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Reddit bans The Atlantic, Businessweek, others in major anti-spam move
- dalke 14y agoYay! I've gotten annoyed at seeing the links in HN to theatlantic.com and others, posted by people who only post dozens of links to a single domain, and who never respond to comments in the thread.
- sp332 14y agoThat was odd to me, because even people at The Atlantic know that doesn't work here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2285156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2285156
- dalke 14y agoJust for reference, here's Alex Madrigal's submission list: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alexismadrigal http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alexismadrigal . Self-posts links to theatlantic every week or more. http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nbj914 http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nbj914 posts links to "outsideonline.com" http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jnickhughes http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jnickhughes posts links (almost) only to soentrepreneurial.com. I've seen others, but these were the easiest to find.
- DanBC 14y agonhebb gives a great example of someone who has the same name as an Atlantic writer who appears to post only links to stories on the Atlantic written by them. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108929 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108929)
- drivingmenuts 14y agoDon't a lot of those companies hire professional astro-turfers to do their dirty work anyway? Besides, how hard is it to point to a proxy that forwards to the spam site?
- antonioevans 14y agoI tend to post to reddit from my website once every few weeks when the article is specifically good and "redditable". I would hope that is not a potential ban target. What probably is happening is that theatlantic / businessweek had a group of up voters that they paid (staff) that would constantly manipulate the voting.
- heretohelp 14y agoI actually know that Cheong fellow and have visited him and his family in Asia. I know exactly what sort of work he does, and frankly, I'm not sure what he did wrong.
- yolesaber 14y agoIan Cheong?
- heretohelp 14y agoAye.
- yolesaber 14y agoThat's really quite funny. I used to hang out on the #fallout IRC channel with him years back. I remember just when he started doing all the gaming sites. Interesting fellow. Just for fun: http://www.duckandcover.cx/content.php?id=111 http://www.duckandcover.cx/content.php?id=111
- diminoten 14y agoThe single most common complaint on Reddit about Reddit is its lack of original content. "Repost!" would be the rallying cry of Redditors, if ever there was one. This move takes those people who do create original content, and throws them out on their collective asses. Rather than throw out OC, why not throw out the actual rule breakers? Those who manipulate Reddit by illicitly acquiring votes should be the target of anti-spam measures, not simply those who submit their own content.
- dangrossman 14y ago> Rather than throw out OC, why not throw out the actual rule breakers? Those who manipulate Reddit by illicitly acquiring votes should be the target of anti-spam measures, not simply those who submit their own content. That's exactly what was done. These publications have employees manipulating social media sites. They're not just submitting stories, they're actively spamming for traffic.
- diminoten 14y agoThe article says that people who post their own content get banned from Reddit if they cross some ambiguous threshold of self promotion. I think self promotion shouldn't be frowned upon on Reddit, only when someone manipulates the aggregator.
- mayneack 14y agoThe reason (I think) is that these places are doing it intentionally from the top down instead of just some random person within their organization or pushing an agenda. If they can successfully identify when domains are coordinating this and make the bans temporary, then this is probably a good discouragement of the abuse. If their detection methods are wrong and they're either banning too many or not enough, then it probably won't.
- ktsmith 14y agoSeveral of these well known content producers have been caught spamming and otherwise cheating their way onto the front page. They've been banned for that and not their content.
- pg 14y agoWe've seen some fairly aggressive voting rings organized by publications with well known names. Only a few are actually banned though. Usually we just take away the voting ring members' ability to vote.
- csphy 14y agohow do you detect these "Voter rings?"
- jaaron 14y agoWhich seems a much better approach than outright banning/censoring domains.
- mayneack 14y agoIt seems to me that if a publication really wants to beat the system, banning users can only work to a certain degree. If you really want to stop them from trying, banning a whole domain seems like a good way to persuade them as long as the bans are temporary. Disclaimer: I have no idea how effective the user banning methods are, but I assume they can be outsmarted more than domain ban.
- koglerjs 14y agoHN doesn't have nearly the mass and concomitant crowd problems of Reddit, though. Not that it banning domains is ideal, but effective implementation is often more important.
