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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 tha

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.
- Scrantonicity 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? Not the guy you replied to but here's my take on this. Users like gallowboob and mvea have been known to post and repost the same content multiple times. If it doesn't get traction within the first few minutes, they delete that and try again. On some other subreddits like EvilBuildings, the mods frequently prune the subreddit's front page which lets posts with a lower number of upvotes hit /r/all more easily. This kind of manipulation was also being done by some other subreddits which led the admins to step in and stop them from showing up on the front page
  - nsilvestri 7y ago
    It's this; I'm guilty of doing it, and I believe there is a comment from /u/GallowBoob of him admitting it, but I can't find it. Sometimes a post just doesn't take off simply by bad luck, and it's easier to try again rather than to comb for new content.

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.

Scrantonicity 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? Not the guy you replied to but here's my take on this. Users like gallowboob and mvea have been known to post and repost the same content multiple times. If it doesn't get traction within the first few minutes, they delete that and try again. On some other subreddits like EvilBuildings, the mods frequently prune the subreddit's front page which lets posts with a lower number of upvotes hit /r/all more easily. This kind of manipulation was also being done by some other subreddits which led the admins to step in and stop them from showing up on the front page
- nsilvestri 7y ago
  It's this; I'm guilty of doing it, and I believe there is a comment from /u/GallowBoob of him admitting it, but I can't find it. Sometimes a post just doesn't take off simply by bad luck, and it's easier to try again rather than to comb for new content.