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Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

techcrunch.com

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Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#71

Post by rokosbasilisk »

jedberg wrote: post #38

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.

Trust is a fragile thing. Spez broke it repeatedly, even Ellen Pao said she would have fired him for editing user comments. Cant say I blame people for being paranoid.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#72

Post by talmand »

toxican wrote: post #59

It doesn't help that the CEO admitted to editing Trump supporter comments. I mean I couldn't care less about those people, but that is censorship and suppression and I can't blame people for viewing anything reddit does from now on with a bit of skepticism. But obviously it's not that bad because they've still chosen to make reddit their home.

Why the downvotes? The CEO did admit to committing such anti-user actions.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#73

Post by mejari »

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…

>> And this wasn't done out of hatred, it was done have consistent and continual abuse of those mod tools to antagonize the rest of the community.

>Oh really? Then why not apply it to every subreddit?

Because every subreddit wasn't abusing the system? I thought that was pretty explicit in what you quoted.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#74

Post by talmand »

rjbrock wrote: post #69
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

Gotta keep the secret blacklist secret.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#75

Post by orf »

talmand wrote: post #72
toxican wrote: post #59

It doesn't help that the CEO admitted to editing Trump supporter comments. I mean I couldn't care less about those people, but that is censorship and suppression and I can't blame people for viewing anything reddit does from now on with a bit of skepticism. But obviously it's not that bad because they've still chosen to make reddit their home.

Why the downvotes? The CEO did admit to committing such anti-user actions.

Because it wasn't censorship or oppression.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#76

Post by TrevorJ »

thinkloop wrote: post #62
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.

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.

Because by definition that's what it is? There's a place for tailored and filtered feeds but there's also utility in seeing what the rest of the public finds interesting.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#77

Post by gdulli »

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 being a cesspool due to anonymity and its established userbase is its DNA. A service like you describe wouldn't be a bad idea, but it wouldn't be Reddit.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#78

Post by HCIdivision17 »

jedberg wrote: post #38

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.

The post where they describe what they're doing sure makes it look like that. From what was described, this is a massive refactoring and recalculation effort to pay down years of accumulated technical debt. Occam's Razor is probably good enough: they had tons of complicated rules in the system that goobered up their calculations, and they needed to get the large amount of ineffectual cruft out at some point.

There's even a clear note that the /top stuff should go back to normal after the recalc is finished and it's back up to speed.

Frankly, I was a bit shocked by the scope of it. Seems like a huge and terrifying update.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#79

Post by minimaxir »

talmand wrote: post #72
toxican wrote: post #59

It doesn't help that the CEO admitted to editing Trump supporter comments. I mean I couldn't care less about those people, but that is censorship and suppression and I can't blame people for viewing anything reddit does from now on with a bit of skepticism. But obviously it's not that bad because they've still chosen to make reddit their home.

Why the downvotes? The CEO did admit to committing such anti-user actions.

At best, it's off-topic.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#80

Post by coreyp_1 »

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'm afraid that our research group was the reason that Reddit removed access to the vote count. Not that it has stopped us from doing research on reddit... We submitted another paper a week or so ago, and will be releasing or dataset upon publication.
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