- rudiger 14y agoInteresting. Is this implemented similarly to "hellban"? Which is to say, does it appear that the votes are valid to the voting rings, or are they shown something else entirely?
- tomjen3 14y agoThe problem is that the atlantic tends to post things worth reading (and their articles tend to be better than most blog posts) so really if you ban them, hn suffers.
- joshu 14y agoThe Atlantic shows up WAY more often on HN than I think is likely, as well. I think on the New page, the user's top domains ought to be shown...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- diogenescynic 14y agoSeems like a purely anti-competitive move considering that Reddit is owned by Conde Nast and most of those sites blocked are direct competitors to Conde Naste's publications. Conflict of interest.
- mertd 14y agoI don't know if this changes anything but I think recently they moved up in the pecking order to be sister companies with CN. However banning competitors outright vs banning competitors that spam are two different things.
- creativityland 14y agoBut when and where do you draw the line? Here's the top comment from reddit... Not sure how to feel about this, on the one hand if they were cheating then blocking them makes sense, on the other hand, I don't see a public list, and this could be abused by admins to block unfavorable sources (maybe not the current admins, but who knows what batch of admins we'll get in the future?)
- prezjordan 14y agoReddit is no longer owned by Conde Nast and is now an independent company.
- owenkahn 14y agoAccording to Wikipedia, they share a parent company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications
- dailyrorschach 14y agoThis is interesting to me as someone who works for a subsidiary of a parent company, suffice to say we are very, very much in competition with a number of the other subsidiaries. This in turn is how the parent company benefits, by getting a slice from all of us. Not saying that's necessarily happening here, but figured worth pointing out.
- tokenadult 14y agoAs long as the good articles from The Atlantic (and many are quite good) keep getting posted here by regular participants who respond to other participants, I suppose it is okay for members of voting rings to lose voting privileges. I would hate to see whole publications banned just because of the actions of their paid supporters, when the same publications have willing readers who like the content of the publications.
- jaems33 14y agoThat's basically my thought too. Seems like it makes more sense to penalize members or adjust the scoring of the source rather than ban it altogether.
- jerrya 14y ago"I would hate to see whole publications banned just because of the actions of their paid supporters," It seems there is a simple solution to this...
- nooneelse 14y agoIf only there were some way for the publications to stop writing those checks, or somehow make them contingent on the "supporters" not spamming sites that don't want to be spammed... but what could it be? </sarcasm>
- spindritf 14y agoThis is crazy, Phys.org may be a little spammy but it's one of the best sites on the Internet. It constantly pops up in my Twitter feed and rarely disappoints.
- sp332 14y agoIt's not about the site being "spammy", it's about site operators actively spamming reddit with article submissions.
- sente 14y agoI'm glad phys.org and science daily are banned, I think /r/science and other subreddits will be better without them. They're both interesting sites, yes, but they blast out articles about X Y or Z if a scientist somewhere finds a b or c.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoPhys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong. It is the Daily Mail of science.
- showerst 14y agoThis is a pretty interesting move, but they really need to make sure the rules are ABSOLUTELY CLEAR to those willing to learn them. I work for ForeignPolicy.com, which could loosely be described as a competitor to the Atlantic. To avoid being spammy/bad community members, we specifically don't submit all of our pieces to reddit/HN, or even all the ones we think are relevant (Virtually our whole site would fit, say, /r/worldnews. HN less so, but occasionally FP stories do rise to the top here). Most major things get submitted anyway, and often drive a fair bit of traffic. That said, the tradeoff here is that we lose control of the headlines that we get submitted under, and the submission timing, and have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible. It would be nice if we could get some sort of account that would let us submit our relevant content, but without any special privileges a la' the publisher feeds that helped ruin digg. We _could_ just get people with well-built-out legit personal accounts to trade off in submitting our stuff, but that still strikes me as too spammy. I know in the comments thread on reddit Alienth said that this action will only be taken in cases where they can prove that the sites knowingly offended [1], but it really worries me that the lines aren't set in stone, and a competitor could potentially make a very compelling attempt at spamming all of our links and get us banned. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physorg_is_not_allowed_on_reddit_this_domain_has/c5046xt http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physor...
