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Given Reddit's already unequal application of the site rules (some people can shamelessly vote manipulate, others receive hellbans for merely following links),

Given Reddit's already unequal application of the site rules (some people can shamelessly vote manipulate, others receive hellbans for merely following links), and the propensities for specific groups to treat mild disagreement as "harassment", this does not bode well. It gets really blatant if you've been on the site for any length of time. I really hope this doesn't kill the site, but it looks bad.

MisterWebz 12y ago
Can you elaborate a bit on the vote manipulation? Other than certain Reddit power users regularly getting their posts to the top of certain subreddits, I haven't really seen anything suspicious.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  So Reddit's got this community called "Shit Reddit Says", also known as 'SRS'. It originally started as a group of Something Awful users doing what can be described as a trolling operation. SRS's stated goal is to highlight people on Reddit saying bad things (casual racism, stuff like that). Someone from the community finds a post somewhere on reddit they feel meets the criterion, and they post it there. Often immediately afterwards, the post, and the user who made it, begin losing karma at a rate that cannot be described as coincidental. One of the rules in SRS is "don't touch the poop" - you're not supposed to participate in a thread that gets linked there. However, looking at the relation between post time on SRS, and karma over time, there's no other explanation for what happens to the scores of comments that get posted there. Before you say "meh, racists, who cares?" - two problems. First, SRS's aegis has expanded to cover any criticism of the social justice movement, rather than actual hurtful comments. Second, what's happening is explicitly against the site rules regarding vote manipulation (vote brigading) - other subreddits who engaged in similar behavior had to institute rules that mandate either "no participation" links (a CSS hack that disables the voting buttons), or outright banning of intra-subreddit linking at the urging of site administration staff.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It's interesting that there's a whole subculture of this stuff now. There's a ton of subreddits starting with "bad," such as badhistory, badlinguistics, and badphilosophy whose purpose is to collect links to comments seen as "bad" in the context of whatever field it's about. This could actually be a valuable service, where you get experts in to correct misconceptions or incorrect claims that are getting a lot of attention. Unfortunately, they're never about that, but are simply about making fun of people behind their backs. I'm reminded of the Robbers Cave Experiment, wherein all it took to create conflict between two groups of summer campers was the act of dividing them into groups. The subreddit system is genius for allowing one site to serve so many different communities, but it also sets the stage for subreddits to see other subreddits as the enemy. (And if this comment was on Reddit, I imagine there would pretty quickly be a link to it from /r/badphilosophy talking about how badly I've misunderstood the experiment and how stupid I am, all while not actually educating me or any of the people reading my comment.)
  - unbudgingprawn 12y ago
    Do you have any data that shows that trend? I frequently see threads where people complain about how blatant the effect is and how hard they're being brigaded, usually with 300+ karma
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      Not right now - SRS is blocked at work. One simple experiment is to look at the front page of the subreddit - each link description has, per the rules, the amount of comment karma it has when it was submitted. Look at relatively new posts, and look at the difference in karma at submission time and then as time goes on. I tried this a few times months ago, and being linked from SRS led to a significant decline in scores on every post in the top 25.
      - unbudgingprawn 12y ago
        >''I enjoy hating on people who think 'fat acceptance' is a legitimate thing...they're easy targets'' [+1521, gilded] (reddit.com) >[–]RodneyHFarva 1706 points 21 hours ago >"A bunch of din du nuffins. But when these thugs get killed their mom will cry murder and say he was such a good boy." [+27] (reddit.com) >esiper 50 points 12 hours ago >"It started with /r/jailbait, but I wasn't a ephebophile so I didn't speak up. Then they came for /r/thefappening, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't into fuzzy pictures of people I don't know. Then /r/gamergate, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a gamer. I'm speaking up now." [+28] (reddit.com) >[–][deleted] 194 points 22 hours ago* It looks like there's an increase in karma score after it gets linked from SRS
- Shivetya 12y ago
  besides the condition listed below it is not permitted for users on one sub to cast votes on another sub by request/suggestion/etc. There is leeway if the user voting is subbed to both but it is not supposed to happen
untog 12y ago
I mean, rules are applied by the mods of each different subreddit, right? I don't doubt some subreddits have huge problems, but IMO the majority don't, and the site itself works just fine.
- iopq 12y ago
  A moderator can't shadowban you. But someone criticizing Ellen Pao got a shadowban recently, which means the actual administrators (Reddit employees) did it. I don't know if it was for criticizing her or for something else.
  - untog 12y ago
    Well, that's actually relevant the policies being discussed here. If they were criticising Pao in a reasoned, sensible way, that's a problem. But if, as often happens on Reddit, they flew off the handle and were abusive/inflammatory/etc. then perhaps they deserved it. It's a similar system to how Hacker News operates, AFAIK.
    - mreiland 12y ago
