8 ms·

Quickmeme banned from Reddit for alleged vote manipulation

121 points by OTRAustin 13y ago

noir_lord 13y ago
Excellent, a few months ago clicking on a quickmeme (by accident normally when not logged in) link on android resulted in multiple redirects and an attempt to download an apk which was lovely. After that I used RES to filter quickmeme on all my desktops.
rocky1138 13y ago
This can only be seen as a good thing as Quickmeme tends to be an extremely heavy site with stuff that could be easily handled by simple image linking or, at worst, imgur.
- minimaxir 13y ago
  Quickmeme, for the most part, was only regulated to /r/AdviceAnimals, which says a lot about the quality of /r/AdviceAnimals.
dghughes 13y ago
It won't be enforced I see many sites supposedly banned still posting everyday websites such as physorg and the Atlantic.
- mehrzad 13y ago
  Weren't those bans lifted?
  - dhughes 13y ago
    I don't know, communication isn't so great, I have no idea which sites are officially banned, which have bans lifted. There may be a spot on the reddit blog or somewhere else that I'm not aware of but really it shouldn't be my responsibility as a user to enforce it that's the job of admins and mods, that's why they exist. It doesn't seem to matter though because I have seen banned websites post even when they are supposed to be banned, reddit doesn't seem to block the url it just mentions the website is spamming reddit and that seems to be all we're told. There is an unofficial (?) subreddit that monitors of banned websites, look to the right at the sidebar for the link to the list http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/ http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/
    - danso 13y ago
      The bans of The Atlantic and other large publishers has been lifted...it was said early on that the bans were just temporary: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physorg_is_not_allowed_on_reddit_this_domain_has/c50651w http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physor... And speaking of temporary bans...I thought dailydot used to be blacklisted from HN? I'm glad to see that it wasn't a permaban.
      - benologist 13y ago
        It looks like dailydot has started running spam accounts - the OP and this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin
danso 13y ago
> Gaming Reddit for traffic has become a regular frustration for the community, which boasts more than 22.9 million monthly visitors in the U.S. alone. This is particularly true within Reddit's default subreddits. All new Reddit users are automatically signed up as subscribers of the site's default subreddits, which include r/AdviceAnimals, r/Atheism, and r/Politics. Hmmm...maybe this problem could be alleviated by not auto-subscribing new users to a meme-based forum? Of all the great subreddits, AdviceAnimals (albeit, which is pretty funny sometimes), seems like a silly one to acquaint new users to. Have any of the bustups of voting rings been done algorithmically? That is, does reddit have a way to pick out cluster of reddit accounts that seem to behave like scripted bots? It seems all of the major domain bans (such as the Atlantic) were done through manual user suspicion and inquiry.
- minimaxir 13y ago
  Algorithmic voting bans are extremely dangerous because a false positive could be devastating for both the parent site and the linked domain. Manual intervention for such an important policy decision is crucial.
  - Tobu 13y ago
    Autobanning is in my opinion tricky because there's a risk of triggering an arms race between autodetection and obfuscation, and giving quick feedback to the cheaters could turn out to help them.
- twentysix 13y ago
  The top ten subreddits(excluding NSFW ones), based on the number of subscribers, are chosen to be the default ones. New accounts do not increase the default subscription count, until they subscribe or unsubscribe to any other subreddit. You can find some good comments on the matter here http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_believe_that_ratheism_should_be_removed_from/c9ttixl http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_belie...
  - arrrg 13y ago
minimaxir 13y ago
It's worth noting that another Redditor and mod from /r/AdviceAnimals, /u/ManWithoutModem, independently discovered different evidence that the Quickmeme posts were being manipulated. [1] No one believed him and he was demodded. He's not happy about it. http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickmeme_is_banned_redditwide_more_inside/caoiq3t http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickme...
- ultimoo 13y ago
  What is the 'np.reddit.com' subdomain used for? I had never seen it before, and it looks similar to the www subdomain.
  - minimaxir 13y ago
    np.reddit.com is for "non-participation": Comments at the subdomain can't be upvoted or downvoted. It was implemented by several subreddits to prevent invasions which happen rather frequently on Reddit. The vote blocking is implemented with client-side CSS, so it doesn't work if you're using RES or using a mobile client.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    ‘NP’ stands for ‘No Participation’. “Linking to np.reddit.com instead of reddit.com will cause the subreddit to display the No Particpation stylesheet. It’s a read-only mode where users linked through the NP domain cannot vote or comment. This works only if the subreddit has installed the NP CSS. If not, linking to the subreddit with the NP domain will cause to display without the subreddit’s custom CSS, and voting and commenting will still be possible. This way we can still watch drama as it develops, but if the subreddit wishes to preserve its own culture by discouraging popcorn pissers, they have that option.” http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/announcement_a_new_rule_to_discourage_invasion/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/annou...
