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> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. Ever since starting a project to collect and analyse the reddit firehose, I've had a series of eye opening experiences about just how manufactured the popular reddit content is. Every day, comments and posts with hundreds to thousands of upvotes get deleted by moderators because they don't fit the desired narrative. A small ring of moderators are in control of most default subs. A small ring of accounts make up for more than 50% of regular front-page content. If you ever want to take a glimpse at the amount of manipulation going on, point something like snew.notabug.io at a popular politics or askreddit thread. Reddit is a platform for pushing manufactured consent/controversy and guerilla advertising. It is not a platform for open speech. The reddit content that most users see often does not represent the views of the userbase. Here's a random post I picked from an old analysis notebook where most of top 10% of comments were deleted, and then the post itself was deleted when new comments started mentioning the censorship. Should give some idea about the magnitude and scope of what's going on https://imgur.com/a/2C5Kn2R https://imgur.com/a/2C5Kn2R

amiga-workbench 7y ago
What was a massive eye opener for me was the few days in the wake of Donald Trump's presidential win, that subreddit went back to normal, it was quiet, level-headed. After a few days the agenda pushing and blatant shilling began anew and it's been a non-stop screaming mess since.
kebman 7y ago
You just described the biggest problem with Wikipedia lol. :D
- rajaganesh87 7y ago
  Atleast edit history is public in wikipedia
  - kabwj 7y ago
    Article revisions can be completely removed by administrators.
OrwellianThrow 7y ago
I have very similar feelings about this site at least recently. There appears to be significant effort from moderators here to squash outside opinions, I've noticed a lot of posts that I've commented on have become flagged even though they did not break the rules and in fact had positive responses from other users (not downvoted).
- paulriddle 7y ago
  Do you think HN owners have contracts with some companies to keep them on the front page? I always see these links to BBC, New York Times, Reuters, Techcrunch, theregister.co.uk, etc. on the front page. Who upvotes this crap? These are regular news that don't belong on HN. I think it's unlikely, but still it's annoying to see stuff like this here. I'm not against it, but it's always there. It got to the point that I started thinking about rtv like program for HN that has built-in recommendation system based on my favorites. Strong filters too. I know there is haxor-news, but it's not that. I want to be able to get a listing of stuff only related to my favorites and favorites of HN users I whitelisted.
  - minimaxir 7y ago
    > These are regular news that don't belong on HN. Tech news is still tech.
whatelseisnew 7y ago
deleted by moderators because they don't fit the desired narrative. A small ring of moderators are in control... Here on HN, it's pretty much the same. You aren't reading the opinions of authentic people. All you get is the selected filtration of a small group of paid staff, compounded by default themes already set in motion by the wider media outlets.
odiroot 7y ago
This is really a sad truth about modern Reddit. Seems like /r/news, /r/worldnews and many other hyper-popular subs are carefully crafted propaganda machines. The best way around it to stay subscribed to smaller, more niche subs.
- Bekwnn 7y ago
  And let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Those specific or niche interests are often done a huge favor by subreddits.
nsilvestri 7y ago
To preface: I have over 650,000 reddit karma, mostly collected from 2014-2017. Roughly 150,000 of this is from posts, the rest comments. I completely agree that mods can push their own agenda about their subreddits; they have almost completely unfettered control of their subreddits, and the admins almost never intervene. But I don't agree that there's an argument to be made for the actual posters of content; it's simply a numbers game, as well as a good amount of "gaming" the system; e.g. posting during high-volume times, crossposting content, etc. I think the calls of shilling on Reddit are significantly more pronounced than shilling itself actually is, as I myself have posted content on multiple occasions and then been called a shill, when in reality I simply found whatever product interesting or useful or otherwise. On one occasion I was offered a free product _after_ making a post about it (I declined). I've never made a post that I've received any kind of compensation for, but I have made posts advertising non-profit events that I organized as a volunteer. I have a group of friends that I've been on Reddit, and all of them have 100,000+ karma, and a couple with over a million, and they have somewhat shared the sentiment. I don't want to sound like I'm saying there's no astroturfing at all, because there definitely is, but there's this culture of calling anything with any kind of recognizable product in it an advertisement, when it can be explained much less conspiratorially.
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  What are your thoughts about accounts such as u/mvea consistently hitting the front page on a daily basis, often with links that were posted by other accounts earlier but only gained traction when posted by this account? What are your thoughts on accusations that admins are able to adorn comments with gold/silver for free and manipulate comment priority? What are your thoughts on the fact that any discussion about this on default reddit gets nuked? There are broadly two kinds of manipulation on reddit. One is by outsider parties - the state sponsored propaganda, the guerilla ad campaigns, etc. The other is by the core moderation and admin team who appear to be actively shaping front page content through selective promotion of desirable and deletion of undesirable content even if it does not break rules. My above screenshot of a 50k upvote post being nuked due to anti-chinese sentiment is an example of #2, I think you're talking about #1 which is not so prevalent lately.
zeropnc 7y ago
I broke a major news story on my own blog years ago on Reddit. It was the top story for a few minutes. Within 20 minutes it was magically deleted, I was shadowbanned, and an identical story from one of the biggest news publications in the world was suddenly #1 up there. The information we live and breathe every day is bought and paid for.

