6 ms·

People get extremely defensive on Reddit if you insinuate that this is common. But it really doesn't take a whole lot of skepticism to see though the more blata

People get extremely defensive on Reddit if you insinuate that this is common. But it really doesn't take a whole lot of skepticism to see though the more blatant ones. Reddit is still a really great site when you unsubscribe from all default subs and any sub that has gone "critical shill" at about 100k or more subs.

avaer 9y ago
I wonder what the break-even is for buying defensive posts when people catch on.
- metilda 9y ago
  Eh, you might as well spin up a few alts over Tor and occasionally use them to build karma, Reddit allows Tor users and registration over Tor. Not saying this isn't a good thing, if Reddit banned Tor a few of my favorite community members would disappear, and I'd likely drift away from the subreddits I do still follow.
  - symlinkk 9y ago
    who is your favorite community member that needs Tor?
metilda 9y ago
Defs, the smaller subs like /r/snakes and /r/circlejerkseattle aren't half bad (the latter replaced upvotes with upbikes, top kek) and are what keep me on Reddit. Just waiting for them to start banning subs again, I'll wager that /r/ChildFree will get banned as a hate sub, and that a few others will be banned around the same time. The total banning of discussion about the Pulse Nightclub Shooting on the major subreddits really pissed a lot of redditors off, as only The_Donald and /r/SandersForPres had decent conversations going on, with tens of pages of deleted comments in /r/News about the shooting.
nateberkopec 9y ago
Yeah, I don't experience a lot of obvious shilling on Reddit, but I've unsubscribed to most of the default subs and mostly just read small subs relevant to my interests.
- camus2 9y ago
  > Yeah, I don't experience a lot of obvious shilling on Reddit When the same talking points are repeated over and over again on large subs and dissident opinions are automatically downvoted to hell, it's obvious there are organized efforts to push specific narratives or point of view. r/politics, r/news, r/worldnews are full of these, with sometimes the moderation itself in bed with the political astro-turfers, banning users that don't fall in line. Regarding the article, the news that was astro-turfed wasn't clashing with r/politics narrative. And since journalists and bloggers themselves now source their news and stories from Reddit, it helped spread that news all over the internet. Reddit is an extremely efficient viral marketing tool, both brands and politicians understand it now. When journalists start quoting reddit in their news that then get posed on reddit as news, we've come full circle.
  - patrickk 9y ago
    One of the most blatant examples is /r/bitcoin. Some context: https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...
  - ucarion 9y ago
    A sibling to this comment mentions/r/Bitcoin, which I agree has biased moderators. But I don't see such blatant bias in the large political subreddits. What views can't be expressed on /r/politics?
    - vxNsr 9y ago
      Anything remotely right leaning. /r/politics could more accurately be named /r/The_Left. Often the top comments of any thread are just whining about Trump in the same way that /r/T_D is just whining about MSM and Hillary. While there boy still posts that they won't tolerate useless comments I've seen nothing but useless comments there these days.
jerrylives 9y ago
/r/hailcorporate
Algent 9y ago
Some subjects touched anywhere on Reddit are huge instant bot/PR magnet. On top of my head I can think of: Fracking, Glyphosate (or anything related to Monsanto/Endocrine Disruptor), Turkish Politics.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  How easy is it to detect? Because it seems like a great place for a academic studying propaganda to evaluate real techniques in the wild.
