reddit!
I'd noticed something like this on HN a few years ago. A negative comment about Apple might be voted up at first. Then, about an hour after posting, there would be many negative votes. The timing on this was consistent. After that, no more negative votes, and the rating would float up again.
I'll often see a similar pattern: I'll post something which disagrees with the common wisdom here on HN, it'll get a flurry of downvotes, then over time it'll get more upvotes. I figure that it's probably just the result of a few folks who are HN addicts, and that over time more reasonable heads prevail.
I think it is human nature. When I see a comment being downvoted, and I think it does not deserve that, I would upvote it.
For Apple, it's so consistent that I suspect there's a program watching for negative Apple sentiment, then sending out alerts to people likely to respond in Apple's favor.
Yeah, this happens to my account. I think I must have made some off-hand comment once that someone did not like and it's their petty vengeance. The DVers will wait about 2 hours (+/- 1hour, random interval) to do so, no more after that normal distribution. The comments are stupid stuff too, like some links to wikipedia pages and just random comments. The ANOVA I did on the DVs showed just random timing and comments (p-val was super high though, as I don't have many comments). It's strange.
Only way I can think to fix it is to tell people to stop talking about HN. If you want to keep HN good, keep it to your very close friends and family. We don't want this to turn into reddit or digg.
Only way I can think to fix it is to tell people to stop talking about HN. If you want to keep HN good, keep it to your very close friends and family. We don't want this to turn into reddit or digg.
If you were designing Reddit today what would you do to prevent this kind of stuff?
1. Make the website invite-only.
2. Give out X invites to everyone.
3. Every user now has a reference pointing to who invited them.
4. Require that you must vouch for the behavior of the people you invite, and their behavior may impact your participation.
5. Use tree traversal and analysis for pruning bad sections of the population of users. (i.e. If you see a series of bad users, go up the tree to find the source and prune it there.)
6. Work on algorithms and moderator tools to improve said analysis.
7. Give merit and incentive to those who contribute. (See: Slashdot and Everything2 systems.)
8. Add anonymous meta-moderation. (Again, see Slashdot.)
9. Give ranks and small power to users based on their merit and participation, and somewhat based on their invited friends.
I can keep going. It's a bit harsh, but I feel it'd work.
I've considered making an example app, but the hard part would be getting a critical mass of users and content. Reddit, for example, faked posting content for their first few years to seed their community. It's hard to grow a new community, if even possible.
P.S. If anyone has a lobste.rs's invite, lemme know. Curious to see how their invite-only website has progressed.
2. Give out X invites to everyone.
3. Every user now has a reference pointing to who invited them.
4. Require that you must vouch for the behavior of the people you invite, and their behavior may impact your participation.
5. Use tree traversal and analysis for pruning bad sections of the population of users. (i.e. If you see a series of bad users, go up the tree to find the source and prune it there.)
6. Work on algorithms and moderator tools to improve said analysis.
7. Give merit and incentive to those who contribute. (See: Slashdot and Everything2 systems.)
8. Add anonymous meta-moderation. (Again, see Slashdot.)
9. Give ranks and small power to users based on their merit and participation, and somewhat based on their invited friends.
I can keep going. It's a bit harsh, but I feel it'd work.
I've considered making an example app, but the hard part would be getting a critical mass of users and content. Reddit, for example, faked posting content for their first few years to seed their community. It's hard to grow a new community, if even possible.
P.S. If anyone has a lobste.rs's invite, lemme know. Curious to see how their invite-only website has progressed.
Sounds a lot like how most private trackers work.
As you mentioned, it is too difficult to get off the ground with an invite system, but it may be interesting if an existing community became invite-only. Unfortunately the high risk of torpedoing your business is a deterrent.
As you mentioned, it is too difficult to get off the ground with an invite system, but it may be interesting if an existing community became invite-only. Unfortunately the high risk of torpedoing your business is a deterrent.
This actually sounds like it could work. If you do decide to build it, I'd love to help.
Tiered subreddits. You would need to earn credibility in open discussions, and earn your way up into more serious discussions. So there would end up being multiple layers of credibility, with only vetted accounts participating in the highest levels.
This approach is probably the most reasonable. Stackoverflow seems to have implemented it fairly well.
I can't agree. Stackoverflow does some things well, but there are reasons that it hasn't caught on outside a certain cohort who were either there first, or who are very dedicated to cultivating their karma.
HN user jfc said it better here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7650975
HN user jfc said it better here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7650975
I have to disagree. Those invested solely in cultivating karma are the reason to institute systems like "earned privileges". Any forum with a voting system will always be misused and abused by those who don't have the priority of the community in mind.
