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Reddit is one of the most astroturfed places on the internet, and there's an entire ecology of PR/marketing firms that focus exclusively on it. There's also a

Reddit is one of the most astroturfed places on the internet, and there's an entire ecology of PR/marketing firms that focus exclusively on it. There's also a thriving market in "high karma" accounts, which can be bought for as little as $30. > Reddit also doesn't have "promoted" content / responses It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned. Basically, Reddit's system is terrible.

petesergeant 4y ago
> Reddit's system is terrible This doesn’t match my experience of reading Reddit
- LewisVerstappen 4y ago
  That's because you're just unaware of how astroturfed it is. I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits and randomly picked an account that posted a top meme https://www.reddit.com/user/esberat/submitted/ https://www.reddit.com/user/esberat/submitted/ The account has 8 million post karma and every single post it submits to a subreddit ends up on the front page of Reddit... without fail. The account isn't a mod of any of those subs, but they're clearly using upvote manipulation to get every single one of their posts to the front page.
  - DanielVZ 4y ago
    Of course the front-page will look like that. Niche subreddits are a completely different experience.
  - Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
    But in the context of TFA - searching Reddit to get factual answers - what appears on the reddit.com front page from day to day is largely irrelevant, surely?
    - A_D_E_P_T 4y ago
      By extension, high-karma accounts that are run by marketing companies can post in a niche subreddit to subtly promote their product or disparage their competition, and they'll end up on the front page of that subreddit. They'll get a lot of views and a lot more engagement than the average unsophisticated user's post would -- and those astroturfed posts would, on average, rank higher in searches. This is analogous to SEO, but rather more insidious and sneaky. You can spot SEO blogspam from a mile away. You don't know if a Reddit user is a real person, a bot, or a company's representative.
      - CuriouslyC 4y ago
        Reddit bots are used for upvote manipulation of legitimate posts by brand ambassadors/etc. The post histories are just to make the bot look legitimate.
    - michaelt 4y ago
      I always assumed the botted accounts on Reddit were in the hands of marketing companies, ready to upvote posts saying "My Brand X headphones sound great" or "I changed from Brand Y to Brand Z cigarettes because the smooth taste never leaves me feeling over-smoked" or "I made big gains by putting my life savings into this sketchy investment" or whatever they're being paid to promote at the time. I'd wager you could do a lot to influence public opinion with just an upvote ring, without the botted accounts actually needing to post messages.
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    Who cares? The real reddit stuff is not in the front pages.
    - bobmaxup 4y ago
      Someone must care, no? Those threads get a large number of impressions, assumedly from real users.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    > I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits That was your first mistake, the defaults are cesspools full of karma farming bots. Nobody goes to those for advice.
    - A_D_E_P_T 4y ago
      What makes you think that the niche subreddits aren't also full of marketing firms, bots, and upvote networks? With very few exceptions, they are.
      - parasubvert 4y ago
        They also have an okay s:n ratio in my experience, as the mod team can work the experience. Like for example, q&a type threads tend to be useful. There are folks promoting things but it’s obvious when they are.
      - moffkalast 4y ago
        Because the tiny niche audience isn't a cost effective marketing group? Advertisers want to maximize their reach and well, it's not like they know these groups even exist. I'm sure it happens a lot regardless, but the vast majority of content in those is still just from regular people. You can tell by the information posted as it tends to be more or less truthful and useful. Once it stops being that it'll be obvious enough. Like when Russian bots invade your average Ukraine related r/worldnews post.
        dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        >Because the tiny niche audience isn't a cost effective marketing group? A That's the magic of Reddit, 4Chan and every other cesspool where any niche is only a slight URL change away from any other niche. It's trivially easy to add niche subs 2, 3 and 4 to the list of places that you target.
        moffkalast 4y ago
        Yeah and then any mod with half a brain sees you're spamming things everywhere and bans you.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    That looks just like making content tailored to subreddit it is posted, no shit it's popular. Also how the fuck "Building a hobby-shelter while camping in Kelowna" or some random funny pictures is "astroturfing"?
lincpa 4y ago
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SquareWheel 4y ago
> Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. User karma isn't factored into the site's sorting algorithms. Post score is, and that influences karma, but not the other way around. edit: On reflection, you may have been referring to the ability to post, rather than the popularity of the post. In that case, the misunderstanding was mine.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It’s not part of the ranking algorithm, it’s part of the anti spam system. If you make a new account and comment, it’s almost never visible to anyone else. You have to warm up accounts with a few comments over a week before they start showing up.
  - SquareWheel 4y ago
    That's often true. Individual subreddits may filter new accounts or low-karma thresholds to prevent spam. The better subreddits will simply flag it for manual review rather than remove it outright.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    An alternative: create an account, don't use it for a while, use it. Mods essentially have two variables to work with: account age and karma. Some subs do set minimum karma (I've stumbled upon some that wouldn't accept below 2k karma), but most just go by account age to prevent banned users from going around the ban. And a tip for spotting karma farmers: just go to one of those big subs that accept screenshots of tweets. If the screenshot has engagements/timestamp cropped, click on a profile. Like 8 times out of 10 it's gonna be an older account that never posted before reposting one of the older popular submissions. EDIT: Here's an example that took me like 20s to find: https://www.reddit.com/user/DepartureSimples/ https://www.reddit.com/user/DepartureSimples/
pprotas 4y ago
> Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. Are you sure? How do you know this?
- moffkalast 4y ago
  I think what they're trying to say is some subreddits auto-collapse comments from users with low karma and recent date of creation to combat bots. If reddit gives any more weight to high karma users I can tell you as one that it definitely doesn't seem noticeable at all. Right time and right place comments are always the ones that end up on top.
- ta8903 4y ago
  On most big subs if you have a fresh account your posts are hidden by default. Maybe they have to be manually approved? Not sure. Source: Don't have a persistent reddit account, just made a new one for the few times I wanted to post something.
hollander 4y ago
As a reddit-addict this really depends on the subreddit you're using. In /r/askreddit you don't stand a chance that your question will attract serious attention, but there are so many subreddits with small usergroups and enough reactions. In /r/askreddit or other popular subreddits, my answers get reasonable attention, even if I'm not on the reddit timeschedule.
makeitdouble 4y ago
When two people say ´reddit´ they might be referencing two completely different worlds. The prime reason I created a reddit account many moons ago was to get rid of all the default and behemoth subreddits from my feed, as they all looked like incredibly toxic and I´d have jumped through a window if I had to stay in them for more than 5 min. But these subreddits are all of reddit for many other people. And some user might only ever be looking at porn. And some others live in a diy bubbles. That is to me the beauty of it, but also why it´s difficult to generalize trends. Low karma accounts getting shadowbanned ring nothing in my mind, but as there´s subs where you can only submit post titles ´cat´, there sure must be others were karma is everything.
ilyt 4y ago
Entirely depends on subreddit in question > It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned. It's used more as protection from SEO spammers and this is just unfortunate side effect for new users. Other problem is that karma is global which basically means user on popular subreddits will gain it quickly so any karma-based filtering is doomed to fail anyway
- NBJack 4y ago
  And it's not a great protection system at all. Just like how content generators are gaming Google search, there is a problem now with bots that find what is popular and repost it later (with a wording change) for karma farming.
wting 4y ago
> It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. User karma has no impact on the default sort ranking[0]. The source code is available here (as of ~2018): https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_sorts.pyx#L47 https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/l... > And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned. User karma is impacted by mods' use of AutoMod on a per subreddit basis or fraudulent[1] accounts, but otherwise there is no site-wide application of user karma. Source: I spent some time experimenting and implementing alternative rankings at Reddit. 0: Subreddit hot score, not applicable to logged in users' default feed. 1: Shadow banning (vs direct banning) fraudulent accounts makes it more difficult to reverse engineer signals used to identify malicious accounts.