- saraid216 14y ago> That said, the tradeoff here is that we lose control of the headlines that we get submitted under, and the submission timing, and have to work quite a bit harder to make sure that we see submissions to get involved in comment threads when possible. I think that the first two are ultimately good things. The headline and the timing can be more useful as feedback than as part of the message you control. As for the third, the key is figuring out how to get notified when something is submitted. If it's important enough, then the "work quite a bit harder" is worth the investment.
- jerrya 14y agoI really like the content of FP and the Atlantic. Nevertheless, I already have a feedreader, and I don't need to see HN, or reddit turned into another RSS feed or twitter. If your stuff is good it will rise to the top. In the meantime, especially at HN, it crowds out less well known sources and authors and bloggers.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mayneack 14y agoDo mirrors still work? Like posting the google cache instead of the original article.
- citricsquid 14y agoYes, all the block does is check if the domain matches a domain that is blocked, nothing more. Using a redirect domain will get around the block, the changes are here on github: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/44ebdeb378f4bf09d6bd1f395764868b57d9fd82 https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/44ebdeb378f4bf09d6bd...
- citricsquid 14y agoThe biggest issue reddit has isn't the spam, it's how the site has become a "work safe" 4chan, it caters to the lowest common denominator. reddit used to be a great site and there are parts of it that still are, but the majority of the "visible" content (stuff that you don't have to search out) sucks. The subreddit idea is fantastic but I don't understand why they aren't making this their focus. A netflix style recommendation system for subreddits would improve the quality of reddit 10 fold and give it a chance of lasting the next few years. I'm a fairly typical and regular reddit user and the sort of spam they're banning rarely (if ever) affects me, I've never seen a link on the front page and thought "what is this doing here?", focusing on this seems misguided.
- phene 14y agoThe biggest issue is that people still think of reddit as a single community. It's not, and you can't stereotype all of reddit by looking at /r/pics and /r/politics. You have control over your home page and can remove noisy subreddits from it.
- citricsquid 14y agoI addressed this in my comment. I am aware that each individual user controls their own reddit, my problem is it is very difficult to find good relevant subreddits without relying on third party tools (which very few users are aware exist) or randomly stumbling upon subreddits through comments or cross posts. If there was a reddit system that could match my voting preferences to specific subreddits (for example if I upvote Minecraft content in r/gaming it recommends r/minecraft) the quality of the site for each individual user would increase. If the quality of each individuals reddit experience increased the entire site would improve.
- brown9-2 14y agoI agree that a recommendation system would be awesome but is it really that hard to find a new subreddit? The search feature at http://www.reddit.com/reddits/ http://www.reddit.com/reddits/ seems fine.
- baq 14y agothis will blow up. hopefully the bans are interim measures and something more advanced is under development.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoReddit has a horribly broken spam filtering system for comments and links, which frequently catches legitimate posts, and then people have to ask subreddit moderators to mark them as "not spam". Why? Well, moderator abuse. Moderators can mark stories and comments as spam to get rid of them. But there is always moderator abuse. So the spam filter has got trained on tons of comments and links that aren't spam. How would they fix it? Give moderators a means to get rid of bad posts other than marking them as spam.
- zem 14y agothis has been implemented (fairly recently). there are now both "remove spam" and "remove ham" options, the latter removing a post without using it as spamfilter input.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoAh, that's good. I haven't done any reddit moderation in quite a while.
- theon144 14y agoThat feature was added a month or two ago, I think.
- danso 14y agoIsn't this heavy-handed banning approach pretty much a tacit admission that the voting algorithm is broken? Why couldn't this spamming be prevented through pattern algorithms/frequency analysis and...this is what I thought Reddit aspired to...democracy? If a lot of articles from a source are voted up by a diverse group of users, then maybe it's because the source is good? The worst part of this is how this countermeasure reeks of the fallacy of ad hominem: who cares who the submitter is and how he/she personally benefits...as long as the content is good?
- nooneelse 14y agoAnother possibility would be prominently marking submissions from spammers. And/or all links to sites that are proven spammers. Let the users/communities have more information to cogitate with when deciding if the content is worth voting up.
