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My speculation: The exact same thing that happens with reddit accounts used for astroturfing... People will 'build up' a profile over the course of several mont

My speculation: The exact same thing that happens with reddit accounts used for astroturfing... People will 'build up' a profile over the course of several months, reposting popular posts from months/years ago, etc. They're actually quite easy to spot, an account with high posting points and low comment points is usually one of these. Then, when it's nice and ripe, they will sell it to a troll farm which uses it to push a particular agenda. We saw this happen quite a bit in 2015-2016, and again starting in early 2020 (though it never really stopped). But, in this case, the product is the 'network' rather than individual accounts. Something that appears this 'organic' and 'homegrown' is a very valuable tool for a widespread disinfo campaign. Or, it could simply be the magician gang that makes viral posts of gross food. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/creators-countertop-spaghetti-hack-make-cooking-fun_n_609c2478e4b03e1dd384df0a https://www.huffpost.com/entry/creators-countertop-spaghetti...

deleted 5y ago
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bink 5y ago
I've never understood this logic. Very few subs limit posts by karma and those that do certainly don't require the insane amounts of karma that these bots are farming. I know I don't go back through someone's post history before voting on their comments and I don't really care about their aggregate karma values.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  It just takes one person to do that though and say "you made a new account for this you troll?" before everyone gets it.
  - josefx 5y ago
    That would work if the moderators of various subs weren't part of it, quite a few subs will hand out temp. bans when you "accuse someone of shilling". Even if the account was created the day a story went public, didn't post anything until weeks later when the story hit reddit and never backed up its attempts to discredit one side of the conflict. Some fun oriented subs will however happily ban spam bots that just automate imgur reposts if you point one out early enough.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Before the advent of the current crop of social media, online forums would post your post count and sign up dates. Posts from someone that has a brand new account and low post count were HIGHLY scrutinized. In some cases, needing mod approval before becoming visible. My assumption is troll farms are buying accounts with karma to try and do an end around such a system. It wouldn't be hard on reddit/hn/or other vote based social media locations to pay extra scrutiny, even automated, against brand new accounts. By using established accounts, it makes astroturf detection harder to do. Now every account is potentially an astroturfer.
- yabones 5y ago
  Indeed, there's more to it than that. I haven't gone in-depth, so this is my very pedestrian understanding... The very secretive spam filter has cut-outs for 'high value' accounts - this isn't really documented formally, but it's pretty obvious that posting limits are essentially nonexistant for 1M+ users, either by design or because they're well known to the mods... The value of the high-karma accounts is that they're much more likely to be accepted for moderator applications. Get enough mods on a default sub, and you basically control the universe. That's very difficult, so the much easier way is to create legit-looking fringe subreddits with names like "newstoday" or "politicallyuncensorednews". Get enough of your smurf accounts to upvote those, and you can get to rising for /all. Get enough real bites and you might even get it to the front page. I haven't really looked into this stuff for a few years, because it's frankly depressing. So my understanding will be a little off what the most recent networks are doing.
  - Pokepokalypse 5y ago
    That's why I think the best thing any (all) of us can do is to report and block every single page that's doing this. Unfortunately, I don't have 1M+ users; so I doubt this message will get out or make any difference.
- 93po 5y ago
  I have a 100% legitimate, human operated reddit account and I am constantly shadow banned by default on subreddits (i.e. my comment shows for me logged in, but is hidden when viewed in private window). I am sure it's not based entirely on karma, but karma and account age are definitely large factors
spoonjim 5y ago
Is there a difference in your post's reach on Reddit if you have 1,000 karma vs. 1,000,000?
- oconnor663 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if some of their shadowban logic was more lenient on accounts that had a lot of karma, to avoid high-profile embarrassing mistakes? Just a guess.
  - lpcvoid 5y ago
    I don't see how banning a high karma account would be embarrassing? I didn't even know that people cared about karma on Reddit.
    - oconnor663 5y ago
      Just that high karma accounts are marginally likelier to be subreddit mods or whatever? Again just a baseless guess on my part.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Luckily for Reddit it can only be highly embarrassing if people actually notice and raise a stink, which shadowbanning is designed to avoid. The shadowbanned user may just naturally get sick of the lack of interaction and leave the site, like this top /r/worldnews moderator with 14mil Karma who has been shadowbanned since July last year: https://old.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill https://old.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      It would be interesting if their shadow-ban logic actually gave users upvotes at random for posts.
    - malwarebytess 5y ago
      they're not shadowbanned. Where did you get that idea from? This is what the profile of a shadowbanned user looks like for everyone but the user: https://www.reddit.com/user/Soggy_Bed6887 https://www.reddit.com/user/Soggy_Bed6887
Nition 5y ago
Questions like this one from the article are also very common on /r/AskReddit: > Without naming the state you are from, what is it famous for? Hard to tell if that's intentional data gathering or just someone innocently copying a common data-gathering question format from Facebook though.
- akersten 5y ago
  That kind of thing is a gold mine for data harvesting. Automatically: for each comment from a certain state, go through their commenting history to map opinions on whatever you care to search for on a state-by-state level. Way cheaper and faster than phone surveys, and also gives a radically higher value slice of the population (than those who would pick up the phone to answer a survey). And that's probably the least nefarious thing someone could do with that data.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    Or just look them up on SnoopSnoo, it'll pull in those things and give you a decent estimate of their personal details.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  The generic "without directly revealing PII, provide some detail which ML algorithms can use to determine the PII with a high degree of accuracy" is pretty clearly a product of intentional data gathering. The fact that is might get copied and organically spread is just a bonus. This also goes for "the first letter of your last name plus the date of your mother's birthday are your <pop culture tag>". Oh and all the cutesy little image processing tools like "what would you look like older/younger/as a different gender/if you were a cartoon" are there to train facial recognition algorithms. Yet even supposedly sophisticated people fall for these.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    Do you have any actual proof that this is used for data mining and not because it's an engaging, fun question?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bink 5y ago

I've never understood this logic. Very few subs limit posts by karma and those that do certainly don't require the insane amounts of karma that these bots are farming. I know I don't go back through someone's post history before voting on their comments and I don't really care about their aggregate karma values.