      no it isn't, that's exactly the concern the initiator of this thread of conversation had. It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. If you dox someone or follow them around for a length of time attacking them, you should be banned for it as it creates a hostile environment. But that is a far cry from telling someone in no uncertain terms that you think their opinion is ridiculous. Personally, I've been wanting a reddit alternative for a while, but everything out there sucks in some manner (don't get me started on hubski...). I would love for this to push enough people onto the other platforms for the content to be there. I doubt it will, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it would happen.
      - untog 12y ago
        It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. That's your opinion on it. Reddit, it would appear, has a different opinion. As, I believe, would the admins of Hacker News.
smrtinsert 12y ago
Can you elaborate? Use reddit a lot, never heard of a hellban.
- robin_reala 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning HN uses it too sometimes. Basically, a hellbanned user doesn’t know they’ve been banned: they can still comment, add submissions etc. The difference is that all their activity is hidden to normal users.
- Lafcadio 12y ago
  You probably heard it mentioned as shadowbanning. That is when a person can comment but no one will see their comments.
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
> I really hope this doesn't kill the site All things must end. Reddit had its day in the sun and maybe it's time for something new to take its place.
Alex3917 12y ago
> I really hope this doesn't kill the site, but it looks bad. The issue with Reddit is why would anyone spend a couple hours writing thoughtful comments when there is some algorithm that just deletes them at random? The obvious answer is they wouldn't. And so by and large the people who used to contribute good content have already left. I doubt this change will push the site into a death spiral, but in general when rules like this are created then it certainly signals that there probably weren't many obviously better options.
- arfliw 12y ago
  >writing thoughtful comments when there is some algorithm that just deletes them at random? huh? i'm a very active redditor across many subs and i've never encountered anything like that. you're the first person i've ever seen even mention it. unless i'm not understanding what you mean?
afeafbfba 12y ago
> Given Reddit's already unequal application of the site rules (some people can shamelessly vote manipulate, others receive hellbans for merely following links), and the propensities for specific groups to treat mild disagreement as "harassment", this does not bode well. It's not even mild disagreements. Most of the subreddits are run like cults. If you look at the mods of the major subreddits, most of them are run by a select few users. The same mods on every other subreddit. Reddit is used as a propaganda tool now.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  Is this literal? I've heard that subreddit mods have been caught promoting/demoting content for money. Or even like, Russian propaganda. But I've never had the in to that community to be able to verify these claims.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Famously, /r/technology was demoted (removed from "default" status, meaning you see it when you're not logged in, meaning it's visible to the majority of Reddit's users) after it came out that they had a bot removing submissions with certain words in the title. Those words included things like "CIA" and "Snowden". /r/skincareaddiction was caught red handed (with a price list, even) offering promotion services. Those are the big ones I can think of - most of the suspicion comes from the fact that you find a lot of the same people moderating a lot of the same subreddits. It smacks of the cabal. (Given communities with a few million subscribers, how is one supposed to do their job on a single one of these, let alone multiple?)
    - washadjeffmad 12y ago
      It's the control freaks, the people who stay late everyday and never go on vacation that are most likely to be robbing you blind. Each mod should have mandatory off time or be banned for a few weeks out of every year, at least so they don't get too comfortable with their position. It's how we caught which manager was stealing from us and got the evidence that our accountant was funneling money out to herself (although it was noticing when she bought that new car and put her children into an expensive private school that created the suspicion).
afeafbfba 12y ago
> Given Reddit's already unequal application of the site rules (some people can shamelessly vote manipulate, others receive hellbans for merely following links), and the propensities for specific groups to treat mild disagreement as "harassment", this does not bode well. It's not even mild disagreements. Most of the subreddits are run like cults. If you look at the mods of the major subreddits, most of them are run by a select few users. The same mods on every other subreddit. Reddit is used as a propaganda tool now.
rrss1122 12y ago
I think for it to kill the site, there has to be a replacement waiting in the wings. Digg faded under much more innocent circumstances because Reddit was gaining in popularity. But, this crackdown might prompt somebody out there to launch a replacement.
- helyka 12y ago
  https://voat.co/ https://voat.co/
  - gambiter 12y ago
    Voat does indeed seem to be a viable replacement. Of course, it's just starting out, and they are in a self-described alpha state, so they may not be ready for a huge influx of users.
    - thrillgore 12y ago
      Voat's become a magnet for the GG and other seedy reddit communities that have propped up over the past few months. More power to them, but Voat can keep them. I'll go elsewhere once Reddit crashes and burns. Away from the MRAs and SRS. Somewhere where the noise is squelched far from the signal.
- kindlez 12y ago
  Try our platform at http://snapzu.com http://snapzu.com

MisterWebz 12y ago

Can you elaborate a bit on the vote manipulation? Other than certain Reddit power users regularly getting their posts to the top of certain subreddits, I haven't really seen anything suspicious.

