6 ms·

This Reddit thing is starting to border insane conspiracy. This is a boring legacy tech company who’s best selling point is being a discussion forum for the chr

This Reddit thing is starting to border insane conspiracy. This is a boring legacy tech company who’s best selling point is being a discussion forum for the chronically mid. The employees are probably checked out and hiding at home, I can’t imagine anybody has time to do all the random stuff they’re being accused of.

wunderland 3y ago
I think you’re underestimating how little work an App Store astroturfing campaign would be
bertil 3y ago
I’ve heard of many schemes like that, and with one exception, employees are not involved or even told this is happening. One senior executive with the budget and incentives to make a metric go up contracts an external party. The one exception is a company that asks employees to review their employer. They seem to verify that the reviews are coming from actual employees.
- tnecniv 3y ago
  Yeah Spez and a marketing director probably hired a bot farm or a mill in a developing country. If you use your employees, it’ll leak.
Etheryte 3y ago
As a side note for others, mid means mediocre or poor of quality, and hence chronically mid means extremely mediocre or very low quality.
- jey 3y ago
  It also seems to be a sly reference to the “midwit” meme.
  - tanjtanjtanj 3y ago
    I doubt it. Mid is extremely commonly used slang that means "Mid-Tier", "middle-of-the-road", "middling" etc.
    - yamazakiwi 3y ago
      You're right but unfortunately it rarely gets used this way. People who say mid end up saying it so often that it seems like everything they don't like is middling instead of bad or poor.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Jeff_Brown 3y ago
  Chronically doesn't mean extremely. It means long-term or inescapably.
  - Etheryte 3y ago
    The dictionary agrees with both options, so I would guess this mostly comes down to local slang, or perhaps British vs American English?
    - gknapp 3y ago
      The dictionary doesn't agree with both options. Cambridge has a single definition: > In a way that continues or has continued for a long time. Merriam-Webster offers the following two: > continuing or occurring again and again for a long time > always present or encountered For"chronically" to mean "extremely" wouldn't make sense as to the root of the word, either.
      - Etheryte 3y ago
        The Oxford English dictionary gives the following description, in addition to the above: > to a very great extent; extremely: chronically stupid drivers, she was chronically indecisive. Whether it makes sense or not, the dictionary agrees with both options.
        brewdad 3y ago
        Oxford English dictionary follows the trends of language rather than setting them definitionally. They offer the "extremely" definition because the word gets misused so often, not because of any original meaning. One can argue the merits of whether a dictionary should include such misuses that have become commonplace but that's the direction they have opted to go. In the same vein as this debate, OED considers irregardless to be a proper synonym for regardless.
        Jeff_Brown 3y ago
- Zetice 3y ago
  On one hand, I find the phrase "mid" to be pretty fucking awful, but on the other I'm old (30s) so who knows.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Is it that you are old, or that you are young enough that the transition from the slang of your peers to a newer one as the fashion of the day is recent and acutely felt?
    - krapp 3y ago
      >Is it that you are old, or that you are young enough that the transition from the slang of your peers to a newer one as the fashion of the day is recent and acutely felt? Once you start to notice that, once pop culture starts to alienate you, you're old. And there's no more obvious sign that you're old than complaining about modern slang.
  - neodymiumphish 3y ago
    Right? What's wrong with "bad", "meh", "basic", "uninteresting", or "mediocre"?
    - Zetice 3y ago
      Those words lack an unearned sense of superiority, which is all the rage for youths these days. Unrelated, but what should I do about these children on my lawn?!
      - o_1 3y ago
        put signs up, edit your Twitter bio lol.
  - yamazakiwi 3y ago
    I don't like mid because it never accurately depicts the speakers actual opinion. People usually say mid to things they think are bad, not middling. Or they believe that the thing is bad because it is middling. A poor descriptor...
- Buttons840 3y ago
  Slurs like "chronically mid" don't belong on HN.
  - low_common 3y ago
    Dude stop gatekeeping what people can say on here and go find something better to do with your day.
    - Etheryte 3y ago
      I hope the irony is not lost on you that you're telling someone to stop telling other people what to say.
      - cactusplant7374 3y ago
        Does that mean that first amendment is ironic because it allows one to speak and criticize the right to speak?
  - cactusplant7374 3y ago
    Most of the comments on Reddit would be downvoted or deleted on HN. Most comments are just not that useful or interesting.
    - Buttons840 3y ago
      Since you gave me an excuse, I'll explain why I'm offended at the slur. The comment says: > This is a boring legacy tech company who’s best selling point is being a discussion forum for the chronically mid. This insult isn't about the comments on Reddit, it's about the people on Reddit. "Chronically mid" means that the people are average and will always be average. The comment is arguing that Reddit is low-value and part of their argument is that the people using Reddit are low-value "chronically mid" people. Everyone can judge for themselves whether downplaying the value of millions of people is offensive or not.