- jcroll 13y ago
  wow some people have way too much time on their hands. I could get a lot of stuff done in the time that guy took to write that.
wnevets 13y ago
the owners of grumpy cat hired a "meme manager" to promote and sell their meme. I now hate all internet memes. http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/ http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/
- mpyne 13y ago
  You're really surprised that a concept that has gained worldwide popularity might actually warrant "brand curation"? I hope you hated memes before grumpy cat then.
  - wnevets 13y ago
    I did but grumpy cat was marketed to make money virtually at its inception. I remember them selling merchandise at NYCC last year, that's two weeks after they posted it on reddit. The commercialism and exploitation of this cat shortly after it's birth has really rubbed me the wrong way.
halayli 13y ago
Isn't that what Reddit did to bootstrap its site?
- richbradshaw 13y ago
  Pretty sure that Reddit is out of its bootstrap phase.
- mahmud 13y ago
  Reddit astroturfed their own site with fake users. These guys are 1) astroturfing other people's sites, 2) practicing unethetical tactics by down-voting links to competing websites with automated bots.
  - halayli 13y ago
    The point is that they are equally dishonest.
    - GhotiFish 13y ago
      hmm. I want to reserve judgment until I read about reddit astroturfing their own website. It reminds me of a golang presentation, where the speaker created an omegle clone, but to boot-strap it he used markov chain bots if no one connected in 5 seconds. http://vimeo.com/53221560 http://vimeo.com/53221560 . I didn't think of that as a particularly immoral thing to do. edit: Actually I'm not really sure what to search for here. Do you have an article going over the details?
    - raganwald 13y ago
      Astroturfing your own site is a longstanding tradition in media. A long time ago in a career far, far away I wrote classified advertising software for desktop publishers, typically small outfits like trade magazines or penny-savers. When launching a new feature like classifieds, it does you no good to put out a blank page. So absolutely every customer that didn't already have classified ads would astroturf with fake ads. The ethics of their profession was to discard any mail-in replies unread. For example, one customer used my software for personals. They had a strict rule that any reply to one of the "fake" mailboxes was to be shredded immediately upon receipt, unopened. They didn't even want them laying around lest someone write down a name or return address. One there are enough "real" ads, the fake ones are phased out. I can't really say whether it is right or wrong, but I can say it seems to be a standard practice predating the world wide web.
gboudrias 13y ago
What kind of idiot made the owner of quickmeme.com a moderator of the subreddit that contained presumably most of its posts?
- NoodleIncident 13y ago
  Red dit bans the posting of personal info. They didn't know.
  - gboudrias 13y ago
    Hm, understandable, but then how did they learn it after the fact?
citricsquid 13y ago
Now r/adviceanimals users are clamouring for a quickmeme alternative, because the present meme sites (eg: livememe.com) suck. Opportunity for anyone that wants to clone quickmeme.com in the next ~6 hours.
- ChiperSoft 13y ago
  Can't they just upload the quickmeme generated images to imgur?
  - danso 13y ago
    I think quickmeme's (and its ilk) success (well, besides the part based on vote-manipulation) is a great example of how smoothing a couple of steps in an otherwise mundane and everyone-knows-how-to-do-it process can be a real product. Having to make an image via quickmeme, then copy-paste and click over to imgur, and then upload it to Reddit is a trivial set of steps...yet, those steps add up...and for many users, it's just a matter of time before the labor of the steps outweighs the impulse to post a meme...and then, the volume of memes will be dampened (OTOH, if it takes more work to post a meme, then maybe only the good ones that people make the effort to post will be seen)
  - wmil 13y ago
    No, quickmeme doesn't actually generate the final images. Instead it layers a transparent PNG on top of the image.
    - prezjordan 13y ago
      That's not true. They DO layer a transparent PNG on the image, but that transparent PNG has no content whatsoever. It's there just to prevent people from hitting right click and "Save Target As."
      - GhotiFish 13y ago
        w... WOW. REALLY? I refuse to believe quickmeme became popular because reddit liked it. That is very very anti-user. Edit: theeeey sure do! http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad right click, view image, go here: http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif delete that element and do it again, go here: http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg
benologist 13y ago
I think Reddit (and HN) should make votes and ip addresses transparent for external analysis. The spammers hide behind these. They could also be more brutal with punishments, route every single link to the offending site through a page that says they were spamming so it's an inconvenience for people and a wall for search engines.
- aw3c2 13y ago
  No, IP addresses are a private matter. The identities behind pseudonyms should never be exposed unless the affected person decides to do so.
  - geuis 13y ago
    Expose them as a hash with a hidden salt. Maintains user privacy while exposing a static data point that can be used for analysis.
    - GhotiFish 13y ago
      ah, that might work, if users can't be tied to upvotes, just that one upvote can be tied to others. Still, if someone finds a way to associate a username to a hash, then there could be real life consequences for that. I like the idea, but it's playing with fire.
