6 ms·

Looking at the comments on some on those stories, it feels like they are being swarmed by the pro-Trump accounts that permeates through a lot of reddit in an or

by nolok 9y ago

Looking at the comments on some on those stories, it feels like they are being swarmed by the pro-Trump accounts that permeates through a lot of reddit in an organized manner. I wonder what step online communities can do to protect against such brigading meant to alter and direct opinions, without sacrificing the freedom they offer their user to have an opinion and discuss it. Machine learning for automatic fact correction seems like a nice answer, until you realize it would definitely go wrong, or be used to control opinion in an even stronger way.

3ioewjkfljdksl 9y ago
> Machine learning for automatic fact correction seems like a nice answer who determines the facts?
rtx 9y ago
Propaganda being countered by propaganda. Nothing to see there.
angry-hacker 9y ago
Is it brigading only if you don't accept the narrative? Half of the popular voted for the man, can't remember anyone complained when Obama was in the office.
- sanswork 9y ago
  You can't remember anyone complaining about Obama when he was in office? You can't be serious.
  - angry-hacker 9y ago
    You misunderstood me, I'm talking about brigading. When he was popular did you call it Obama fans brigading again and how to stop them?
    - sanswork 9y ago
      People in conservative forums pretty regularly complain about brigading. Check r/conservative sometime.
backhanded 9y ago
Interesting. As an outsider (didn't vote for Trump or Clinton), Reddit seems decidedly organized against the Trump supporters on that site. From what I can tell, even the admins have made core changes to Reddit that any reasonable person would see as an effort to reduce the visibility of the Trump subreddit. I think the Trump subreddit is very childish (seems to be intentional). But I hate the thought of websites like Reddit, FB, and Twitter engaging in practices that clearly and systematically try to reduce the visibility and legitimacy of one political viewpoint. What if the table was turned against the liberal viewpoint? I would be just as worried.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  This is fairly easily disproved by looking at non-US subreddits. I frequent /r/france, /r/unitedkingdom and /r/sweden and non-liberal viewpoints, although less popular, are certainly not silenced. They're just that: less popular (thus more downvotes). Things are different for the trump subreddit because it's a subreddit that has actively engaged in hostility against other subreddits and particular reddit users. Calls for brigading, slurs and harrassment of other users and admins, I've seen it all by now. It's reprehensible. The main Trump subreddit would have long been banned and nuked out of existence if it weren't as popular as it is today. Right now, Reddit would face too much backlash if it outright banned the subreddit for continuing not to comply with the site rules. So it's understandable that the admins are trying to handle the situation somehow -- that's not "an effort to reduce [its] visibility", it's a compromise that doesn't involve removing the sub outright. There's plenty of pro-trump subreddits which aren't involved in this nonsense because they're not spamming, harrassing, using bots etc. You don't hear about them because they get lost in the noise.
  - hueving 9y ago
    > to handle the situation somehow -- that's not "an effort to reduce [its] visibility", it's a compromise that doesn't involve removing the sub outright. I'm certain what will happen is that the admins will keep adjusting the anti-voting ring algorithms until they effectively nerf all of the accounts that frequent the_donald and vote there. Then they have a cover for any backlash because they didn't do anything specifically targeting the_donald, it just happens to be the case that the_donald "unfortunately got impacted" by the new algorithm due to the community's behavior.
lph 9y ago
Absolutely. And it's not just on WaPo stories; it's on almost any kind of post that can be tangentially tied to Trump populism. One of the subreddits I frequent is for a liberal major city. The the_donald shills are vastly outnumbered, but every single post has a few of them popping up to argue in their disingenuous signature troll style (tu quoque, gish gallop, rinse + repeat). I used to waste time arguing with them, but now I just down vote and move on. These people aren't interested in any kind of real debate; they just want to broadcast their Breitbart talking points over and over again.

by nolok 9y ago

3ioewjkfljdksl 9y ago

> Machine learning for automatic fact correction seems like a nice answer who determines the facts?

rtx 9y ago

Propaganda being countered by propaganda. Nothing to see there.

angry-hacker 9y ago

Is it brigading only if you don't accept the narrative? Half of the popular voted for the man, can't remember anyone complained when Obama was in the office.

sanswork 9y ago
You can't remember anyone complaining about Obama when he was in office? You can't be serious.
- angry-hacker 9y ago
  You misunderstood me, I'm talking about brigading. When he was popular did you call it Obama fans brigading again and how to stop them?
  - sanswork 9y ago
    People in conservative forums pretty regularly complain about brigading. Check r/conservative sometime.

backhanded 9y ago

Interesting. As an outsider (didn't vote for Trump or Clinton), Reddit seems decidedly organized against the Trump supporters on that site. From what I can tell, even the admins have made core changes to Reddit that any reasonable person would see as an effort to reduce the visibility of the Trump subreddit. I think the Trump subreddit is very childish (seems to be intentional). But I hate the thought of websites like Reddit, FB, and Twitter engaging in practices that clearly and systematically try to reduce the visibility and legitimacy of one political viewpoint. What if the table was turned against the liberal viewpoint? I would be just as worried.

scrollaway 9y ago
This is fairly easily disproved by looking at non-US subreddits. I frequent /r/france, /r/unitedkingdom and /r/sweden and non-liberal viewpoints, although less popular, are certainly not silenced. They're just that: less popular (thus more downvotes). Things are different for the trump subreddit because it's a subreddit that has actively engaged in hostility against other subreddits and particular reddit users. Calls for brigading, slurs and harrassment of other users and admins, I've seen it all by now. It's reprehensible. The main Trump subreddit would have long been banned and nuked out of existence if it weren't as popular as it is today. Right now, Reddit would face too much backlash if it outright banned the subreddit for continuing not to comply with the site rules. So it's understandable that the admins are trying to handle the situation somehow -- that's not "an effort to reduce [its] visibility", it's a compromise that doesn't involve removing the sub outright. There's plenty of pro-trump subreddits which aren't involved in this nonsense because they're not spamming, harrassing, using bots etc. You don't hear about them because they get lost in the noise.
- hueving 9y ago
  > to handle the situation somehow -- that's not "an effort to reduce [its] visibility", it's a compromise that doesn't involve removing the sub outright. I'm certain what will happen is that the admins will keep adjusting the anti-voting ring algorithms until they effectively nerf all of the accounts that frequent the_donald and vote there. Then they have a cover for any backlash because they didn't do anything specifically targeting the_donald, it just happens to be the case that the_donald "unfortunately got impacted" by the new algorithm due to the community's behavior.

lph 9y ago

Absolutely. And it's not just on WaPo stories; it's on almost any kind of post that can be tangentially tied to Trump populism. One of the subreddits I frequent is for a liberal major city. The the_donald shills are vastly outnumbered, but every single post has a few of them popping up to argue in their disingenuous signature troll style (tu quoque, gish gallop, rinse + repeat). I used to waste time arguing with them, but now I just down vote and move on. These people aren't interested in any kind of real debate; they just want to broadcast their Breitbart talking points over and over again.