wasyl 3y ago
Is it that big of a stretch to assume Reddit boosted their own apps ratings with fake/paid reviews, given one of the main arguments is that their apps still suck while they're killing third party ones? > I can’t imagine anybody has time to do all the random stuff they’re being accused of. Employees are probably not happy but they are still working. And you can literally find a page offering paid reviews in seconds, add an item to _a basket_ and pay with a credit card
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > is it that big of a stretch to assume Absent evidence, for the HN front page, yes.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    It’s rampant/common in industry. The evidence is self evident in the reviews characteristics. Secondly the CEO has a history of posting fake user engagement himself or at his command in order to show more popularity than actual. He does this. You’d look at twitter bot replies and say the same thing huh
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Reddit before today: "Dark patterns, dark patterns everywhere" Reddit today after collective forgetting: "What do you mean companies use dark patterns?!"
      - tredre3 3y ago
        Yes, Reddit uses plenty of dark patterns. Like begging users to leave a positive review. Which makes me wonder why y'all prefer to believe that reddit itself is buying reviews from black market bot farms in a giant conspiracy, rather than those dark patterns just being, you know, effective at pushing users to leave low effort reviews?
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  its also not a big stretch to acknowledge anybody could harm anybody else’s app with an astroturfing campaign something more obvious right now given how bad the astroturfing campaign is. one word reviews? everyone knows Reddit is vulnerable to a thousand cuts right now, its the perfect time to do so I’ve seen that in a lot of crypto projects, because people consistently develop a parasocial relationship with the founders and then try to digitally harm them after the founders dont do what they expect this looks and acts like the same thing
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
getmeinrn 3y ago
It's not an insane conspiracy when you acknowledge that they bootstrapped their community through fake accounts[1]. This shows they have no reservations about using deception to increase their brand's reputation. Fake app reviews falls into that category. 1. https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/ https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
- mAritz 3y ago
  They (admins) recently started a couple of new German language subreddits, that were 1-to-1 translations of existing successful subreddits, like r/showerthoughts and r/explainlikeimfive. They very clearly created fake accounts that then posted badly translated copies of existing posts from those originals onto the new subreddits. Then after that they sent unsolicited private messages to users subscribed to certain organic German language subreddits (like r/de) inviting people to those new subreddits. The r/de subreddit is still in blackout, so I can't really provide a working source right now, but once that ends, you can check it out here: https://reddit.com/r/de/comments/13orxh0/milde_interessant_reddit_admins_machen_werbung/ https://reddit.com/r/de/comments/13orxh0/milde_interessant_r...
  - adamckay 3y ago
    https://archive.ph/HI8dn https://archive.ph/HI8dn
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- qjx 3y ago
  not to mention the ceo also edited user comment because he disagreed with it, banned subs with no consistency, and for the r/place event, people caught admins cheating by placing tiles with no cooldown. who knows what other shady stuff goes on in the background
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Let's not even mention that the CEO was the head moderator of r/jailbait and several other... "distasteful" subreddits before they were shut down.
chollida1 3y ago
> This is a boring legacy tech company who’s best selling point is being a discussion forum for the chronically mid. I've been a redditor since day one and I can't figure out what this sentence is supposed to mean. Can you flesh this out some more? What is chronically mid? Is this a new feature i'm unaware of?
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  He is calling you a plebe.
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  He means mid as in mid-tier people. Average folk. Salt of the earth. You know, morons. I think his attitude biases his thinking, though. But I guess I can't truly understand how an alpha like him thinks :)
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    Ha! The common clay of the new West. That was such a hilarious, irreverent movie. Can anyone even get away with making movies like that these days?
  - cactusplant7374 3y ago
    Most reddit comments would be deleted if they appeared here.
- superfrank 3y ago
  Mid is slang for average. Same connotation as calling someone basic
- millzlane 3y ago
  I think it means mid grade.4, 5, 6, or 7 on a scale of 1-10. Basically saying it's poor quality. OP please correct me if I'm wrong.
- lcrz 3y ago
  It’s just OPs superiority complex for being on hacker news instead of “low-grade” Reddit.
croes 3y ago
They faked in the beginning, so maybe now too. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
chongli 3y ago