amiga-workbench 7y ago

What was a massive eye opener for me was the few days in the wake of Donald Trump's presidential win, that subreddit went back to normal, it was quiet, level-headed. After a few days the agenda pushing and blatant shilling began anew and it's been a non-stop screaming mess since.

kebman 7y ago

You just described the biggest problem with Wikipedia lol. :D

rajaganesh87 7y ago
Atleast edit history is public in wikipedia
- kabwj 7y ago
  Article revisions can be completely removed by administrators.

OrwellianThrow 7y ago

I have very similar feelings about this site at least recently. There appears to be significant effort from moderators here to squash outside opinions, I've noticed a lot of posts that I've commented on have become flagged even though they did not break the rules and in fact had positive responses from other users (not downvoted).

paulriddle 7y ago
Do you think HN owners have contracts with some companies to keep them on the front page? I always see these links to BBC, New York Times, Reuters, Techcrunch, theregister.co.uk, etc. on the front page. Who upvotes this crap? These are regular news that don't belong on HN. I think it's unlikely, but still it's annoying to see stuff like this here. I'm not against it, but it's always there. It got to the point that I started thinking about rtv like program for HN that has built-in recommendation system based on my favorites. Strong filters too. I know there is haxor-news, but it's not that. I want to be able to get a listing of stuff only related to my favorites and favorites of HN users I whitelisted.
- minimaxir 7y ago
  > These are regular news that don't belong on HN. Tech news is still tech.

whatelseisnew 7y ago

deleted by moderators because they don't fit the desired narrative. A small ring of moderators are in control... Here on HN, it's pretty much the same. You aren't reading the opinions of authentic people. All you get is the selected filtration of a small group of paid staff, compounded by default themes already set in motion by the wider media outlets.

odiroot 7y ago

This is really a sad truth about modern Reddit. Seems like /r/news, /r/worldnews and many other hyper-popular subs are carefully crafted propaganda machines. The best way around it to stay subscribed to smaller, more niche subs.

Bekwnn 7y ago
And let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Those specific or niche interests are often done a huge favor by subreddits.

nsilvestri 7y ago

To preface: I have over 650,000 reddit karma, mostly collected from 2014-2017. Roughly 150,000 of this is from posts, the rest comments. I completely agree that mods can push their own agenda about their subreddits; they have almost completely unfettered control of their subreddits, and the admins almost never intervene. But I don't agree that there's an argument to be made for the actual posters of content; it's simply a numbers game, as well as a good amount of "gaming" the system; e.g. posting during high-volume times, crossposting content, etc. I think the calls of shilling on Reddit are significantly more pronounced than shilling itself actually is, as I myself have posted content on multiple occasions and then been called a shill, when in reality I simply found whatever product interesting or useful or otherwise. On one occasion I was offered a free product _after_ making a post about it (I declined). I've never made a post that I've received any kind of compensation for, but I have made posts advertising non-profit events that I organized as a volunteer. I have a group of friends that I've been on Reddit, and all of them have 100,000+ karma, and a couple with over a million, and they have somewhat shared the sentiment. I don't want to sound like I'm saying there's no astroturfing at all, because there definitely is, but there's this culture of calling anything with any kind of recognizable product in it an advertisement, when it can be explained much less conspiratorially.

kuzehanka 7y ago
What are your thoughts about accounts such as u/mvea consistently hitting the front page on a daily basis, often with links that were posted by other accounts earlier but only gained traction when posted by this account? What are your thoughts on accusations that admins are able to adorn comments with gold/silver for free and manipulate comment priority? What are your thoughts on the fact that any discussion about this on default reddit gets nuked? There are broadly two kinds of manipulation on reddit. One is by outsider parties - the state sponsored propaganda, the guerilla ad campaigns, etc. The other is by the core moderation and admin team who appear to be actively shaping front page content through selective promotion of desirable and deletion of undesirable content even if it does not break rules. My above screenshot of a 50k upvote post being nuked due to anti-chinese sentiment is an example of #2, I think you're talking about #1 which is not so prevalent lately.

zeropnc 7y ago

I broke a major news story on my own blog years ago on Reddit. It was the top story for a few minutes. Within 20 minutes it was magically deleted, I was shadowbanned, and an identical story from one of the biggest news publications in the world was suddenly #1 up there. The information we live and breathe every day is bought and paid for.