Moreover, jfc has valid points about negativity and unhelpful responses, but it remains anecdotal. As a counter, my own anecdotal experience has largely been positive on SO, and I rarely run into those problems. I am definitely not part of the cohort that was there first, and think it's a rather fair system. For example, preventing downvotes until a certain level of reputation is reached is a small check on those looking to farm karma by blanketing out competing answers. Obviously it isn't foolproof, but it at least ensures that you have actually contributed to the community at least a few times.
Perhaps his comment speaks more to the quality of the userbase than to the efficiency of the voting system?
Moreover, jfc has valid points about negativity and unhelpful responses, but it remains anecdotal. As a counter, my own anecdotal experience has largely been positive on SO, and I rarely run into those problems. I am definitely not part of the cohort that was there first, and think it's a rather fair system. For example, preventing downvotes until a certain level of reputation is reached is a small check on those looking to farm karma by blanketing out competing answers. Obviously it isn't foolproof, but it at least ensures that you have actually contributed to the community at least a few times.
Perhaps his comment speaks more to the quality of the userbase than to the efficiency of the voting system?
I'll grant you that there are many high quality answers / discussions at SO. I also have no problem asserting that SO is infested with karma whores. They also have terrible moderation, and chippy pithy users with all manner of unproductive discussion habits. In other words, they suffer the same types of faults as other forums. I'm glad for you that you that you've had a positive experience on SO, obviously some users do; so have I, to the extent that I don't bother engaging in discussion, but rather just use the place to find the answer I want, and then just leave as soon as I am done with my research. As far as the anecdotes in that HN thread I posted earlier go, jfc isn't alone, there are pages of similar anecdotes in the same thread in addition to plenty of similar criticism elsewhere in the internet.
Sure, this is an OK scheme for finding higher quality discussion, but it's just not what the market wants.
After the initial adopters had been outnumbered, but long before reddit was popular enough to attract legions of professional marketers, popular subreddits were dominated by puns, memes, highly biased politics, emoting, etc. It's what people upvote, and it doesn't require a reputation system.
After the initial adopters had been outnumbered, but long before reddit was popular enough to attract legions of professional marketers, popular subreddits were dominated by puns, memes, highly biased politics, emoting, etc. It's what people upvote, and it doesn't require a reputation system.
Do you think something like this could overcome the effects of say, the 50 Cent Party[1]? Or would they eventually end up being 80% of the "vetted accounts"?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
In my mind, nothing like that should ever get vetted - only vetted accounts would be able to approve other accounts to get vetted. And with multiple layers of vetting, even if mistakes happen, it just won't go very high. Worst case scenario, if a group does infiltrate a layer, you just demote the whole layer. It might be a temporary frustration for real people, but that is better than perpetuating shills.
People who are picturing crowds coming in and messing up such a system aren't really getting the idea -- it is a closed system. Above the lowest layer, it is read-only to the public, unless you are given permission to contribute. The other commenter who said people don't want a system like this may be correct... but that might be a good thing. Catering to the crowds isn't the goal here. Finding the much smaller groups that are willing to put in more work to manage themselves, and engage in meaningful dialogue is exactly what might make places like /r/politics meaningful.
People who are picturing crowds coming in and messing up such a system aren't really getting the idea -- it is a closed system. Above the lowest layer, it is read-only to the public, unless you are given permission to contribute. The other commenter who said people don't want a system like this may be correct... but that might be a good thing. Catering to the crowds isn't the goal here. Finding the much smaller groups that are willing to put in more work to manage themselves, and engage in meaningful dialogue is exactly what might make places like /r/politics meaningful.
Reddit's voting/karma system needs an overhaul. Karma does absolutely nothing on that site yet it's the only metric of value on that site (people do crazy things for meaningless reddit karma), that and having an ancient account but old accounts only matter to mods/admins for the most part.
Give an allowance of votes per day/week. More can be bought for very cheap, like 2 cents?
Votes are a commodity that can be accumulated and used to vote others. The more popular your posts are the more votes you have pooled to use on others. Votes are slowly dissipated over time to prevent hoarding.
You'd have to find a way to deal with shills/bots. No easy solution here, invite only will stifle growth. Collecting too much personal info will stifle growth. Maybe extreme blacklisting techniques for anyone found to be manipulating?
If you could pull it off then advertisers would actually have to pay to manipulate your site, not perfect but better than reddit's free accounts to manipulate thing they have going on now.
Give an allowance of votes per day/week. More can be bought for very cheap, like 2 cents?
Votes are a commodity that can be accumulated and used to vote others. The more popular your posts are the more votes you have pooled to use on others. Votes are slowly dissipated over time to prevent hoarding.