It’s not a conspiracy if it’s just one person doing it. All indications point to spez being in an increasingly tenuous situation. He created a firestorm and now he’s desperate to get out of it. His real problem is that he cast his lot with the “strongmen” (such as Elon). Now he can’t walk that back without appearing weak and (even more) incompetent to his investors. It really sucks to be him right now!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
I'm having trouble believing that you could believe anything alleged is out of reach for a random tech company.
- Zetice 3y ago
  What do you do to prevent falling for unfounded or false claims?
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    There's surprisingly little one can be 100% sure of. All you really can do is see if something matches motivation, patterns of behavior, logic, and so on. So I think your argument is rather one for why companies (and individuals) shouldn't behave in a scummy fashion, than for why people shouldn't think scummy companies are doing scummy things.
    - Zetice 3y ago
      I notice you don't mention evidence, how come?
Zetice 3y ago
There's a playbook people who have zero control over a situation use to try and trigger influence anyway, and "insane conspiracy" is one of the chapters of that playbook. Like it or hate it, Reddit can run however Reddit wants, and the vast majority of its users won't care, basically no matter what, as long as the core value prop (endless scrolling of relevant content) remains. Subs going dark for a few days doesn't materially move the needle to the owners of Reddit, and in fact I'd bet a lot of the "normal" users are only dimly aware of how, why, or even if it happened at all. Regardless, if they are aware, they're probably mad about it, and want their content back. Mods have no control here in the long run, users who are upset have no control in the long run, so the only hail mary chance they have is creating chaos, so that's what they do. Steady hands at the wheel are the antidote, and we'll see if spez has what it takes. So far no, but it's not over.
noirscape 3y ago
Maybe circa/before 2020, I'd have agreed, but something changed with Reddit in 2021. Before that the site was your average "moderately functional trainwreck" that you can call pretty much every social media site out there. In 2020, for some reason Reddit went hard on just... loony shit. Things like pushing the redesign even though it was blatantly not ready for use, switching their mobile site for some completely dogshit PWA that doesn't even function properly 75% of the time. In terms of community, they started putting people older Reddit had pretty much exiled for being horrible on the emergency mod reserve list (which notably led to them putting a thrice accused rapist on the mod list for /r/rape, who only deleted their account after completely different drama linked them back to their old identity). They also hired a convicted pedophile as an admin, mentioned her by name and surname in the announcement of her joining and then tried to double down when people expressed discomfort when they found the conviction (and even banned people for pointing it out). Similarly, things like April Fools went from "niche fun tech thing" to "next marketing campaign". Older Reddit had things like The Button - simple in premise, utterly byzantine, entire community was user-invented. Newer reddit just has completely given up on doing anything like that, the closest it came was trying to redo /r/place, and it failed completely (since e-celebs knew it was coming and began mobilizing their userbase to hijack it). They also completely gave up on trying to moderate spam when COVID-19 began; it's now all up to the mods of individual subs to get rid of it. Reddits admins don't bother banning spam accounts anymore, so mods have resorted again to using shared banlists just to get around repost karmafarm bots. The company is completely floundering when it comes to community management and it's hard to keep presuming it's not malice when it's this consistently bad. Buying 5 star reviews for their apps is genuinely not out of the managements ballpark.
somenameforme 3y ago
What sort of effort do you think this takes? I did a quick search for 'buy android reviews' and there are tons of sites that seem perfectly legitimate. The prices are also extremely reasonable, the reviews are guaranteed, and it's not illegal. The only thing you have to risk is if you somehow get discovered and your reputation takes a dive, but Reddit's already made it extremely clear that they take their current users for granted, so from their perspective there is probably 0 perceived risk and a reasonable potential upside if they believe their review score can help drive more signups tomorrow. So basically you're looking at a low effort, low cost, low risk, mid+ reward type task.
pie420 3y ago
you can buy likes for trivial amounts of money from indian review farms
qjx 3y ago
That's how reddit started out - posting fake comment to make the site seemed more popular[0]. And how they continue to operate - admin editing user comment because he disagreed with it, then posting a terrible apology[1]. Also how they continued to things like giving admins ability cheat by putting down r/place tiles with no cooldown[2], and censoring the canvas[3] [0]https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1x6iyo/til_that_in_the_early_days_of_reddit_founders/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1x6iyo/til_t... [1]https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/tv2lmx/reddit_adminmoderator_caught_cheating_in_rplace/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/tv2lmx/redd... [3]https://old.reddit.com/r/place/comments/twfvl6/the_truth_in_one_image_plus_censorship_of_reddit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/place/comments/twfvl6/the_truth_in_...