- 43224gg252 9y ago
  Definitely fracking and Monsanto. I've also noticed some software and hardware products seem to have a shill presence. I think we all remember that 6 month period where Microsoft decided to shove VSCode down every ones throat. It was impossible to get away from. New vim released? "Yeah vim is good but now I use VSCode TM". New sublime? New Atom? Same thing. They were aggressive with that one.
  - TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
    I once implied that Microsoft was targeting HN as part of that astroturfing campaign, and was threatened with banination.
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      On Reddit?
  - ascorbic 9y ago
    I saw loads of accusations of that, but very little evidence to suggest that these were shills, rather than real people who like VS Code. We all get very passionate about our editors, and lots of people use and like VS Code so it's not surprising people comment about it when the discussion is about editors. I like VS Code. I can't remember if I've ever commented to this effect. I'm not a MS shill.
  - philh 9y ago
rmc 9y ago
> Reddit is still a really great site when you unsubscribe from ... any sub that has gone "critical shill" at about 100k or more subs. AskHistorians is still a great sub, at 620k subscribers. It's (intentionally) not on the default list, and has very heavy handed, strict moderation, which is probably why the quality is so good. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
- DavidHm 9y ago
  One regret I have about AskHistorians is that I don't get to see all the hissy fits thrown by people who don't like the strict moderation and believe their speech should be uninpeded.
  - noxToken 9y ago
    I am a moderator on a major subreddit of serious nature. It's pretty boring. Here are the typical culprits. Probably the most common who have something to say to the mod team are those who blame us for pushing an agenda. We welcome and encourage debate. We want people to call bullshit on something bunk, but we stand by that it has to be something that can be substantiated. We just want you to provide some kind of proof, source, etc. other than, "This totally happened to my sister's boyfriend's cousin!" Some people take those removals very personally, because the comment is about something heavy that has greatly impacted that person's life. They feel like we are snubbing them when they took the time to reveal something personal. A non-real example would be a study that shows that cancer survival rate increases when you drink at least 60 oz of water daily. Someone will inevitably reply with, "My mom died from cancer, and all she dra nk was water with the occasional cup of tea." I mean, we're sorry for your loss, but your single anecdotal point doesn't really refute the claim. The comment gets removed, and then we're called monsters. If you really think it's bullshit, find another study that claims otherwise or poke holes in the study itself. Another common one reason is low effort comments or comments that don't add to the discussion. "Jeez, why is this a comment graveyard?" is a pretty common removal. There usually aren't hissy fits, but this, jokes, puns, lyric chains, comments like, "Yeah and water is wet," are also common. Two other low effort comments are, "Someone give me TL;DR please," or, "I want to believe this, but some comment is going to blow this claim out of the water." The reality is that most removals are boring.
LutfuRadu 9y ago
While still excellent advice for older accounts, I would like to point out the default subs are no more: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6eh6ga/reddits_new_signup_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6eh6ga/reddi...