- freshhawk 14y ago> The worst part of this is how this countermeasure reeks of the fallacy of ad hominem: who cares who the submitter is and how he/she personally benefits...as long as the content is good? Well, the easiest answer to that is that one of the best ways to separate the good content from the bad algorithmically is to look at the submitter behavior. Saying "as long as the content is good" glosses over the practicalities of actually measuring that.
- cpunks 14y agoreddit don't aspire to democracy. Note that the set of links on the default page aren't the most popular or up-voted; they are from a pre-selected set of reddits that e.g. include atheism but not e.g. hinduism. This gives a feedback loop -- Hindus see offensive hate speech, and go away. Atheists see an accepting community, and more come in. The types of content and community you see there is clearly engineered -- I think most incidentally, and a little intentionally.
- ojbyrne 14y agoI find this kind of fascinating after Digg v4, which basically tried to ban everyone else but mainstream publications.
- naner 14y agoThe first thing that came to mind was that anybody might be able to get someone else's site banned from Reddit by making it look like they are trying to spam/game the site.
- daenz 14y agoIt seems that "The Front Page of the Internet" only includes some of the internet.
- philip1209 14y agoI hope they ban link shorteners, too. As I recall, they both violate site policy and are prominent.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- albertsun 14y agoPeople realize that most professional news publications now have social media editors or social media teams whose job it is to make that publications content popular on social media sites and in online communities right? Seems like Jared Keller was doing exactly his job description and got the whole domain banned.
- lhnn 14y agoIf Reddit wanted to end karma whoring in general (to an extent), they'd move to a slashdot system where numbers are hidden, and only vague ranges (bad, new, good, excellent) are given. It wouldn't completely rid the site of the bigger voting rings, but it would cut back on many individuals who spam posts looking for a quick turnaround.
- fpp 14y agoContent is the most important if you want to create a sustainable sharing based model. But, generally with reddit since quite some time the frequency of which the content is repeating is shortening substantially: Try for yourself - have a look at imgur and point out the images that you have not seen during the last 24/36 months repeating over and over ( not counting the variations of cat pics, funny heads etc) So that is their mainstream - but there are many other still functional areas underneath. Now if we are talking mainstream that's where this ban of BusinessWeek.com, Phys.org, ScienceDaily.com, TheAtlantic.com, and GlobalPost comes into play. When an organisation like reddit that is facing a more and more immanent lack of content bans content - well looking at that as a desperate move might be kind. In other words - they have lost the understanding of their own business model or more precisely the underlying principle of their overall existence - sharing content. So if those sites are the ones who share the most content - fine - IMHO at least most of them are known to have created value content for many years (some for decades and beyond). The whole thing that a shop like reddit might achieve with that is pushing more and more of their long time supporters to the sites where the most of its content originates from. Or in other words - sure wag the dog - or even better - post the whole thing on AOL, digg.com, myspace or name your own previous network(s)...
- paulhauggis 14y agoThis really won't work. I can easily make a blog that pulls all of the articles from these sites and posts them.
- BlackNapoleon 14y agoI'm just bewildered here. We're banning QUALITY content? BusinessWeek and The Atlantic are some of the BEST and most RELIABLE source of info around.
- cpunks 14y agoThe major problem I have with reddit isn't censorship, although that's certainly occasionally there. It's not even the increasing stupidity of the users and the move to the lowest common denominator. It's not the astroturf advertising that pops up every day. What bugs me most is the blatant support and promotion of certain classes of bigotry and hate speech by the owners. Yet I still keep coming back...
- mkramlich 14y agosocial media is the new SEO, with all the bad and good that entails
- dsolomon 14y agoReddit, the new Digg
- markkat 14y agoThis is the biggest caveat with community spaces. Although Redditors can subscribe to subreddits to customize their content, each subreddit remains a community space. IMO there isn't an alternative to heavy moderation when shared spaces are inherit to the design.
- mayneack 14y agoDoesn't appear to be up and running yet: http://www.reddit.com/r/junk001/ http://www.reddit.com/r/junk001/ Has recent links to all 4 announced bans.