wunderland 3y ago

I think you’re underestimating how little work an App Store astroturfing campaign would be

bertil 3y ago

I’ve heard of many schemes like that, and with one exception, employees are not involved or even told this is happening. One senior executive with the budget and incentives to make a metric go up contracts an external party. The one exception is a company that asks employees to review their employer. They seem to verify that the reviews are coming from actual employees.

tnecniv 3y ago
Yeah Spez and a marketing director probably hired a bot farm or a mill in a developing country. If you use your employees, it’ll leak.

Etheryte 3y ago

As a side note for others, mid means mediocre or poor of quality, and hence chronically mid means extremely mediocre or very low quality.

jey 3y ago
It also seems to be a sly reference to the “midwit” meme.
- tanjtanjtanj 3y ago
  I doubt it. Mid is extremely commonly used slang that means "Mid-Tier", "middle-of-the-road", "middling" etc.
  - yamazakiwi 3y ago
    You're right but unfortunately it rarely gets used this way. People who say mid end up saying it so often that it seems like everything they don't like is middling instead of bad or poor.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Jeff_Brown 3y ago
Chronically doesn't mean extremely. It means long-term or inescapably.
- Etheryte 3y ago
  The dictionary agrees with both options, so I would guess this mostly comes down to local slang, or perhaps British vs American English?
  - gknapp 3y ago
    The dictionary doesn't agree with both options. Cambridge has a single definition: > In a way that continues or has continued for a long time. Merriam-Webster offers the following two: > continuing or occurring again and again for a long time > always present or encountered For"chronically" to mean "extremely" wouldn't make sense as to the root of the word, either.
    - Etheryte 3y ago
      The Oxford English dictionary gives the following description, in addition to the above: > to a very great extent; extremely: chronically stupid drivers, she was chronically indecisive. Whether it makes sense or not, the dictionary agrees with both options.
      - brewdad 3y ago
        Oxford English dictionary follows the trends of language rather than setting them definitionally. They offer the "extremely" definition because the word gets misused so often, not because of any original meaning. One can argue the merits of whether a dictionary should include such misuses that have become commonplace but that's the direction they have opted to go. In the same vein as this debate, OED considers irregardless to be a proper synonym for regardless.
        Jeff_Brown 3y ago
Zetice 3y ago
On one hand, I find the phrase "mid" to be pretty fucking awful, but on the other I'm old (30s) so who knows.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Is it that you are old, or that you are young enough that the transition from the slang of your peers to a newer one as the fashion of the day is recent and acutely felt?
  - krapp 3y ago
    >Is it that you are old, or that you are young enough that the transition from the slang of your peers to a newer one as the fashion of the day is recent and acutely felt? Once you start to notice that, once pop culture starts to alienate you, you're old. And there's no more obvious sign that you're old than complaining about modern slang.
- neodymiumphish 3y ago
  Right? What's wrong with "bad", "meh", "basic", "uninteresting", or "mediocre"?
  - Zetice 3y ago
    Those words lack an unearned sense of superiority, which is all the rage for youths these days. Unrelated, but what should I do about these children on my lawn?!
    - o_1 3y ago
      put signs up, edit your Twitter bio lol.
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  I don't like mid because it never accurately depicts the speakers actual opinion. People usually say mid to things they think are bad, not middling. Or they believe that the thing is bad because it is middling. A poor descriptor...
Buttons840 3y ago
Slurs like "chronically mid" don't belong on HN.
- low_common 3y ago
  Dude stop gatekeeping what people can say on here and go find something better to do with your day.
  - Etheryte 3y ago
    I hope the irony is not lost on you that you're telling someone to stop telling other people what to say.
    - cactusplant7374 3y ago
      Does that mean that first amendment is ironic because it allows one to speak and criticize the right to speak?
- cactusplant7374 3y ago
  Most of the comments on Reddit would be downvoted or deleted on HN. Most comments are just not that useful or interesting.
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    Since you gave me an excuse, I'll explain why I'm offended at the slur. The comment says: > This is a boring legacy tech company who’s best selling point is being a discussion forum for the chronically mid. This insult isn't about the comments on Reddit, it's about the people on Reddit. "Chronically mid" means that the people are average and will always be average. The comment is arguing that Reddit is low-value and part of their argument is that the people using Reddit are low-value "chronically mid" people. Everyone can judge for themselves whether downplaying the value of millions of people is offensive or not.

