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The reddit hack for reviews succeeds at being a good source for "reviews", _because_ that's not what it's for. As soon as you create a search engine, someone w

The reddit hack for reviews succeeds at being a good source for "reviews", _because_ that's not what it's for. As soon as you create a search engine, someone will figure out how manipulate the results. Even reddit search results can be pretty spammy as I think some people have figured this out.

danenania 4y ago
I find Reddit to be the best source not only for reviews, but for any topic that has even a whiff of commercial relevance. On Reddit you have a very good chance of seeing multiple high quality, well-informed posts on whatever topic you're interested in, written by real people who genuinely want to offer help in an area they're knowledgeable about. On Google these days, even once you scroll past the wall of actual ads, you'll usually just see a bunch more defacto ads masquerading as "organic" results.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  > On Reddit you have a very good chance of seeing multiple high quality, well-informed posts on whatever topic you're interested in, written by real people who genuinely want to offer help in an area they're knowledgeable about. The pervasiveness of fake, shill, and/or paid reviews across the rest of the web makes it difficult for me to escape the suspicion that there is pervasive review fraud on Reddit as well.
  - simplehuman 4y ago
    But are those comments highly upvoted?
    - danenania 4y ago
      Exactly. Reddit’s culture acts as an anti-spam, anti-shill immune system. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but it’s quite a bit better than the typical search engine or social network at weeding out content-spam and other bs.
    - seoaeu 4y ago
      Some of them presumably are? Redditors are notorious for not being able to distinguish creative writing exercises from reality. Throw in the various methods of vote manipulation that the less scrupulous marketing folks there are surely using, and it is hard to imagine that a large fraction of highly upvoted Reddit product testimonials aren’t fake
marginalia_nu 4y ago
> As soon as you create a search engine, someone will figure out how manipulate the results. I see this sentiment a lot. Are there any actual examples of this happening, or does it merely propagate on the basis of sounding true?
- dflock 4y ago
  The example is the way that the dominance of Google changed the web. It's "manipulate the results", by way of "be careful what you wish for" - if there's money to be made in pandering to a search engines whims, then that will happen at scale and that content will swamp the good stuff that you wanted in the first place.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Google is arguable exceptional, in that they are in a position to shape a significant amount of web traffic. Their largest competitor doesn't even have 1% market share.
    - dflock 4y ago
      I agree with this - Google is so dominant and so large, that it distorts the entire web. But I think this is probably just a historical accident, more or less. This is just [Goodharts Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) write large: > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So, when you try to measure content quality in some way, that becomes a target, and starts to distort the quality of the content. I think this applies equally in any niche, at any scale where people find it worthwhile. If you have a niche search engine that has different content requirements, and it becomes worthwhile to SEO niche content for that engine, then it will happen, eventually. I think it just has to become worthwhile (and then for this fact to become known) - but that threshold is going to vary a lot, in different niches, times, places, etc... There are plenty of people (~everyone?) gaming/SEO'ing the search on Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, etc... for example, by doing niche & platform specific SEO on their listings on those platforms. I also think that people's definition of "worthwhile" differs too. For the broad SEO industry, it monetary. For people making posts on HN or Reddit, it's Karma, or Discussion or something - and people will optimize their content towards that, just for "fun". Actually, I think this applies pretty boardly to making _anything_, more or less, once you have someone or something evaluating/measuring your output? How _harmful_ this is, depends on what's being optimized for; scale & rewards probably change how "hard" the optimization arms race gets - as well as how many people are affected.

danenania 4y ago

I find Reddit to be the best source not only for reviews, but for any topic that has even a whiff of commercial relevance. On Reddit you have a very good chance of seeing multiple high quality, well-informed posts on whatever topic you're interested in, written by real people who genuinely want to offer help in an area they're knowledgeable about. On Google these days, even once you scroll past the wall of actual ads, you'll usually just see a bunch more defacto ads masquerading as "organic" results.

InitialLastName 4y ago
> On Reddit you have a very good chance of seeing multiple high quality, well-informed posts on whatever topic you're interested in, written by real people who genuinely want to offer help in an area they're knowledgeable about. The pervasiveness of fake, shill, and/or paid reviews across the rest of the web makes it difficult for me to escape the suspicion that there is pervasive review fraud on Reddit as well.
- simplehuman 4y ago
  But are those comments highly upvoted?
  - danenania 4y ago
    Exactly. Reddit’s culture acts as an anti-spam, anti-shill immune system. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but it’s quite a bit better than the typical search engine or social network at weeding out content-spam and other bs.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    Some of them presumably are? Redditors are notorious for not being able to distinguish creative writing exercises from reality. Throw in the various methods of vote manipulation that the less scrupulous marketing folks there are surely using, and it is hard to imagine that a large fraction of highly upvoted Reddit product testimonials aren’t fake

marginalia_nu 4y ago

> As soon as you create a search engine, someone will figure out how manipulate the results. I see this sentiment a lot. Are there any actual examples of this happening, or does it merely propagate on the basis of sounding true?

dflock 4y ago
The example is the way that the dominance of Google changed the web. It's "manipulate the results", by way of "be careful what you wish for" - if there's money to be made in pandering to a search engines whims, then that will happen at scale and that content will swamp the good stuff that you wanted in the first place.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Google is arguable exceptional, in that they are in a position to shape a significant amount of web traffic. Their largest competitor doesn't even have 1% market share.
  - dflock 4y ago
    I agree with this - Google is so dominant and so large, that it distorts the entire web. But I think this is probably just a historical accident, more or less. This is just [Goodharts Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) write large: > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So, when you try to measure content quality in some way, that becomes a target, and starts to distort the quality of the content. I think this applies equally in any niche, at any scale where people find it worthwhile. If you have a niche search engine that has different content requirements, and it becomes worthwhile to SEO niche content for that engine, then it will happen, eventually. I think it just has to become worthwhile (and then for this fact to become known) - but that threshold is going to vary a lot, in different niches, times, places, etc... There are plenty of people (~everyone?) gaming/SEO'ing the search on Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, etc... for example, by doing niche & platform specific SEO on their listings on those platforms. I also think that people's definition of "worthwhile" differs too. For the broad SEO industry, it monetary. For people making posts on HN or Reddit, it's Karma, or Discussion or something - and people will optimize their content towards that, just for "fun". Actually, I think this applies pretty boardly to making _anything_, more or less, once you have someone or something evaluating/measuring your output? How _harmful_ this is, depends on what's being optimized for; scale & rewards probably change how "hard" the optimization arms race gets - as well as how many people are affected.