Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#31

Post by jansenv » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

gohrt wrote: post #11

Silly that the announcements give so much attention to scores going up (due to a change in scale) and not to the content of the change. It would be trivial to keep the scale magnitude the same by multiplying by a factor ("old average frontpage post" / "new average frontpage post") or applying a logarithmic transform. Makes me think that they are intentionally kicking up dust around the scale change, to draw attention…

This is exactly what is happening. They are doing a lot more here than what it seems.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#32

Post by justinlaster » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

EJTH wrote: post #7

I wonder how they are pulling this off. I guess it takes stuff like account age into consideration. But I fear it is more based on what sub it originates from, context of the post etc. It will be their go to excuse for why content is censored off the front page now. It has been problematic to excuse away the censorship lately, so this is a nice catch all excuse they just made here.

We need to lay to rest this ridiculous notion that reddit is actively censoring anyone. A few subs have hosted outright illegal material, harassed users on and offline, and ruined the general ecosystem in the rest of reddit. The admins have reacted accordingly... sometimes. The bar to get out right banned from reddit is absurdly (and needlessly, in my opinion) high.

However, these specific changes have been planned for a while now, it was one of the principal topics of interest when spez came back. There is no "catch all excuse", it's been in the pipeline before people confused free speech and system abuse of a private website.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#33

Post by notatoad » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #6

This is mostly another fix of bad design that was added in Reddit's early years, but people have started to notice the aggressive vote fuzzing as it was calibrated for a much smaller userbase. At the least, this will break statistical analysis of Reddit data for awhile since the public datasets will not have their scores updated, which I in particular am not happy about. :p

Complaints like this are the reason companies are reluctant to release public datasets. They don't have any obligation to release data, but they do. It's a gift. If they have to consider "how will this change affect the consumers of our public data releases?" every time they make a change, they're going to stop releasing public datasets.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#34

Post by thomasahle » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

binarymax wrote: post #15

mark242 wrote: post #10

I still don't understand why, after having grown to a sufficient size, Reddit doesn't just enforce two-factor at account creation time. Tie a user to a phone number at the very least.

Because having anonymity on public forums is important.

It seems that every time somebody have wanted to find out who a user is, for lynching say, it hasn't been a big problem to find out who people are?

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#35

Post by chrismarlow9 » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

colonelxc wrote: post #25

EJTH wrote: post #7

I wonder how they are pulling this off. I guess it takes stuff like account age into consideration. But I fear it is more based on what sub it originates from, context of the post etc. It will be their go to excuse for why content is censored off the front page now. It has been problematic to excuse away the censorship lately, so this is a nice catch all excuse they just made here.

They didn't "just make" anything. They've had vote fuzzing, shadow banning and more from early days. As both the techcrunch post and the actual reddit post say, the rules around it were complicated and hard to reason about. They've basically refactored and come up with a simpler set of rules.

I even recall a vulnerability write up where someone figured out that by using the "Show me posts with more than X upvotes" feature and a counter you could determine what a posts real score was.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#36

Post by burkaman » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

rokosbasilisk wrote: post #27

jamespo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or do what they want as it's their website

bad argument. we dont let bakers discrimate against gay people. being a private business, doesnt mean you can do whatever you want. Edit: I agree with the posters below me. My point is a private business doesnt mean I can do whatever I want. There are still social rules and laws that need to be considered.

Because gay people face systemic societal discrimination, so we have made them a legally protected class. Private businesses are free to ban or censor whoever they want as long as they aren't targeting a protected class.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#37

Post by hashhar » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

mark242 wrote: post #10

I still don't understand why, after having grown to a sufficient size, Reddit doesn't just enforce two-factor at account creation time. Tie a user to a phone number at the very least.

Reddit's model has anonymity at it's very core. I follow a lot of things on the site and speak a lot about things about which if my parents or my family knew it would be embarassing. Not bad things, but simply things like /r/TIFU.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#38

Post by jedberg » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

Since I can't really say more than this: there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding in these comments. Don't believe everything you read on the internet and don't believe the conspiracy theories that this has anything to do with censorship or surpressing political (or any other) discourse.

It's really just making the math less complicated.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#39

Post by dpark » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

rokosbasilisk wrote: post #27

jamespo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or do what they want as it's their website

bad argument. we dont let bakers discrimate against gay people. being a private business, doesnt mean you can do whatever you want. Edit: I agree with the posters below me. My point is a private business doesnt mean I can do whatever I want. There are still social rules and laws that need to be considered.

Bakers can discriminate against you for your political beliefs. Political party affiliation is not a protected class.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#40

Post by koolba » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

justinlaster wrote: post #32

EJTH wrote: post #7

I wonder how they are pulling this off. I guess it takes stuff like account age into consideration. But I fear it is more based on what sub it originates from, context of the post etc. It will be their go to excuse for why content is censored off the front page now. It has been problematic to excuse away the censorship lately, so this is a nice catch all excuse they just made here.

We need to lay to rest this ridiculous notion that reddit is actively censoring anyone. A few subs have hosted outright illegal material, harassed users on and offline, and ruined the general ecosystem in the rest of reddit. The admins have reacted accordingly... sometimes . The bar to get out right banned from reddit is absurdly (and needlessly, in my opinion) high. However, these specific changes have been planned…

> We need to lay to rest this ridiculous notion that reddit is actively censoring anyone.

They have code targeting specific subreddits to actively prevent them from being on the front page. While not totally censoring those people, they are putting their fingers on the scale which many see as a form of censorship.