wasyl 3y ago

Is it that big of a stretch to assume Reddit boosted their own apps ratings with fake/paid reviews, given one of the main arguments is that their apps still suck while they're killing third party ones? > I can’t imagine anybody has time to do all the random stuff they’re being accused of. Employees are probably not happy but they are still working. And you can literally find a page offering paid reviews in seconds, add an item to _a basket_ and pay with a credit card

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> is it that big of a stretch to assume Absent evidence, for the HN front page, yes.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  It’s rampant/common in industry. The evidence is self evident in the reviews characteristics. Secondly the CEO has a history of posting fake user engagement himself or at his command in order to show more popularity than actual. He does this. You’d look at twitter bot replies and say the same thing huh
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Reddit before today: "Dark patterns, dark patterns everywhere" Reddit today after collective forgetting: "What do you mean companies use dark patterns?!"
    - tredre3 3y ago
      Yes, Reddit uses plenty of dark patterns. Like begging users to leave a positive review. Which makes me wonder why y'all prefer to believe that reddit itself is buying reviews from black market bot farms in a giant conspiracy, rather than those dark patterns just being, you know, effective at pushing users to leave low effort reviews?
yieldcrv 3y ago
its also not a big stretch to acknowledge anybody could harm anybody else’s app with an astroturfing campaign something more obvious right now given how bad the astroturfing campaign is. one word reviews? everyone knows Reddit is vulnerable to a thousand cuts right now, its the perfect time to do so I’ve seen that in a lot of crypto projects, because people consistently develop a parasocial relationship with the founders and then try to digitally harm them after the founders dont do what they expect this looks and acts like the same thing

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

getmeinrn 3y ago

It's not an insane conspiracy when you acknowledge that they bootstrapped their community through fake accounts[1]. This shows they have no reservations about using deception to increase their brand's reputation. Fake app reviews falls into that category. 1. https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/ https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/

mAritz 3y ago
They (admins) recently started a couple of new German language subreddits, that were 1-to-1 translations of existing successful subreddits, like r/showerthoughts and r/explainlikeimfive. They very clearly created fake accounts that then posted badly translated copies of existing posts from those originals onto the new subreddits. Then after that they sent unsolicited private messages to users subscribed to certain organic German language subreddits (like r/de) inviting people to those new subreddits. The r/de subreddit is still in blackout, so I can't really provide a working source right now, but once that ends, you can check it out here: https://reddit.com/r/de/comments/13orxh0/milde_interessant_reddit_admins_machen_werbung/ https://reddit.com/r/de/comments/13orxh0/milde_interessant_r...
- adamckay 3y ago
  https://archive.ph/HI8dn https://archive.ph/HI8dn
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
qjx 3y ago
not to mention the ceo also edited user comment because he disagreed with it, banned subs with no consistency, and for the r/place event, people caught admins cheating by placing tiles with no cooldown. who knows what other shady stuff goes on in the background
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Let's not even mention that the CEO was the head moderator of r/jailbait and several other... "distasteful" subreddits before they were shut down.

chollida1 3y ago

> This is a boring legacy tech company who’s best selling point is being a discussion forum for the chronically mid. I've been a redditor since day one and I can't figure out what this sentence is supposed to mean. Can you flesh this out some more? What is chronically mid? Is this a new feature i'm unaware of?

tsunamifury 3y ago
He is calling you a plebe.
ribosometronome 3y ago
He means mid as in mid-tier people. Average folk. Salt of the earth. You know, morons. I think his attitude biases his thinking, though. But I guess I can't truly understand how an alpha like him thinks :)
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Ha! The common clay of the new West. That was such a hilarious, irreverent movie. Can anyone even get away with making movies like that these days?
- cactusplant7374 3y ago
  Most reddit comments would be deleted if they appeared here.
superfrank 3y ago
Mid is slang for average. Same connotation as calling someone basic
millzlane 3y ago
I think it means mid grade.4, 5, 6, or 7 on a scale of 1-10. Basically saying it's poor quality. OP please correct me if I'm wrong.
lcrz 3y ago
It’s just OPs superiority complex for being on hacker news instead of “low-grade” Reddit.

croes 3y ago

They faked in the beginning, so maybe now too. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...

chongli 3y ago

It’s not a conspiracy if it’s just one person doing it. All indications point to spez being in an increasingly tenuous situation. He created a firestorm and now he’s desperate to get out of it. His real problem is that he cast his lot with the “strongmen” (such as Elon). Now he can’t walk that back without appearing weak and (even more) incompetent to his investors. It really sucks to be him right now!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lazzlazzlazz 3y ago

I'm having trouble believing that you could believe anything alleged is out of reach for a random tech company.