      - benologist 13y ago
        It doesn't have to be a reversible hash, just assign a guid for each ip address. There are probably subreddits where that information could be potentially harmful (eg upvotes in jailbait way back when) but that can be solved by not enabling it across the board, and it's not an issue here. Digg made their upvotes public from the start, and so do delicious, facebook, stumbleupon etc.
tommorris 13y ago
And nothing of value was lost.
Uperte 13y ago
I have always thought imgur, quickmeme and other meme site (forgot its name) are owned by Reddit owners or executives. It is impossible to get upvotes if you embedded image on your site/blog.
- citricsquid 13y ago
  imgur.com is owned by Alan Schaaf, he's not associated with reddit. The reason images don't get traction if they're embedded on a website or blog is because they're not compatible with the reddit clients people use (mobile) and RES (reddit enhancement suite). Most people that use r/adviceanimals want instant gratification, if your image doesn't load in under a second nobody cares and will move on, it's why imgur is so popular: it's fast and consistent.
  - wnevets 13y ago
    I believe conde nast owns reddit & imgur.
    - citricsquid 13y ago
      Conde Nast purchased reddit in 2006, then in 2011 (maybe 2012) it became "independent" again with the parent company of Conde Nast, Advance Publications, retaining an ownership stake of the newly formed reddit, inc. [1][2] Imgur is a totally separate entity, the company was founded by Alan Schaaf using reddit as a place to "launch" it[3], they've never announced outside funding and there has never been any talk of reddit (or Advance Publications, or Conde Nast) having any ownership stake.[4] [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddit_is_a_corporate_investment_and_we_are_the/c7gwhzp http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddi... [2] http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits_pledge_drive_pitch/cahlxny http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits... (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png) [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur
_pmf_ 13y ago
But there will be nothing left! It will now be all fabricated Facebook posts and 4chan content that is intellectually low-brow enough for the Reddit hivemind to understand!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
hayksaakian 13y ago
Ironic that this is posted by a HN user with no comments, and only submissions from the daily dot.
personlurking 13y ago
I'm not so concerned with Quickmeme et. al, (because I don't follow default subreddits) but rather I'm concerned with voting rings against personal accounts. I had an account for a substantial time where I posted good, useful comments frequently (for which I was upvoted frequently). Once, maybe twice in response to other commenters I disagreed with them, like 0.1% of my time on the site. Afterwards I found myself downvoted to hell no matter what I did, how long I waited between writing comments (ie, 6 months). Everything (quality comments) would go rather quickly to a 0 or a -1/-2. I had to make a new account, there's no way around it.
- Phlarp 13y ago
  I think this is one of the biggest concerns for Reddit going forward. Fighting bots can be approached systematically and with relatively decent results. Fighting coordinated groups with an agenda and voting brigades is a much harder beast. The SRS "fempire" is probably the scariest case study in all of this.
  - pronoiac 13y ago
    Oh, that's funny. Shit Reddit Says is a sub-reddit that calls out offensive comments on Reddit. They've been called the PC Police and the like, and they appropriated "fempire" after people got sensitive about being called out for sexist comments. The rules say not to downvote the linked comments, but people think they do, or that they upvote stupidity just so they can highlight it. So research was done [1], and no evidence of that sort of misbehavior was found. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/prcpf/a_short_examination_of_the_top_twenty_threads_in/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/prcpf/a_shor...
  - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    On the contrary, SRS is one of the most innovative uses of a subreddit since Reddit's inception. Think back to the days of forums, LiveJournals, mailing lists, IRC, etc. Whenever an issue of discrimination arose, it was always derailed one way or another. Between vocal opponents, concern trolls, and "explain to me how this offends you"-types, it was impossible for someone who experienced discrimination to find a safe space to legitimize their experience. With SRS, instead of allowing any kind of discourse related to the validity of a claim, every participating member is required to just accept the claim as valid. There is no driving force to change Reddit, and there is no activism involved. It's simply a safe space for people who are offended to express themselves in an environment that won't be questioned, especially when Reddit is known for having a hive mentality.
trotsky 13y ago
And as such, content submitted within these subreddits are regularly featured on Reddit's front page each day and capable of being clicked on by more than 1 billion people. What an odd thing to say. That same hypothetical line of thinking could lead you to say that I'm capable of receiving a trillion dollars tomorrow, simply because I have a fedwire destination address and that much money could hypothetically be transferred to it. Neither has even a slight chance of actually happening.
Tuxlar 13y ago
Something something pots and kettles and allegations and blackness.
peter_l_downs 13y ago
Who gives a shit?