You'd have to find a way to deal with shills/bots. No easy solution here, invite only will stifle growth. Collecting too much personal info will stifle growth. Maybe extreme blacklisting techniques for anyone found to be manipulating?
If you could pull it off then advertisers would actually have to pay to manipulate your site, not perfect but better than reddit's free accounts to manipulate thing they have going on now.
Reddit has a lot of features to stop vote spam..they implemented an overhaul in late 2015 I know. Until then, newly made accounts could affect rankings..now they don't. . Mods are also pretty good at deleting spam, unless they are being paid off. The mods of major subs have enormous power, so it would not surprise me if this is going on still
> Give an allowance of upvotes per day/week. More can be bought for very cheap, like 2 cents?
Every time a "what would kill off Reddit" thread comes up limiting up/downvotes and paying for more comes up. I feel it would kill off Reddit. (But I'm not a Reddit fan so I wouldn't stand in their way if they wish to add it).
Every time a "what would kill off Reddit" thread comes up limiting up/downvotes and paying for more comes up. I feel it would kill off Reddit. (But I'm not a Reddit fan so I wouldn't stand in their way if they wish to add it).
Yeah I think if the idea took off it could work but the actual payment screen and entering cc info would turn off >99% of users.
And the 1% of users it doesn't deter will be the ones who were previously manipulating results and can now do so for much cheaper.
There have been a few articles claiming bots are being used on Twitter to impact trending topics. One solution I talked to a friend about was having a yearly subscription fee to make it less cost effective to create hundreds of fake accounts. Of course hitting a critical mass of users would be very difficult. And even if the service did become wildly popular, and trusted, it would only increase the value for companies to game the system.
I think the general population is becoming more aware of how intrusive ad networks are, possibly moving the needle on making a pay service more viable. But I don't think I know any non-tech people that would be willing to pay for a Twitter/Facebook/Reddit type service today.
So, I have no good solution. But I sure hope someone figures out a good solution. The whole concept of "pick your own truth" has some terrifying consequences.
I think the general population is becoming more aware of how intrusive ad networks are, possibly moving the needle on making a pay service more viable. But I don't think I know any non-tech people that would be willing to pay for a Twitter/Facebook/Reddit type service today.
So, I have no good solution. But I sure hope someone figures out a good solution. The whole concept of "pick your own truth" has some terrifying consequences.
My idea is for reddit to make as much of the users' posting history available for anyone to download and analyze, but while respecting the privacy of their users. I'm not sure how this can be done (I don't know their terms of service). But the idea is to allow researchers to use reddit's data to find manipulation. I certainly don't expect reddit to solve the problem on their own.
Anyone serious should start with HN's guidelines and try and steal dang from YC lol.
Not so fast. You think up your own million dollar business ideas!
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Reddit is awesome for tons of small game communities, I hope whatever happens on those apparently more important subreddits won't ever affect that
Niche interest subreddits are about the only thing Reddit is good for anymore as far as I'm concerned. I don't subscribe to a single default sub and never check the front page.
I subscribe to subs like sysadmin, woodworking, ruby and bicycling. The front page and defaults are just horribly toxic.
I subscribe to subs like sysadmin, woodworking, ruby and bicycling. The front page and defaults are just horribly toxic.
Same can be said for sports communities, especially the racing subreddits :)
We've seen this before. Usenet was killed from spam as it didn't have a defence against those seeking to profit from the audience.
This is today's equivalent of the same problem. The difference is it is now two monied interests battling for the audience.
I long for a modern usenet newsgroup equivalent that has some kind of protection from monied interests, I suppose a small audience is a guard.
This is today's equivalent of the same problem. The difference is it is now two monied interests battling for the audience.
I long for a modern usenet newsgroup equivalent that has some kind of protection from monied interests, I suppose a small audience is a guard.
Previous discussion here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714159
(I would like to give a more substantive comment, so I'll leave the somewhat jaded perspective of rephrasing the title: "<social channel> is being manipulated by <anyone who participates in social engagement/growth hacking/perception management>". The question I contemplate is where we draw the line of what social engagement is above the bar acceptability. (To answer my own question, I typically consider "disclosure" the answer to that))
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714159
(I would like to give a more substantive comment, so I'll leave the somewhat jaded perspective of rephrasing the title: "<social channel> is being manipulated by <anyone who participates in social engagement/growth hacking/perception management>". The question I contemplate is where we draw the line of what social engagement is above the bar acceptability. (To answer my own question, I typically consider "disclosure" the answer to that))
[deleted]
I think it goes without saying that a social media site with millions of users and place 23 on the Alexa rankings is an interesting advertising platform, and that it happens on a regular basis and a large distributed scale across the platform.