Karunamon 12y ago
So Reddit's got this community called "Shit Reddit Says", also known as 'SRS'. It originally started as a group of Something Awful users doing what can be described as a trolling operation. SRS's stated goal is to highlight people on Reddit saying bad things (casual racism, stuff like that). Someone from the community finds a post somewhere on reddit they feel meets the criterion, and they post it there. Often immediately afterwards, the post, and the user who made it, begin losing karma at a rate that cannot be described as coincidental. One of the rules in SRS is "don't touch the poop" - you're not supposed to participate in a thread that gets linked there. However, looking at the relation between post time on SRS, and karma over time, there's no other explanation for what happens to the scores of comments that get posted there. Before you say "meh, racists, who cares?" - two problems. First, SRS's aegis has expanded to cover any criticism of the social justice movement, rather than actual hurtful comments. Second, what's happening is explicitly against the site rules regarding vote manipulation (vote brigading) - other subreddits who engaged in similar behavior had to institute rules that mandate either "no participation" links (a CSS hack that disables the voting buttons), or outright banning of intra-subreddit linking at the urging of site administration staff.
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's interesting that there's a whole subculture of this stuff now. There's a ton of subreddits starting with "bad," such as badhistory, badlinguistics, and badphilosophy whose purpose is to collect links to comments seen as "bad" in the context of whatever field it's about. This could actually be a valuable service, where you get experts in to correct misconceptions or incorrect claims that are getting a lot of attention. Unfortunately, they're never about that, but are simply about making fun of people behind their backs. I'm reminded of the Robbers Cave Experiment, wherein all it took to create conflict between two groups of summer campers was the act of dividing them into groups. The subreddit system is genius for allowing one site to serve so many different communities, but it also sets the stage for subreddits to see other subreddits as the enemy. (And if this comment was on Reddit, I imagine there would pretty quickly be a link to it from /r/badphilosophy talking about how badly I've misunderstood the experiment and how stupid I am, all while not actually educating me or any of the people reading my comment.)
- unbudgingprawn 12y ago
  Do you have any data that shows that trend? I frequently see threads where people complain about how blatant the effect is and how hard they're being brigaded, usually with 300+ karma
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Not right now - SRS is blocked at work. One simple experiment is to look at the front page of the subreddit - each link description has, per the rules, the amount of comment karma it has when it was submitted. Look at relatively new posts, and look at the difference in karma at submission time and then as time goes on. I tried this a few times months ago, and being linked from SRS led to a significant decline in scores on every post in the top 25.
    - unbudgingprawn 12y ago
      >''I enjoy hating on people who think 'fat acceptance' is a legitimate thing...they're easy targets'' [+1521, gilded] (reddit.com) >[–]RodneyHFarva 1706 points 21 hours ago >"A bunch of din du nuffins. But when these thugs get killed their mom will cry murder and say he was such a good boy." [+27] (reddit.com) >esiper 50 points 12 hours ago >"It started with /r/jailbait, but I wasn't a ephebophile so I didn't speak up. Then they came for /r/thefappening, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't into fuzzy pictures of people I don't know. Then /r/gamergate, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a gamer. I'm speaking up now." [+28] (reddit.com) >[–][deleted] 194 points 22 hours ago* It looks like there's an increase in karma score after it gets linked from SRS
Shivetya 12y ago
besides the condition listed below it is not permitted for users on one sub to cast votes on another sub by request/suggestion/etc. There is leeway if the user voting is subbed to both but it is not supposed to happen

untog 12y ago

I mean, rules are applied by the mods of each different subreddit, right? I don't doubt some subreddits have huge problems, but IMO the majority don't, and the site itself works just fine.

