5 ms·

Reddit Thinks I'm a Spammer

11 points by Nurdok 14y ago

benologist 14y ago
Reddit is absolutely right to put no weight on the "acceptance" of submitted stories, it's easy to get stories "accepted" on sites like Reddit and HN - there are a ton of blog posts on the best times, the best keywords and how to correctly exploit the herd mentality. And that's not even taking into consideration fake accounts that can support a spammer for a long time. You look pretty spammy here too by the way, exactly the same symptoms that makes reddit "think" you are spamming - only submitting and commenting on your own site. Someone should automate violentacrez' guide and make a lookup service for social news sites. Reddit just recently busted major news sites spamming them, they will have missed a shitload of them and of course HN / digg / stumbleupon / etc certainly aren't immune either.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  So the same person submitting his own site is NOT a spammer if he makes a number of throwaway comments? I'm all for spam control, but that heuristic is interesting... it just says that you only want professional spammers who know also to make throwaway comments at a certain rate. The only unacceptable thing is an amateur spammer who links his own stuff without also posting other people's cat pictures and so on.
  - clavalle 14y ago
    Of course someone who makes a bunch of throwaway comments on their own posts is a spammer. That doesn't make someone who does nothing but self promote in a more naive way less of a spammer. Anyone who is seen as self-promoting is viewed with suspicion. /Especially/ if that is /all/ they do on Reddit or HN. I personally think it is ok to post one's own blog, even if it has ads, if the content is interesting. But if that is all you do for a community...I don't know. Seems like bad form to me.
  - benologist 14y ago
    It doesn't say that at all, it just targets one spam pattern of many. violentacrez' guide looks at a bunch more: http://www.reddit.com/r/Moderating/comments/cz6zu/identifying_spammers_101/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Moderating/comments/cz6zu/identifyin... And of course that's not even comprehensive, it just focuses on the obvious per-user flavors. When you look at things like domain history, domain registration, hosting, the 3rd party services they use etc you can start identifying bigger efforts.
raldi 14y ago
The goal of reddit has always been to provide something good to read when you're bored. The policies are optimized for this use case. The goal of reddit is emphatically not to provide a promotion vehicle for a given content producer. In other words, if the reddit listings are dull, that's a major problem. If a particular site isn't making it through to a particular listing, well, if there's time someone might look into it. But it's just not a top priority. And frankly, if you only participate in the site to promote your own content, I'm not so sure I'd call the spam filter wrong in this case.
sswezey 14y ago
He is complaining about being labelled a spammer on Reddit, writes a blog post with as much substance as a marshmallow and then posts it on HN? This article should be flagged for spam here, this isn't a venting site for your Reddit frustrations.
powertower 14y ago
I was a prolific reader of /r/programming, and even submitted good links that were quickly upvoted. Then the spam filer got me, and kept getting me, so I left. Except there was no spam,... just a mod that decided to remove some submits that he thought were off-topic (they were not), and me making more than 1 or 2 submits every week. Before posting to reddit, make sure that 1) you've upvoted/downvoted something, and 2) made some comments on other threads.
usea 14y ago
The filter seems to try and measure self-interested intent, which correlates well with spam. However, they're not the same thing. In the content of fighting spam, if a user is providing things people are genuinely interested in, then their intent is irrelevant.
lutusp 14y ago
Interesting, unfortunate, but not as nefarious as outright censorship, which is what happened to me: http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html In short, a Reddit moderator took offense at my expressed position on the status of psychology as a science, and bluntly told me that I couldn't post my view on that specific topic, and if I did, I would be banned. He made it clear that I could post any viewpoint I wanted except that specific viewpoint. Once I realized it was censorship, that I had done nothing wrong except to offend a specific moderator who felt justified in silencing me, I stopped posting to Reddit.

11 points by Nurdok 14y ago

Reddit is absolutely right to put no weight on the "acceptance" of submitted stories, it's easy to get stories "accepted" on sites like Reddit and HN - there are a ton of blog posts on the best times, the best keywords and how to correctly exploit the herd mentality. And that's not even taking into consideration fake accounts that can support a spammer for a long time. You look pretty spammy here too by the way, exactly the same symptoms that makes reddit "think" you are spamming - only submitting and commenting on your own site. Someone should automate violentacrez' guide and make a lookup service for social news sites. Reddit just recently busted major news sites spamming them, they will have missed a shitload of them and of course HN / digg / stumbleupon / etc certainly aren't immune either.

slurgfest 14y ago
So the same person submitting his own site is NOT a spammer if he makes a number of throwaway comments? I'm all for spam control, but that heuristic is interesting... it just says that you only want professional spammers who know also to make throwaway comments at a certain rate. The only unacceptable thing is an amateur spammer who links his own stuff without also posting other people's cat pictures and so on.
- clavalle 14y ago
  Of course someone who makes a bunch of throwaway comments on their own posts is a spammer. That doesn't make someone who does nothing but self promote in a more naive way less of a spammer. Anyone who is seen as self-promoting is viewed with suspicion. /Especially/ if that is /all/ they do on Reddit or HN. I personally think it is ok to post one's own blog, even if it has ads, if the content is interesting. But if that is all you do for a community...I don't know. Seems like bad form to me.
- benologist 14y ago
  It doesn't say that at all, it just targets one spam pattern of many. violentacrez' guide looks at a bunch more: http://www.reddit.com/r/Moderating/comments/cz6zu/identifying_spammers_101/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Moderating/comments/cz6zu/identifyin... And of course that's not even comprehensive, it just focuses on the obvious per-user flavors. When you look at things like domain history, domain registration, hosting, the 3rd party services they use etc you can start identifying bigger efforts.

raldi 14y ago

The goal of reddit has always been to provide something good to read when you're bored. The policies are optimized for this use case. The goal of reddit is emphatically not to provide a promotion vehicle for a given content producer. In other words, if the reddit listings are dull, that's a major problem. If a particular site isn't making it through to a particular listing, well, if there's time someone might look into it. But it's just not a top priority. And frankly, if you only participate in the site to promote your own content, I'm not so sure I'd call the spam filter wrong in this case.

sswezey 14y ago

He is complaining about being labelled a spammer on Reddit, writes a blog post with as much substance as a marshmallow and then posts it on HN? This article should be flagged for spam here, this isn't a venting site for your Reddit frustrations.

powertower 14y ago

I was a prolific reader of /r/programming, and even submitted good links that were quickly upvoted. Then the spam filer got me, and kept getting me, so I left. Except there was no spam,... just a mod that decided to remove some submits that he thought were off-topic (they were not), and me making more than 1 or 2 submits every week. Before posting to reddit, make sure that 1) you've upvoted/downvoted something, and 2) made some comments on other threads.

usea 14y ago

The filter seems to try and measure self-interested intent, which correlates well with spam. However, they're not the same thing. In the content of fighting spam, if a user is providing things people are genuinely interested in, then their intent is irrelevant.

lutusp 14y ago

Interesting, unfortunate, but not as nefarious as outright censorship, which is what happened to me: http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html In short, a Reddit moderator took offense at my expressed position on the status of psychology as a science, and bluntly told me that I couldn't post my view on that specific topic, and if I did, I would be banned. He made it clear that I could post any viewpoint I wanted except that specific viewpoint. Once I realized it was censorship, that I had done nothing wrong except to offend a specific moderator who felt justified in silencing me, I stopped posting to Reddit.