121 points by OTRAustin 13y ago

Excellent, a few months ago clicking on a quickmeme (by accident normally when not logged in) link on android resulted in multiple redirects and an attempt to download an apk which was lovely. After that I used RES to filter quickmeme on all my desktops.

rocky1138 13y ago

This can only be seen as a good thing as Quickmeme tends to be an extremely heavy site with stuff that could be easily handled by simple image linking or, at worst, imgur.

minimaxir 13y ago
Quickmeme, for the most part, was only regulated to /r/AdviceAnimals, which says a lot about the quality of /r/AdviceAnimals.

dghughes 13y ago

It won't be enforced I see many sites supposedly banned still posting everyday websites such as physorg and the Atlantic.

mehrzad 13y ago
Weren't those bans lifted?
- dhughes 13y ago
  I don't know, communication isn't so great, I have no idea which sites are officially banned, which have bans lifted. There may be a spot on the reddit blog or somewhere else that I'm not aware of but really it shouldn't be my responsibility as a user to enforce it that's the job of admins and mods, that's why they exist. It doesn't seem to matter though because I have seen banned websites post even when they are supposed to be banned, reddit doesn't seem to block the url it just mentions the website is spamming reddit and that seems to be all we're told. There is an unofficial (?) subreddit that monitors of banned websites, look to the right at the sidebar for the link to the list http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/ http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/
  - danso 13y ago
    The bans of The Atlantic and other large publishers has been lifted...it was said early on that the bans were just temporary: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physorg_is_not_allowed_on_reddit_this_domain_has/c50651w http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physor... And speaking of temporary bans...I thought dailydot used to be blacklisted from HN? I'm glad to see that it wasn't a permaban.
    - benologist 13y ago
      It looks like dailydot has started running spam accounts - the OP and this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin

danso 13y ago

> Gaming Reddit for traffic has become a regular frustration for the community, which boasts more than 22.9 million monthly visitors in the U.S. alone. This is particularly true within Reddit's default subreddits. All new Reddit users are automatically signed up as subscribers of the site's default subreddits, which include r/AdviceAnimals, r/Atheism, and r/Politics. Hmmm...maybe this problem could be alleviated by not auto-subscribing new users to a meme-based forum? Of all the great subreddits, AdviceAnimals (albeit, which is pretty funny sometimes), seems like a silly one to acquaint new users to. Have any of the bustups of voting rings been done algorithmically? That is, does reddit have a way to pick out cluster of reddit accounts that seem to behave like scripted bots? It seems all of the major domain bans (such as the Atlantic) were done through manual user suspicion and inquiry.

minimaxir 13y ago
Algorithmic voting bans are extremely dangerous because a false positive could be devastating for both the parent site and the linked domain. Manual intervention for such an important policy decision is crucial.
- Tobu 13y ago
  Autobanning is in my opinion tricky because there's a risk of triggering an arms race between autodetection and obfuscation, and giving quick feedback to the cheaters could turn out to help them.
twentysix 13y ago
The top ten subreddits(excluding NSFW ones), based on the number of subscribers, are chosen to be the default ones. New accounts do not increase the default subscription count, until they subscribe or unsubscribe to any other subreddit. You can find some good comments on the matter here http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_believe_that_ratheism_should_be_removed_from/c9ttixl http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_belie...
- arrrg 13y ago

minimaxir 13y ago

It's worth noting that another Redditor and mod from /r/AdviceAnimals, /u/ManWithoutModem, independently discovered different evidence that the Quickmeme posts were being manipulated. [1] No one believed him and he was demodded. He's not happy about it. http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickmeme_is_banned_redditwide_more_inside/caoiq3t http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickme...

ultimoo 13y ago
What is the 'np.reddit.com' subdomain used for? I had never seen it before, and it looks similar to the www subdomain.
- minimaxir 13y ago
  np.reddit.com is for "non-participation": Comments at the subdomain can't be upvoted or downvoted. It was implemented by several subreddits to prevent invasions which happen rather frequently on Reddit. The vote blocking is implemented with client-side CSS, so it doesn't work if you're using RES or using a mobile client.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  ‘NP’ stands for ‘No Participation’. “Linking to np.reddit.com instead of reddit.com will cause the subreddit to display the No Particpation stylesheet. It’s a read-only mode where users linked through the NP domain cannot vote or comment. This works only if the subreddit has installed the NP CSS. If not, linking to the subreddit with the NP domain will cause to display without the subreddit’s custom CSS, and voting and commenting will still be possible. This way we can still watch drama as it develops, but if the subreddit wishes to preserve its own culture by discouraging popcorn pissers, they have that option.” http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/announcement_a_new_rule_to_discourage_invasion/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/annou...
jcroll 13y ago
wow some people have way too much time on their hands. I could get a lot of stuff done in the time that guy took to write that.

wnevets 13y ago

the owners of grumpy cat hired a "meme manager" to promote and sell their meme. I now hate all internet memes. http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/ http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/

mpyne 13y ago
You're really surprised that a concept that has gained worldwide popularity might actually warrant "brand curation"? I hope you hated memes before grumpy cat then.
- wnevets 13y ago
  I did but grumpy cat was marketed to make money virtually at its inception. I remember them selling merchandise at NYCC last year, that's two weeks after they posted it on reddit. The commercialism and exploitation of this cat shortly after it's birth has really rubbed me the wrong way.

halayli 13y ago

Isn't that what Reddit did to bootstrap its site?