The far more important problem in my opinion in this situation is to be able to differentiate a "normal" user submitted post from an advertisiement, a skill that is missing in 80% of today's youth:
http://fortune.com/2016/11/23/stanford-fake-news/
The far more important problem in my opinion in this situation is to be able to differentiate a "normal" user submitted post from an advertisiement, a skill that is missing in 80% of today's youth:
http://fortune.com/2016/11/23/stanford-fake-news/
It's not fair to call it a missing skill when the other side of that equation is a $500B+ industry of university-educated advertisers with decades of experience who are working to obfuscate the difference between ads and content, if not practice outright deception.
What exactly are "today's youth" supposed to know in the face of that?
What exactly are "today's youth" supposed to know in the face of that?
I don't understand why "financial services" are called out in the headline. They're being manipulated by shady digital marketing companies who have some financial clients among many others.
Financial services account for a substantial portion of the US GDP and some may argue has big sway in the way our laws are written, and now in steering conversation about them on a popular site.
I think that's a big assumption. Financial services firms are not usually savvy marketers and the big wall street firms everyone hates almost never try to appeal directly to consumers and would have little to gain from swaying opinion on reddit. I'd wager retail firms are far more active on social media.
cause people don't like them, and it's fun to read bad things happening to bad people.
This is a fun subreddit to subscribe to: https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/
This is a very old phenomenon called sockpuppetry[1]. Any online forum of sufficient size and popularity is bound to be a target of it. It's no surprise at all that Reddit would be targeted.
Most reputable forums try to deal with it somehow, but it's difficult to stamp it out completely -- especially if the site administrators are ever themselves compromised.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29
Most reputable forums try to deal with it somehow, but it's difficult to stamp it out completely -- especially if the site administrators are ever themselves compromised.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29
Has anyone ever tried something like a captcha for upvoting? Upvoting isn't really something that needs to be done conveniently in rapid succession.
A much more insidious spam but very common are fly-by-night 'news' sites that copy paste content from reputable sources and then get up-voted to the top of popular subreddits, generating adsense revenue for the webmasters. Adsense is such a pox on the internet. I know companies need to make money but it also gives rise to soooo much spam.
If anyone wants to play a game of "how could HN be manipulated" ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718417
And I wonder which discussion forum isn't... the closer any site gets to money (example: stock discussions), the more is at worth with manipulative conversations.
Ok, its manipulated but why by financial service companies? Are they trying to trigger stock price movements?
IIRC didn't reddit use fake users and content when they launched?
I think that is a pretty standard and often needed tactic when starting a forum or community. A community is pretty binary; it's either dead or it isn't, so a it needs to be jumpstarted.
Yep, this is most communities are started. Either through literal fake users (sometimes set up by the staff, sometimes 'imported' from other sites) or by deals and exchanges with other communities (aka you use my site for a bit and I'll do the same on yours).
Not surprising at all that Reddit did the same thing.
Not surprising at all that Reddit did the same thing.
So that's why all my NSFW subreddits have started looking weird!
And HN and other tech sites are somehow exempt from this phenomenon? With billions of dollars at stake at Uber and its various competitors, is it impossible to think, for example, that Susan Fowler had professional authoring help, or was offered compensation to publish her recent blog post? Or that paid/professional/fake commenters downvoted, attacked, and drowned out any voice who simply requested documentation, or cautioned that judgment should be reserved until both sides of the story were made public?
That reads like a cross between personal attack and concern trolling. Artfully done—too artfully actually.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13724990 and marked it off-topic.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13724990 and marked it off-topic.
No one said HN is exempt from this, actually it happens all the time.
However HN is tiny compared to reddit it doesnt fracture itself into small subreddits. Things are much more managable this way. When shill content does pop up it's pretty obvious and it's usually called out.
However HN is tiny compared to reddit it doesnt fracture itself into small subreddits. Things are much more managable this way. When shill content does pop up it's pretty obvious and it's usually called out.
It seems likely that only the poorly-written shill content gets called out.
There is brigading going on with some HN articles, though the comments fare a lot better. I think this mainly related to people not being able to down vote until they reach a considerable amount of karma. Often if an article reaches the top too quickly, people call it out in the comments.
In Susan Fowler vs. 5.5 billion dollar company, why on earth would you suspect that Susan is the one contracting with reputation management firms?
Dowjones is advancing the conspiracy theory that The sinister BigTaxiCartel want to see Uber done in, so they pay for writers to create blog posts for disgruntled ex-employees.
(It's not something I believe).
(It's not something I believe).
anon2264(3)