Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#61

Post by pfarnsworth » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #49

rm999 wrote: post #30

It's pretty clear to me that Reddit has always lacked a solid experienced science-driven data person. Someone who can pinpoint an issue, formulate the issue into a product-driven concrete problem, come up with hypotheses on how to fix the problem, then use their vast wealth of data and users to test and/or implement them. It's not just the ad hoc unintuitive "solution" they came up with to mask votes (which most peop…

Redditor of 11 years here. I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). I want to see what other people are seeing, and not just like-minded people either. For that I can find subreddits and subscribe to them.

Exactly this. That's what I love about the front page, it's the front page of the Internet, not my front page. Of course, reddit has its own bubbles to deal with, but in general I like the different perspectives I'm given.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#62

Post by thinkloop » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #49

rm999 wrote: post #30

It's pretty clear to me that Reddit has always lacked a solid experienced science-driven data person. Someone who can pinpoint an issue, formulate the issue into a product-driven concrete problem, come up with hypotheses on how to fix the problem, then use their vast wealth of data and users to test and/or implement them. It's not just the ad hoc unintuitive "solution" they came up with to mask votes (which most peop…

Redditor of 11 years here. I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). I want to see what other people are seeing, and not just like-minded people either. For that I can find subreddits and subscribe to them.

Algorithms that are optimized to show more of what a user is interested in, shouldn't be equated to creating an echo chamber. A good algorithm could include variety and conflicting positions, if that's what the user shows affinity to. I don't think the concept should be discounted because of weak implementations.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#63

Post by djsumdog » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #49

rm999 wrote: post #30

It's pretty clear to me that Reddit has always lacked a solid experienced science-driven data person. Someone who can pinpoint an issue, formulate the issue into a product-driven concrete problem, come up with hypotheses on how to fix the problem, then use their vast wealth of data and users to test and/or implement them. It's not just the ad hoc unintuitive "solution" they came up with to mask votes (which most peop…

Redditor of 11 years here. I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). I want to see what other people are seeing, and not just like-minded people either. For that I can find subreddits and subscribe to them.

But it's already like that. They removed the API that allowed RES to show you individual up/down votes per-post. They've banned tons of subs for varying levels of controversy. They removed their warranty canary. Their CEO was caught changing comments and they weren't asked to resign; got away with just an apology?

I realize that Voat is a cesspool, but anonymity -- real anonymity -- tends to let you see peoples' real dark opinions (hence all the chans .. and why Google requires real profiles for YouTube comments now).

I think Reddit filters a lot more than people realize; more than just the banned subreddits and edited comments. It's been a filter bubble for quite some time.

In anycase, I've given up on Reddit .. and Voat. I guess my big addiction now is Hackernews. :-P

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#64

Post by mejari » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #60

SEJeff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a data driven scientist, if you were the king of Reddit, what would you do differently and why would it be better? Not playing devil's advocate, but just curious.

If I were in this position I would empower people to filter out cheap content, fluff, memes and keep the in depth discussions and articles. Each user could choose the filtering level.

Can they not do exactly that with their subscriptions? Unsubscribe from AdviceAnimals and subscribe to AskHistorians.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#65

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #50

binthere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on "their lack of personalized content discovery"? I'm usually on the fence of bringing personalized content on platforms where you usually want to remain anonymous.

It could be as simple as "Hey, we noticed you spend a lot of time on r/gaming and r/frugal - might we suggest r/gameDeals?". Or perhaps even just filling some of the front page with threads from subreddits that may interest the user. I think there'd be a lot of interesting discovery available to reasonably active users of reddit. (I've spent a significant % of my career on personalized recommendations, and in my opin…

As a proof of concept, I made a simple related subreddit finder using solely the commenting data of users: http://minimaxir.com/2016/06/reddit-related-subreddits/

The "like X subreddit and Y subreddit? Here's Z" is not infeasable to do with ALS on a similar dataset, but requires a better computer than I have. :p

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#66

Post by michaelcampbell » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #44

rm999 wrote: post #30

It's pretty clear to me that Reddit has always lacked a solid experienced science-driven data person. Someone who can pinpoint an issue, formulate the issue into a product-driven concrete problem, come up with hypotheses on how to fix the problem, then use their vast wealth of data and users to test and/or implement them. It's not just the ad hoc unintuitive "solution" they came up with to mask votes (which most peop…

As a data driven scientist, if you were the king of Reddit, what would you do differently and why would it be better? Not playing devil's advocate, but just curious.

I (not who you asked, but...) would first start with a problem statement. I'm not sure what exactly they're trying to solve, yet.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#67

Post by justinlaster » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #53

justinlaster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They have code targeting specific subreddits to actively prevent them from being on the front page. Source? The only thing they've done is prevent certain mod tools from being used a slingshot to the front page for specific subreddits. And this wasn't done out of hatred, it was done after consistent and continual abuse of those mod tools to antagonize the rest of the community.

> Source? The only thing they've done is prevent certain mod tools from being used a slingshot to the front page for specific subreddits. How about /u/spez himself: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_... Quoting part of his post (feel free to Ctrl-F to find the context): >> Posts stickied on r/the_donald will no longer appear in r/all. It's not a global change to everybody. It's only for that…

I literally just addressed both of those points. Sticked posts are mod tools. They didn't do anything else. You literally pointed out exactly what I did.

>It's not a global change to everybody. It's only for that one specific subreddit.

Again, I already pointed this out.

>Then why not apply it to every subreddit?

Once again, in my reply to you:

>consistent and continual abuse of those mod tools to antagonize the rest of the community.

Other subreddits use them for the designed purpose. For example sports related subreddits will use sticked posts for currently running games, etc. /r/The_Donald used mod stickies to rally the community behind one post on a near daily basis with the express purpose of getting it to the front page.

Notice that they can still sticky posts, it just won't show up on /r/all. The community moderators found a loophole in reddit's system and the admins stopped the abuse. Presumably, this was not done to other subreddits because they don't abuse the tool with the express purpose of antagonizing the rest of the community.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#68

Post by jordigh » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

Can someone explain to me the relationship between their public source code and what's actually running on their servers? I thought their voting algorithms were all public, but there are no commits here indicating any voting changes.

https://github.com/reddit/reddit

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#69

Post by rjbrock » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #68

Can someone explain to me the relationship between their public source code and what's actually running on their servers? I thought their voting algorithms were all public, but there are no commits here indicating any voting changes. https://github.com/reddit/reddit

Their anti-spammer code is the only code that is not published as open source

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#70

Post by komali2 » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #63

clamprecht wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redditor of 11 years here. I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). I want to see what other people are seeing, and not just like-minded people either. For that I can find subreddits and subscribe to them.

But it's already like that. They removed the API that allowed RES to show you individual up/down votes per-post. They've banned tons of subs for varying levels of controversy. They removed their warranty canary. Their CEO was caught changing comments and they weren't asked to resign; got away with just an apology? I realize that Voat is a cesspool, but anonymity -- real anonymity -- tends to let you see peoples' real…

I like Hackernews because I actually learn things here and have genuinely interesting conversations with relatively polite people, but we only seem to talk about tech stuff. Cryptography, web dev, programming, etc. Nobody here wants to talk about like, motorcycles or raising pet rats or other things I'm interested in outside of technology, so it can't replace reddit for me.