richbradshaw 13y ago
Pretty sure that Reddit is out of its bootstrap phase.
mahmud 13y ago
Reddit astroturfed their own site with fake users. These guys are 1) astroturfing other people's sites, 2) practicing unethetical tactics by down-voting links to competing websites with automated bots.
- halayli 13y ago
  The point is that they are equally dishonest.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    hmm. I want to reserve judgment until I read about reddit astroturfing their own website. It reminds me of a golang presentation, where the speaker created an omegle clone, but to boot-strap it he used markov chain bots if no one connected in 5 seconds. http://vimeo.com/53221560 http://vimeo.com/53221560 . I didn't think of that as a particularly immoral thing to do. edit: Actually I'm not really sure what to search for here. Do you have an article going over the details?
  - raganwald 13y ago
    Astroturfing your own site is a longstanding tradition in media. A long time ago in a career far, far away I wrote classified advertising software for desktop publishers, typically small outfits like trade magazines or penny-savers. When launching a new feature like classifieds, it does you no good to put out a blank page. So absolutely every customer that didn't already have classified ads would astroturf with fake ads. The ethics of their profession was to discard any mail-in replies unread. For example, one customer used my software for personals. They had a strict rule that any reply to one of the "fake" mailboxes was to be shredded immediately upon receipt, unopened. They didn't even want them laying around lest someone write down a name or return address. One there are enough "real" ads, the fake ones are phased out. I can't really say whether it is right or wrong, but I can say it seems to be a standard practice predating the world wide web.

gboudrias 13y ago

What kind of idiot made the owner of quickmeme.com a moderator of the subreddit that contained presumably most of its posts?

NoodleIncident 13y ago
Red dit bans the posting of personal info. They didn't know.
- gboudrias 13y ago
  Hm, understandable, but then how did they learn it after the fact?

citricsquid 13y ago

Now r/adviceanimals users are clamouring for a quickmeme alternative, because the present meme sites (eg: livememe.com) suck. Opportunity for anyone that wants to clone quickmeme.com in the next ~6 hours.

ChiperSoft 13y ago
Can't they just upload the quickmeme generated images to imgur?
- danso 13y ago
  I think quickmeme's (and its ilk) success (well, besides the part based on vote-manipulation) is a great example of how smoothing a couple of steps in an otherwise mundane and everyone-knows-how-to-do-it process can be a real product. Having to make an image via quickmeme, then copy-paste and click over to imgur, and then upload it to Reddit is a trivial set of steps...yet, those steps add up...and for many users, it's just a matter of time before the labor of the steps outweighs the impulse to post a meme...and then, the volume of memes will be dampened (OTOH, if it takes more work to post a meme, then maybe only the good ones that people make the effort to post will be seen)
- wmil 13y ago
  No, quickmeme doesn't actually generate the final images. Instead it layers a transparent PNG on top of the image.
  - prezjordan 13y ago
    That's not true. They DO layer a transparent PNG on the image, but that transparent PNG has no content whatsoever. It's there just to prevent people from hitting right click and "Save Target As."
    - GhotiFish 13y ago
      w... WOW. REALLY? I refuse to believe quickmeme became popular because reddit liked it. That is very very anti-user. Edit: theeeey sure do! http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad right click, view image, go here: http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif delete that element and do it again, go here: http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg

benologist 13y ago

I think Reddit (and HN) should make votes and ip addresses transparent for external analysis. The spammers hide behind these. They could also be more brutal with punishments, route every single link to the offending site through a page that says they were spamming so it's an inconvenience for people and a wall for search engines.

aw3c2 13y ago
No, IP addresses are a private matter. The identities behind pseudonyms should never be exposed unless the affected person decides to do so.
- geuis 13y ago
  Expose them as a hash with a hidden salt. Maintains user privacy while exposing a static data point that can be used for analysis.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    ah, that might work, if users can't be tied to upvotes, just that one upvote can be tied to others. Still, if someone finds a way to associate a username to a hash, then there could be real life consequences for that. I like the idea, but it's playing with fire.
    - benologist 13y ago
      It doesn't have to be a reversible hash, just assign a guid for each ip address. There are probably subreddits where that information could be potentially harmful (eg upvotes in jailbait way back when) but that can be solved by not enabling it across the board, and it's not an issue here. Digg made their upvotes public from the start, and so do delicious, facebook, stumbleupon etc.

tommorris 13y ago

And nothing of value was lost.