petesergeant 4y ago

> Reddit's system is terrible This doesn’t match my experience of reading Reddit

LewisVerstappen 4y ago
That's because you're just unaware of how astroturfed it is. I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits and randomly picked an account that posted a top meme https://www.reddit.com/user/esberat/submitted/ https://www.reddit.com/user/esberat/submitted/ The account has 8 million post karma and every single post it submits to a subreddit ends up on the front page of Reddit... without fail. The account isn't a mod of any of those subs, but they're clearly using upvote manipulation to get every single one of their posts to the front page.
- DanielVZ 4y ago
  Of course the front-page will look like that. Niche subreddits are a completely different experience.
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  But in the context of TFA - searching Reddit to get factual answers - what appears on the reddit.com front page from day to day is largely irrelevant, surely?
  - A_D_E_P_T 4y ago
    By extension, high-karma accounts that are run by marketing companies can post in a niche subreddit to subtly promote their product or disparage their competition, and they'll end up on the front page of that subreddit. They'll get a lot of views and a lot more engagement than the average unsophisticated user's post would -- and those astroturfed posts would, on average, rank higher in searches. This is analogous to SEO, but rather more insidious and sneaky. You can spot SEO blogspam from a mile away. You don't know if a Reddit user is a real person, a bot, or a company's representative.
    - CuriouslyC 4y ago
      Reddit bots are used for upvote manipulation of legitimate posts by brand ambassadors/etc. The post histories are just to make the bot look legitimate.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    I always assumed the botted accounts on Reddit were in the hands of marketing companies, ready to upvote posts saying "My Brand X headphones sound great" or "I changed from Brand Y to Brand Z cigarettes because the smooth taste never leaves me feeling over-smoked" or "I made big gains by putting my life savings into this sketchy investment" or whatever they're being paid to promote at the time. I'd wager you could do a lot to influence public opinion with just an upvote ring, without the botted accounts actually needing to post messages.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  Who cares? The real reddit stuff is not in the front pages.
  - bobmaxup 4y ago
    Someone must care, no? Those threads get a large number of impressions, assumedly from real users.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  > I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits That was your first mistake, the defaults are cesspools full of karma farming bots. Nobody goes to those for advice.
  - A_D_E_P_T 4y ago
    What makes you think that the niche subreddits aren't also full of marketing firms, bots, and upvote networks? With very few exceptions, they are.
    - parasubvert 4y ago
      They also have an okay s:n ratio in my experience, as the mod team can work the experience. Like for example, q&a type threads tend to be useful. There are folks promoting things but it’s obvious when they are.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      Because the tiny niche audience isn't a cost effective marketing group? Advertisers want to maximize their reach and well, it's not like they know these groups even exist. I'm sure it happens a lot regardless, but the vast majority of content in those is still just from regular people. You can tell by the information posted as it tends to be more or less truthful and useful. Once it stops being that it'll be obvious enough. Like when Russian bots invade your average Ukraine related r/worldnews post.
      - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        >Because the tiny niche audience isn't a cost effective marketing group? A That's the magic of Reddit, 4Chan and every other cesspool where any niche is only a slight URL change away from any other niche. It's trivially easy to add niche subs 2, 3 and 4 to the list of places that you target.
        moffkalast 4y ago
        Yeah and then any mod with half a brain sees you're spamming things everywhere and bans you.
- ilyt 4y ago
  That looks just like making content tailored to subreddit it is posted, no shit it's popular. Also how the fuck "Building a hobby-shelter while camping in Kelowna" or some random funny pictures is "astroturfing"?

