Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#151

Post by rfrank » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

justinlaster wrote: post #142

rfrank wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not using a tool in the way that the designer intends constitutes abuse now? An interesting perspective for a community with hacker in the name.

That is a completely disingenuous take on what was stated. The subreddit in question specifically and continually used the tool in a negative, unconstructive manner, which is obviously not what it is designed for. Other subreddits use the mod tool in various ways that don't have anything to do with the explicit purpose of stickied posts, which I pointed out, but notice I didn't label that as abuse.

> The subreddit in question specifically and continually used the tool in a negative, unconstructive manner

I don't think that's true, I think you just don't like the content.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#152

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #147

minimaxir wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For clarity, the Reddit datasets are not released by Reddit itself, but scraped through the API. (More context/examples of what I do with the data: http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/ )

Does this mean you (or I if I want to do some analytics on Reddit data) will need to completely rescrape the site after scores are recomputed?

If you wanted to compare raw scores for submissions before the change to those after the changes, yes.

Otherwise, it shouldn't matter.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#153

Post by ue_ » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #139

ue_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, it lets you see a narrow slice of people's real, dark opinions. There are a whole host of opinions you'll never see on Voat because the user base is antagonistic to the basic ideas which underpin them I don't know how it is on Voat, but on 8chan I'm a frequent user and poster of /leftypol/, titled "Leftist Politically Incorrect", which is basically the flip-side to the infamous /pol/ boards of {8,4}chan. On ther…

Even without moderation, anonymous imageboards have their own way to derail civilized discussion. Someone could post a thread with an interesting premise, and the first response could be $racial_slur, and then the hivemind would repeat the process and spam $racial_slur indefinitely without any kind of real discussion going on. For the lulz.

This is certainly a problem, but I find it happening less on "special interest" boards. I don't think it's too far from Reddit in this respect. On /r/funny you might expect something like this to happen, with the top 2 comment threads being puns, or unenlightened comments. But on /r/EngineeringStudents or /r/compsci or /r/lisp ... (subs I vaguely remember) that's less likely to happen.

Right now on /leftypol/ there aren't many threads of what you describe. They do exist, but they aren't numerous. What you describe is more similar to 4chan's /b/, but even 4chan's /g/ has "tightened up" and is being steered more toward discussion (still with racial slurs but not entirely focussed on them). A notable exception is the "DESIGNATED SHITTING STREETS"/ "POO IN LOO" meme, though.

I don't know if these are just my experiences.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#154

Post by coreyp_1 » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #103

coreyp_1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does your research entail? Sounds tantalizing

http://dsg.nd.edu/soc.html

I'm in the same lab, but I don't work on the Reddit projects currently (although I am on the most recently submitted paper, which, due to it not being accepted yet, is not on the website, either).

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#155

Post by jonlucc » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #78

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…

I'm not sure if there's a commonly accepted way to handle the logistics of this, but I'd love to see a blog post from them about how they manage this on a site with so many active users at all times.

I guess you start with backing up the production DB to an offline location. The fact that votes can be placed on old posts makes it difficult, I'd assume.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#156

Post by ue_ » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

MollyR wrote: post #144

ue_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, it lets you see a narrow slice of people's real, dark opinions. There are a whole host of opinions you'll never see on Voat because the user base is antagonistic to the basic ideas which underpin them I don't know how it is on Voat, but on 8chan I'm a frequent user and poster of /leftypol/, titled "Leftist Politically Incorrect", which is basically the flip-side to the infamous /pol/ boards of {8,4}chan. On ther…

Aren't the chans not about your real beliefs, but simply trolling to get reactions ? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/11/terrorist-t... This guy got articles published as radical feminist as well beyond being a fake isis terrorist, fake white nationalist, fake jewish lawyer.

I think this is a narrow position. On the boards on chans that I frequent, this isn't at all true. Yes, there are occasionally "trolls" who pretend they have positions they do not. The sarcasm may be subtle or not, depending on intention. But far more predominantly there are people who espouse their views and back them up cogently. There are also devil's advocates.

But I wouldn't say that chan culture is about this, or that there is an inextricable link between them. It's simply a common occurance by nature of being anonymous. More often than not, "bait" is called out as such, but even if you're being serious, you can ignore that.

A mixed bag, but certainly not representative. I know of many on the politics board who do sincerely hold nationalist or white supremacist views, and I have argued against them. I also know many on the left-politics board who will talk you through Marx's critique of capitalism.

There is some nuance in my opinion.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#157

Post by jakebasile » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #143

talmand wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is referring the actual fact the CEO admitted to such actions inaccurate spin?

It wasn't about Trump at all, thus the spin, and introducing unnecessary politics. >It wasn't trump supporter comments, it was comments that said exactly "fuck spez." Misrepresenting it as "trump supporters" gives it a decidedly different, post-truth spin. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13124802

The edited comments were on r/the_donald, and he changed them to point to r/the_donald moderators. You have to be doing some serious mental gymnastics to think that it wasn't against "those Trump supporters".

And here's the thing: it doesn't matter. An admin of a site (the CEO even!) edited users' comments without permission, notification, or apparent consequence. This can lead to users distrusting the site.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#158

Post by scott_ni » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #150

One aspect I don't understand is why Reddit allows new accounts to vote from the beginning. You don't even need to verify an email address, you can just start voting (unless they're doing something sneaky and ignore those votes). I'm comparing this to Stack Overflow, where you need 10 reputation to vote. This is a pretty trivial barrier, but it does mean that you need to put more effort into each sock puppet to be ab…

On the other hand, requiring reputation could incentivize spamming and worthless posts. For example, if you already have an automated voting bot, why not make it upvote your new bot accounts to transfer "rep" and allow more upvotes?

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#159

Post by jonlucc » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #86

talmand wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the users Spez trolled with his edits decided to leave reddit forever, it would only make reddit a better place.

I agree, but there are other users who might not trust that their comments won't be invisibly altered. The specific incident is not very troubling, but the fact that it occurred at all is.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#160

Post by criley2 » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

xnull2guest wrote: post #132

My trust is broken. Am I a provably nasty actor who ... etc? My trust has been broken repeatedly, by things like the Snowden documents (and the media coverup of its contents) and Iraq War propaganda (with media participation), and yes by gamed use of scoring algorithms and selective/politicized moderation of social media. My trust was particularly broken when Facebook censored (literally did not allow me to post) Sno…

Frankly, I don't believe your post. It's such a wishy washy amalgamation of "of course I was right" rose tinted steps through the past, each stop complete with ham-fisted "they called me all the worst things but I was right".

No story is that perfect. You aren't that perfect.

And writing this long of a post to try and convince me that conspiracies like Hillary Clinton engaging in a pedohpile sex ring are true because you believed the Iraq War wasn't about WMDs is just stupid.

When we take into the fact that President-Elect Trump used to party with Pedophile Jeff Epstein, and 3 years ago went as far as to praise Jeff's young taste in women, the fact that Jeff Epstein had 13 separate numbers for Mr Trump... I guess we're in Trump's America now.

I can't stop you from fellating yourself regarding your overwhelmingly pretentiously perfect view of yourself throughout the past decade, so I guess I should join you. Trump's a pedo and anyone who doesn't see it, sling your arrows at me, the truth will be visible later rather than sooner, and I'll be posting lame, rose tinted "I was right the whole time" posts trying to contradict the next anti-conspiracy poster :)

I can't beat you and your "I was always right so conspiracies are legit" nonsense, so I'll join you! That's Trump's America. We can't beat the misinformation. Facts lose. Feels win.