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This was an interesting read. I'm not sure it's the best idea as a blog post because I'm sure Reddit staff will get onto it then keep a much closer eye on this

This was an interesting read. I'm not sure it's the best idea as a blog post because I'm sure Reddit staff will get onto it then keep a much closer eye on this firm. I feel like journalists will be the same too. If I received 10 emails about these guys I'd be a bit skeptical that there is any actual interest. As an aside, I wonder if they're using the same tactics here.

scribu 9y ago
> I wonder if they're using the same tactics here. Comparing the number of upvotes with the limited karma bump on my account, there do seem to be a few suspicious votes happening.
veb 9y ago
They said they were using fake email addresses. I'm also not sure if there's any meaningful way that Reddit can fix this sort of issue either. Sure, they can keep an eye on some suspicious accounts but yeah... Usually you don't have to buy that many upvotes/likes/whatever either - usually just a few in the beginning helps seeds a post/tweet well enough that it starts to bring in the organic traffic.
patrickk 9y ago
The amount of spam, manipulation of news and opinion, and fake accounts on reddit is insane, and reddit's staff (actual paid staff, not moderators) do almost nothing about it. This story is only the tip of the iceberg. Look at the recent US presidential election, look at the ongoing, long running censorship on r/bitcoin, among many other examples. I moderate a small subreddit related to a niche sport and deal with a massive amount of spam and fake accounts, and reddit's spam policing tool (Automoderator) is somewhat difficult to setup, only partially effective and could be a lot easier to use (e.g. one click bans for accounts and domains) if reddit's staff were serious about the problem.
oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
> I'm sure Reddit staff will get onto it then keep a much closer eye on this firm How can they connect this firm to random submissions and/or upvotes? I think even targeting fiverr would be difficult, because sellers aren't going to advertise which usernames they're going to us to vote. This is a very difficult problem to properly solve. Even if they can somehow guarantee each user account is one unique individual, what's to stop a company paying 200 actual, real people to go and vote on something on reddit?

scribu 9y ago

> I wonder if they're using the same tactics here. Comparing the number of upvotes with the limited karma bump on my account, there do seem to be a few suspicious votes happening.

veb 9y ago

They said they were using fake email addresses. I'm also not sure if there's any meaningful way that Reddit can fix this sort of issue either. Sure, they can keep an eye on some suspicious accounts but yeah... Usually you don't have to buy that many upvotes/likes/whatever either - usually just a few in the beginning helps seeds a post/tweet well enough that it starts to bring in the organic traffic.

patrickk 9y ago

The amount of spam, manipulation of news and opinion, and fake accounts on reddit is insane, and reddit's staff (actual paid staff, not moderators) do almost nothing about it. This story is only the tip of the iceberg. Look at the recent US presidential election, look at the ongoing, long running censorship on r/bitcoin, among many other examples. I moderate a small subreddit related to a niche sport and deal with a massive amount of spam and fake accounts, and reddit's spam policing tool (Automoderator) is somewhat difficult to setup, only partially effective and could be a lot easier to use (e.g. one click bans for accounts and domains) if reddit's staff were serious about the problem.

oneeyedpigeon 9y ago

> I'm sure Reddit staff will get onto it then keep a much closer eye on this firm How can they connect this firm to random submissions and/or upvotes? I think even targeting fiverr would be difficult, because sellers aren't going to advertise which usernames they're going to us to vote. This is a very difficult problem to properly solve. Even if they can somehow guarantee each user account is one unique individual, what's to stop a company paying 200 actual, real people to go and vote on something on reddit?