Uperte 13y ago

I have always thought imgur, quickmeme and other meme site (forgot its name) are owned by Reddit owners or executives. It is impossible to get upvotes if you embedded image on your site/blog.

citricsquid 13y ago
imgur.com is owned by Alan Schaaf, he's not associated with reddit. The reason images don't get traction if they're embedded on a website or blog is because they're not compatible with the reddit clients people use (mobile) and RES (reddit enhancement suite). Most people that use r/adviceanimals want instant gratification, if your image doesn't load in under a second nobody cares and will move on, it's why imgur is so popular: it's fast and consistent.
- wnevets 13y ago
  I believe conde nast owns reddit & imgur.
  - citricsquid 13y ago
    Conde Nast purchased reddit in 2006, then in 2011 (maybe 2012) it became "independent" again with the parent company of Conde Nast, Advance Publications, retaining an ownership stake of the newly formed reddit, inc. [1][2] Imgur is a totally separate entity, the company was founded by Alan Schaaf using reddit as a place to "launch" it[3], they've never announced outside funding and there has never been any talk of reddit (or Advance Publications, or Conde Nast) having any ownership stake.[4] [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddit_is_a_corporate_investment_and_we_are_the/c7gwhzp http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddi... [2] http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits_pledge_drive_pitch/cahlxny http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits... (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png) [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur

_pmf_ 13y ago

But there will be nothing left! It will now be all fabricated Facebook posts and 4chan content that is intellectually low-brow enough for the Reddit hivemind to understand!

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

hayksaakian 13y ago

Ironic that this is posted by a HN user with no comments, and only submissions from the daily dot.

personlurking 13y ago

I'm not so concerned with Quickmeme et. al, (because I don't follow default subreddits) but rather I'm concerned with voting rings against personal accounts. I had an account for a substantial time where I posted good, useful comments frequently (for which I was upvoted frequently). Once, maybe twice in response to other commenters I disagreed with them, like 0.1% of my time on the site. Afterwards I found myself downvoted to hell no matter what I did, how long I waited between writing comments (ie, 6 months). Everything (quality comments) would go rather quickly to a 0 or a -1/-2. I had to make a new account, there's no way around it.

Phlarp 13y ago
I think this is one of the biggest concerns for Reddit going forward. Fighting bots can be approached systematically and with relatively decent results. Fighting coordinated groups with an agenda and voting brigades is a much harder beast. The SRS "fempire" is probably the scariest case study in all of this.
- pronoiac 13y ago
  Oh, that's funny. Shit Reddit Says is a sub-reddit that calls out offensive comments on Reddit. They've been called the PC Police and the like, and they appropriated "fempire" after people got sensitive about being called out for sexist comments. The rules say not to downvote the linked comments, but people think they do, or that they upvote stupidity just so they can highlight it. So research was done [1], and no evidence of that sort of misbehavior was found. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/prcpf/a_short_examination_of_the_top_twenty_threads_in/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/prcpf/a_shor...
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  On the contrary, SRS is one of the most innovative uses of a subreddit since Reddit's inception. Think back to the days of forums, LiveJournals, mailing lists, IRC, etc. Whenever an issue of discrimination arose, it was always derailed one way or another. Between vocal opponents, concern trolls, and "explain to me how this offends you"-types, it was impossible for someone who experienced discrimination to find a safe space to legitimize their experience. With SRS, instead of allowing any kind of discourse related to the validity of a claim, every participating member is required to just accept the claim as valid. There is no driving force to change Reddit, and there is no activism involved. It's simply a safe space for people who are offended to express themselves in an environment that won't be questioned, especially when Reddit is known for having a hive mentality.

trotsky 13y ago

And as such, content submitted within these subreddits are regularly featured on Reddit's front page each day and capable of being clicked on by more than 1 billion people. What an odd thing to say. That same hypothetical line of thinking could lead you to say that I'm capable of receiving a trillion dollars tomorrow, simply because I have a fedwire destination address and that much money could hypothetically be transferred to it. Neither has even a slight chance of actually happening.

Tuxlar 13y ago

Something something pots and kettles and allegations and blackness.

peter_l_downs 13y ago

Who gives a shit?