lincpa 4y ago

[dead]

SquareWheel 4y ago

> Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. User karma isn't factored into the site's sorting algorithms. Post score is, and that influences karma, but not the other way around. edit: On reflection, you may have been referring to the ability to post, rather than the popularity of the post. In that case, the misunderstanding was mine.

Gigachad 4y ago
It’s not part of the ranking algorithm, it’s part of the anti spam system. If you make a new account and comment, it’s almost never visible to anyone else. You have to warm up accounts with a few comments over a week before they start showing up.
- SquareWheel 4y ago
  That's often true. Individual subreddits may filter new accounts or low-karma thresholds to prevent spam. The better subreddits will simply flag it for manual review rather than remove it outright.
- input_sh 4y ago
  An alternative: create an account, don't use it for a while, use it. Mods essentially have two variables to work with: account age and karma. Some subs do set minimum karma (I've stumbled upon some that wouldn't accept below 2k karma), but most just go by account age to prevent banned users from going around the ban. And a tip for spotting karma farmers: just go to one of those big subs that accept screenshots of tweets. If the screenshot has engagements/timestamp cropped, click on a profile. Like 8 times out of 10 it's gonna be an older account that never posted before reposting one of the older popular submissions. EDIT: Here's an example that took me like 20s to find: https://www.reddit.com/user/DepartureSimples/ https://www.reddit.com/user/DepartureSimples/

pprotas 4y ago

> Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. Are you sure? How do you know this?

moffkalast 4y ago
I think what they're trying to say is some subreddits auto-collapse comments from users with low karma and recent date of creation to combat bots. If reddit gives any more weight to high karma users I can tell you as one that it definitely doesn't seem noticeable at all. Right time and right place comments are always the ones that end up on top.
ta8903 4y ago
On most big subs if you have a fresh account your posts are hidden by default. Maybe they have to be manually approved? Not sure. Source: Don't have a persistent reddit account, just made a new one for the few times I wanted to post something.

hollander 4y ago

As a reddit-addict this really depends on the subreddit you're using. In /r/askreddit you don't stand a chance that your question will attract serious attention, but there are so many subreddits with small usergroups and enough reactions. In /r/askreddit or other popular subreddits, my answers get reasonable attention, even if I'm not on the reddit timeschedule.

makeitdouble 4y ago

When two people say ´reddit´ they might be referencing two completely different worlds. The prime reason I created a reddit account many moons ago was to get rid of all the default and behemoth subreddits from my feed, as they all looked like incredibly toxic and I´d have jumped through a window if I had to stay in them for more than 5 min. But these subreddits are all of reddit for many other people. And some user might only ever be looking at porn. And some others live in a diy bubbles. That is to me the beauty of it, but also why it´s difficult to generalize trends. Low karma accounts getting shadowbanned ring nothing in my mind, but as there´s subs where you can only submit post titles ´cat´, there sure must be others were karma is everything.

ilyt 4y ago

Entirely depends on subreddit in question > It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned. It's used more as protection from SEO spammers and this is just unfortunate side effect for new users. Other problem is that karma is global which basically means user on popular subreddits will gain it quickly so any karma-based filtering is doomed to fail anyway

NBJack 4y ago
And it's not a great protection system at all. Just like how content generators are gaming Google search, there is a problem now with bots that find what is popular and repost it later (with a wording change) for karma farming.

wting 4y ago

> It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. User karma has no impact on the default sort ranking[0]. The source code is available here (as of ~2018): https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_sorts.pyx#L47 https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/l... > And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned. User karma is impacted by mods' use of AutoMod on a per subreddit basis or fraudulent[1] accounts, but otherwise there is no site-wide application of user karma. Source: I spent some time experimenting and implementing alternative rankings at Reddit. 0: Subreddit hot score, not applicable to logged in users' default feed. 1: Shadow banning (vs direct banning) fraudulent accounts makes it more difficult to reverse engineer signals used to identify malicious accounts.