MattGaiser 5y ago
It just takes one person to do that though and say "you made a new account for this you troll?" before everyone gets it.
- josefx 5y ago
  That would work if the moderators of various subs weren't part of it, quite a few subs will hand out temp. bans when you "accuse someone of shilling". Even if the account was created the day a story went public, didn't post anything until weeks later when the story hit reddit and never backed up its attempts to discredit one side of the conflict. Some fun oriented subs will however happily ban spam bots that just automate imgur reposts if you point one out early enough.
cogman10 5y ago
Before the advent of the current crop of social media, online forums would post your post count and sign up dates. Posts from someone that has a brand new account and low post count were HIGHLY scrutinized. In some cases, needing mod approval before becoming visible. My assumption is troll farms are buying accounts with karma to try and do an end around such a system. It wouldn't be hard on reddit/hn/or other vote based social media locations to pay extra scrutiny, even automated, against brand new accounts. By using established accounts, it makes astroturf detection harder to do. Now every account is potentially an astroturfer.
yabones 5y ago
Indeed, there's more to it than that. I haven't gone in-depth, so this is my very pedestrian understanding... The very secretive spam filter has cut-outs for 'high value' accounts - this isn't really documented formally, but it's pretty obvious that posting limits are essentially nonexistant for 1M+ users, either by design or because they're well known to the mods... The value of the high-karma accounts is that they're much more likely to be accepted for moderator applications. Get enough mods on a default sub, and you basically control the universe. That's very difficult, so the much easier way is to create legit-looking fringe subreddits with names like "newstoday" or "politicallyuncensorednews". Get enough of your smurf accounts to upvote those, and you can get to rising for /all. Get enough real bites and you might even get it to the front page. I haven't really looked into this stuff for a few years, because it's frankly depressing. So my understanding will be a little off what the most recent networks are doing.
- Pokepokalypse 5y ago
  That's why I think the best thing any (all) of us can do is to report and block every single page that's doing this. Unfortunately, I don't have 1M+ users; so I doubt this message will get out or make any difference.
93po 5y ago
I have a 100% legitimate, human operated reddit account and I am constantly shadow banned by default on subreddits (i.e. my comment shows for me logged in, but is hidden when viewed in private window). I am sure it's not based entirely on karma, but karma and account age are definitely large factors

spoonjim 5y ago

Is there a difference in your post's reach on Reddit if you have 1,000 karma vs. 1,000,000?

oconnor663 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if some of their shadowban logic was more lenient on accounts that had a lot of karma, to avoid high-profile embarrassing mistakes? Just a guess.
- lpcvoid 5y ago
  I don't see how banning a high karma account would be embarrassing? I didn't even know that people cared about karma on Reddit.
  - oconnor663 5y ago
    Just that high karma accounts are marginally likelier to be subreddit mods or whatever? Again just a baseless guess on my part.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Luckily for Reddit it can only be highly embarrassing if people actually notice and raise a stink, which shadowbanning is designed to avoid. The shadowbanned user may just naturally get sick of the lack of interaction and leave the site, like this top /r/worldnews moderator with 14mil Karma who has been shadowbanned since July last year: https://old.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill https://old.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    It would be interesting if their shadow-ban logic actually gave users upvotes at random for posts.
  - malwarebytess 5y ago
    they're not shadowbanned. Where did you get that idea from? This is what the profile of a shadowbanned user looks like for everyone but the user: https://www.reddit.com/user/Soggy_Bed6887 https://www.reddit.com/user/Soggy_Bed6887

Nition 5y ago

Questions like this one from the article are also very common on /r/AskReddit: > Without naming the state you are from, what is it famous for? Hard to tell if that's intentional data gathering or just someone innocently copying a common data-gathering question format from Facebook though.

akersten 5y ago
That kind of thing is a gold mine for data harvesting. Automatically: for each comment from a certain state, go through their commenting history to map opinions on whatever you care to search for on a state-by-state level. Way cheaper and faster than phone surveys, and also gives a radically higher value slice of the population (than those who would pick up the phone to answer a survey). And that's probably the least nefarious thing someone could do with that data.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Or just look them up on SnoopSnoo, it'll pull in those things and give you a decent estimate of their personal details.
cratermoon 5y ago
The generic "without directly revealing PII, provide some detail which ML algorithms can use to determine the PII with a high degree of accuracy" is pretty clearly a product of intentional data gathering. The fact that is might get copied and organically spread is just a bonus. This also goes for "the first letter of your last name plus the date of your mother's birthday are your <pop culture tag>". Oh and all the cutesy little image processing tools like "what would you look like older/younger/as a different gender/if you were a cartoon" are there to train facial recognition algorithms. Yet even supposedly sophisticated people fall for these.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  Do you have any actual proof that this is used for data mining and not because it's an engaging, fun question?