iopq 12y ago
A moderator can't shadowban you. But someone criticizing Ellen Pao got a shadowban recently, which means the actual administrators (Reddit employees) did it. I don't know if it was for criticizing her or for something else.
- untog 12y ago
  Well, that's actually relevant the policies being discussed here. If they were criticising Pao in a reasoned, sensible way, that's a problem. But if, as often happens on Reddit, they flew off the handle and were abusive/inflammatory/etc. then perhaps they deserved it. It's a similar system to how Hacker News operates, AFAIK.
  - mreiland 12y ago
    no it isn't, that's exactly the concern the initiator of this thread of conversation had. It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. If you dox someone or follow them around for a length of time attacking them, you should be banned for it as it creates a hostile environment. But that is a far cry from telling someone in no uncertain terms that you think their opinion is ridiculous. Personally, I've been wanting a reddit alternative for a while, but everything out there sucks in some manner (don't get me started on hubski...). I would love for this to push enough people onto the other platforms for the content to be there. I doubt it will, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it would happen.
    - untog 12y ago
      It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. That's your opinion on it. Reddit, it would appear, has a different opinion. As, I believe, would the admins of Hacker News.

smrtinsert 12y ago

Can you elaborate? Use reddit a lot, never heard of a hellban.

robin_reala 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning HN uses it too sometimes. Basically, a hellbanned user doesn’t know they’ve been banned: they can still comment, add submissions etc. The difference is that all their activity is hidden to normal users.
Lafcadio 12y ago
You probably heard it mentioned as shadowbanning. That is when a person can comment but no one will see their comments.

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

> I really hope this doesn't kill the site All things must end. Reddit had its day in the sun and maybe it's time for something new to take its place.

Alex3917 12y ago

> I really hope this doesn't kill the site, but it looks bad. The issue with Reddit is why would anyone spend a couple hours writing thoughtful comments when there is some algorithm that just deletes them at random? The obvious answer is they wouldn't. And so by and large the people who used to contribute good content have already left. I doubt this change will push the site into a death spiral, but in general when rules like this are created then it certainly signals that there probably weren't many obviously better options.

arfliw 12y ago
>writing thoughtful comments when there is some algorithm that just deletes them at random? huh? i'm a very active redditor across many subs and i've never encountered anything like that. you're the first person i've ever seen even mention it. unless i'm not understanding what you mean?

afeafbfba 12y ago

> Given Reddit's already unequal application of the site rules (some people can shamelessly vote manipulate, others receive hellbans for merely following links), and the propensities for specific groups to treat mild disagreement as "harassment", this does not bode well. It's not even mild disagreements. Most of the subreddits are run like cults. If you look at the mods of the major subreddits, most of them are run by a select few users. The same mods on every other subreddit. Reddit is used as a propaganda tool now.

A_COMPUTER 12y ago
Is this literal? I've heard that subreddit mods have been caught promoting/demoting content for money. Or even like, Russian propaganda. But I've never had the in to that community to be able to verify these claims.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Famously, /r/technology was demoted (removed from "default" status, meaning you see it when you're not logged in, meaning it's visible to the majority of Reddit's users) after it came out that they had a bot removing submissions with certain words in the title. Those words included things like "CIA" and "Snowden". /r/skincareaddiction was caught red handed (with a price list, even) offering promotion services. Those are the big ones I can think of - most of the suspicion comes from the fact that you find a lot of the same people moderating a lot of the same subreddits. It smacks of the cabal. (Given communities with a few million subscribers, how is one supposed to do their job on a single one of these, let alone multiple?)
  - washadjeffmad 12y ago
    It's the control freaks, the people who stay late everyday and never go on vacation that are most likely to be robbing you blind. Each mod should have mandatory off time or be banned for a few weeks out of every year, at least so they don't get too comfortable with their position. It's how we caught which manager was stealing from us and got the evidence that our accountant was funneling money out to herself (although it was noticing when she bought that new car and put her children into an expensive private school that created the suspicion).

afeafbfba 12y ago

rrss1122 12y ago

I think for it to kill the site, there has to be a replacement waiting in the wings. Digg faded under much more innocent circumstances because Reddit was gaining in popularity. But, this crackdown might prompt somebody out there to launch a replacement.

helyka 12y ago
https://voat.co/ https://voat.co/
- gambiter 12y ago
  Voat does indeed seem to be a viable replacement. Of course, it's just starting out, and they are in a self-described alpha state, so they may not be ready for a huge influx of users.
  - thrillgore 12y ago
    Voat's become a magnet for the GG and other seedy reddit communities that have propped up over the past few months. More power to them, but Voat can keep them. I'll go elsewhere once Reddit crashes and burns. Away from the MRAs and SRS. Somewhere where the noise is squelched far from the signal.
kindlez 12y ago
Try our platform at http://snapzu.com http://snapzu.com