Zetice 3y ago
What do you do to prevent falling for unfounded or false claims?
- somenameforme 3y ago
  There's surprisingly little one can be 100% sure of. All you really can do is see if something matches motivation, patterns of behavior, logic, and so on. So I think your argument is rather one for why companies (and individuals) shouldn't behave in a scummy fashion, than for why people shouldn't think scummy companies are doing scummy things.
  - Zetice 3y ago
    I notice you don't mention evidence, how come?

Zetice 3y ago

There's a playbook people who have zero control over a situation use to try and trigger influence anyway, and "insane conspiracy" is one of the chapters of that playbook. Like it or hate it, Reddit can run however Reddit wants, and the vast majority of its users won't care, basically no matter what, as long as the core value prop (endless scrolling of relevant content) remains. Subs going dark for a few days doesn't materially move the needle to the owners of Reddit, and in fact I'd bet a lot of the "normal" users are only dimly aware of how, why, or even if it happened at all. Regardless, if they are aware, they're probably mad about it, and want their content back. Mods have no control here in the long run, users who are upset have no control in the long run, so the only hail mary chance they have is creating chaos, so that's what they do. Steady hands at the wheel are the antidote, and we'll see if spez has what it takes. So far no, but it's not over.

noirscape 3y ago

Maybe circa/before 2020, I'd have agreed, but something changed with Reddit in 2021. Before that the site was your average "moderately functional trainwreck" that you can call pretty much every social media site out there. In 2020, for some reason Reddit went hard on just... loony shit. Things like pushing the redesign even though it was blatantly not ready for use, switching their mobile site for some completely dogshit PWA that doesn't even function properly 75% of the time. In terms of community, they started putting people older Reddit had pretty much exiled for being horrible on the emergency mod reserve list (which notably led to them putting a thrice accused rapist on the mod list for /r/rape, who only deleted their account after completely different drama linked them back to their old identity). They also hired a convicted pedophile as an admin, mentioned her by name and surname in the announcement of her joining and then tried to double down when people expressed discomfort when they found the conviction (and even banned people for pointing it out). Similarly, things like April Fools went from "niche fun tech thing" to "next marketing campaign". Older Reddit had things like The Button - simple in premise, utterly byzantine, entire community was user-invented. Newer reddit just has completely given up on doing anything like that, the closest it came was trying to redo /r/place, and it failed completely (since e-celebs knew it was coming and began mobilizing their userbase to hijack it). They also completely gave up on trying to moderate spam when COVID-19 began; it's now all up to the mods of individual subs to get rid of it. Reddits admins don't bother banning spam accounts anymore, so mods have resorted again to using shared banlists just to get around repost karmafarm bots. The company is completely floundering when it comes to community management and it's hard to keep presuming it's not malice when it's this consistently bad. Buying 5 star reviews for their apps is genuinely not out of the managements ballpark.

somenameforme 3y ago

What sort of effort do you think this takes? I did a quick search for 'buy android reviews' and there are tons of sites that seem perfectly legitimate. The prices are also extremely reasonable, the reviews are guaranteed, and it's not illegal. The only thing you have to risk is if you somehow get discovered and your reputation takes a dive, but Reddit's already made it extremely clear that they take their current users for granted, so from their perspective there is probably 0 perceived risk and a reasonable potential upside if they believe their review score can help drive more signups tomorrow. So basically you're looking at a low effort, low cost, low risk, mid+ reward type task.

pie420 3y ago

you can buy likes for trivial amounts of money from indian review farms

qjx 3y ago

That's how reddit started out - posting fake comment to make the site seemed more popular[0]. And how they continue to operate - admin editing user comment because he disagreed with it, then posting a terrible apology[1]. Also how they continued to things like giving admins ability cheat by putting down r/place tiles with no cooldown[2], and censoring the canvas[3] [0]https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1x6iyo/til_that_in_the_early_days_of_reddit_founders/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1x6iyo/til_t... [1]https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/tv2lmx/reddit_adminmoderator_caught_cheating_in_rplace/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/tv2lmx/redd... [3]https://old.reddit.com/r/place/comments/twfvl6/the_truth_in_one_image_plus_censorship_of_reddit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/place/comments/twfvl6/the_truth_in_...