avaer 9y ago

I wonder what the break-even is for buying defensive posts when people catch on.

metilda 9y ago
Eh, you might as well spin up a few alts over Tor and occasionally use them to build karma, Reddit allows Tor users and registration over Tor. Not saying this isn't a good thing, if Reddit banned Tor a few of my favorite community members would disappear, and I'd likely drift away from the subreddits I do still follow.
- symlinkk 9y ago
  who is your favorite community member that needs Tor?

metilda 9y ago

Defs, the smaller subs like /r/snakes and /r/circlejerkseattle aren't half bad (the latter replaced upvotes with upbikes, top kek) and are what keep me on Reddit. Just waiting for them to start banning subs again, I'll wager that /r/ChildFree will get banned as a hate sub, and that a few others will be banned around the same time. The total banning of discussion about the Pulse Nightclub Shooting on the major subreddits really pissed a lot of redditors off, as only The_Donald and /r/SandersForPres had decent conversations going on, with tens of pages of deleted comments in /r/News about the shooting.

nateberkopec 9y ago

Yeah, I don't experience a lot of obvious shilling on Reddit, but I've unsubscribed to most of the default subs and mostly just read small subs relevant to my interests.

camus2 9y ago
> Yeah, I don't experience a lot of obvious shilling on Reddit When the same talking points are repeated over and over again on large subs and dissident opinions are automatically downvoted to hell, it's obvious there are organized efforts to push specific narratives or point of view. r/politics, r/news, r/worldnews are full of these, with sometimes the moderation itself in bed with the political astro-turfers, banning users that don't fall in line. Regarding the article, the news that was astro-turfed wasn't clashing with r/politics narrative. And since journalists and bloggers themselves now source their news and stories from Reddit, it helped spread that news all over the internet. Reddit is an extremely efficient viral marketing tool, both brands and politicians understand it now. When journalists start quoting reddit in their news that then get posed on reddit as news, we've come full circle.
- patrickk 9y ago
  One of the most blatant examples is /r/bitcoin. Some context: https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...
- ucarion 9y ago
  A sibling to this comment mentions/r/Bitcoin, which I agree has biased moderators. But I don't see such blatant bias in the large political subreddits. What views can't be expressed on /r/politics?
  - vxNsr 9y ago
    Anything remotely right leaning. /r/politics could more accurately be named /r/The_Left. Often the top comments of any thread are just whining about Trump in the same way that /r/T_D is just whining about MSM and Hillary. While there boy still posts that they won't tolerate useless comments I've seen nothing but useless comments there these days.

jerrylives 9y ago

/r/hailcorporate

Algent 9y ago

Some subjects touched anywhere on Reddit are huge instant bot/PR magnet. On top of my head I can think of: Fracking, Glyphosate (or anything related to Monsanto/Endocrine Disruptor), Turkish Politics.

3pt14159 9y ago
How easy is it to detect? Because it seems like a great place for a academic studying propaganda to evaluate real techniques in the wild.
43224gg252 9y ago
Definitely fracking and Monsanto. I've also noticed some software and hardware products seem to have a shill presence. I think we all remember that 6 month period where Microsoft decided to shove VSCode down every ones throat. It was impossible to get away from. New vim released? "Yeah vim is good but now I use VSCode TM". New sublime? New Atom? Same thing. They were aggressive with that one.
- TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
  I once implied that Microsoft was targeting HN as part of that astroturfing campaign, and was threatened with banination.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    On Reddit?
- ascorbic 9y ago
  I saw loads of accusations of that, but very little evidence to suggest that these were shills, rather than real people who like VS Code. We all get very passionate about our editors, and lots of people use and like VS Code so it's not surprising people comment about it when the discussion is about editors. I like VS Code. I can't remember if I've ever commented to this effect. I'm not a MS shill.
- philh 9y ago

rmc 9y ago

> Reddit is still a really great site when you unsubscribe from ... any sub that has gone "critical shill" at about 100k or more subs. AskHistorians is still a great sub, at 620k subscribers. It's (intentionally) not on the default list, and has very heavy handed, strict moderation, which is probably why the quality is so good. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/

DavidHm 9y ago
One regret I have about AskHistorians is that I don't get to see all the hissy fits thrown by people who don't like the strict moderation and believe their speech should be uninpeded.
- noxToken 9y ago
  I am a moderator on a major subreddit of serious nature. It's pretty boring. Here are the typical culprits. Probably the most common who have something to say to the mod team are those who blame us for pushing an agenda. We welcome and encourage debate. We want people to call bullshit on something bunk, but we stand by that it has to be something that can be substantiated. We just want you to provide some kind of proof, source, etc. other than, "This totally happened to my sister's boyfriend's cousin!" Some people take those removals very personally, because the comment is about something heavy that has greatly impacted that person's life. They feel like we are snubbing them when they took the time to reveal something personal. A non-real example would be a study that shows that cancer survival rate increases when you drink at least 60 oz of water daily. Someone will inevitably reply with, "My mom died from cancer, and all she dra nk was water with the occasional cup of tea." I mean, we're sorry for your loss, but your single anecdotal point doesn't really refute the claim. The comment gets removed, and then we're called monsters. If you really think it's bullshit, find another study that claims otherwise or poke holes in the study itself. Another common one reason is low effort comments or comments that don't add to the discussion. "Jeez, why is this a comment graveyard?" is a pretty common removal. There usually aren't hissy fits, but this, jokes, puns, lyric chains, comments like, "Yeah and water is wet," are also common. Two other low effort comments are, "Someone give me TL;DR please," or, "I want to believe this, but some comment is going to blow this claim out of the water." The reality is that most removals are boring.

LutfuRadu 9y ago

While still excellent advice for older accounts, I would like to point out the default subs are no more: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6eh6ga/reddits_new_signup_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6eh6ga/reddi...