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Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

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Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#211

Post by pmarreck »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #114
pmarreck wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question- Do you think there's room for a new discussion site which embraced all these lessons that other discussion sites seem to perpetually be ignoring (perhaps due to simple entrenchment)? Because I have oft floated the idea of starting just such a site. Anyway, I somehow (as an avid Reddit user) missed the news that they lost their warrant canary (probably because I unsubbed from almost all the default s…

What lessons would you like to include on such a site? Off the top of my head, my favorite things about Hacker News: high level civil discourse, lack of humor (no, seriously, humor easily crowds out good discussion on other sites), excellent layout (collapsible tree comments), anonymous speech with ease to creating new accounts, light handed and responsive moderation. There's not much I don't like: narrow focus on te…

I could say "upvote category" (a la Slashdot or Steam where you can tag a comment as "funny" or "insightful") and "downvote category" (so you can specifically downvote for disagreeing vs. offensive vs. irrelevancy) but let me tell you a story about Reddit instead.

Once upon a time I was subbed to /r/redpill, usually to counterpoint their many arguably-false conclusions. Naturally I was downvoted to oblivion most of the time, because Reddit does not do anything to prevent echo-chambers (in fact it probably outright encourages them... because engagement), and thus, echo-chambers are a natural result of subreddits and "comment percolation via upvoting in agreement and downvoting in disagreement" (the fact that Reddit TOS says you should only downvote on irrelevancy, NOT disagreement, doesn't matter, because people are assholes and critical-thinking skill is apparently an extremely precious commodity these days).

At the same time I was subbed to a number of, eh, feminist subs, like TwoXChromosomes. Sometimes, I disagreed with them too (and got downvoted), but most of the time (slightly most of the time), I got upvoted on those.

One day, I got banned from ALL feminist subs. ALL. OF. THEM. Simply because some mod with a god complex did a cross-reference of everyone subbed to /r/redpill, and mass-banned them. My entreaties to the mods ("just look at my fucking comments in there! I'm actually fighting for you guys!!) resulted in no reinstatement. (While this should not matter, it probably didn't help that my username at the time was "GSpotAssassin".)

Around that point, I kind of lost faith in Reddit as a thing not fatally-flawed. (While deciding to completely step out of the modern gender wars. It's a cesspool, anyway.)

I cannot emphasize how much I loathe echo-chambers. And it seems to be getting worse. I literally do not understand how people cannot tolerate the occasional discomfort of a dissimilar viewpoint, especially if it is well-argued. But I'm a rationalist, and we love a good debate, basically. Sadly, this does not at all account for most people, who I like to joke "prefer to belong than be right".

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#212

Post by Terr_ »

rfrank wrote: post #208
Terr_ wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote manipulation is against the rules regardless of what tool you use. They just used stickies as their tool.

Stickying a new post so users see / vote on it faster is vote manipulation? Doesn't seem to be the case per reddit itself. [1] 1. https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192985

Oh FFS, did you even read the link!? Here, the last bullet point:

> Forming or joining a group that votes together, either on a specific post, a user's posts, posts from a domain, etc.

That perfectly describes what was going on with moderators leading the mob by stickying dozens of posts per day, directing them towards their brigading targets.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#213

Post by justinlaster »

koolba wrote: post #188
justinlaster wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The admins and a sizable portion, if not the majority, of reddit think it's true. It's also odd that you seem to forget that the content in question was specifically and continually addressed to the rest of the community in an often aggressive manner. Hardly any active and constructive discussion, political or otherwise, took place on those threads. Indeed it's hard for that to ever happen when your mods immediately…

> Indeed it's hard for that to ever happen when your mods immediately ban anyone who doesn't fit a certain mold. That statement is false. Nobody is banned from that subreddit for being of a "certain mold". The rules for the subreddit are on the sidebar and they only ban users who speak ill of their candidate of choice. The same is true on the /r/SandersForPresident and /r/HillaryClinton. If you went on either of thos…

I was banned without ever having ventured there, and then proceeded to be called a "faggot cuck" (presumably because of my posts to /r/gaybros) by the moderator. So it most certainly is not false. There are many others who echo this scenario across reddit.

>If you went on either of those and insulted Sanders, Clinton, or their supporters, you'd get banned on there as well.

Funny, I was not very kind towards Clinton. Still can post in /r/HillaryClinton.

>I'd argue the anti-Trump subreddits are demonstrably worse.

You can certainly argue that, the problem is having some kind of substantive evidence to base this claim on.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#214

Post by robwilliams »

talmand wrote: post #74
rjbrock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Gotta keep the secret blacklist secret.

It would be trivial to test whether a site is blacklisted, that's not why the anti-spam code is private.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#216

Post by justinlaster »

rfrank wrote: post #202
justinlaster wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can stop being dishonest at anytime now. Your timeline is backwards. They were not singled out for "censorship" before their abuse. That doesn't even make sense. Again, please notice the immediate effect of having the tool taken away from the mods. Hardly anything is organically upvoted from that subreddit anymore. >Should they be nice to a community that consistently calls it the_dipshit Why are you going to pur…

You can stop being dishonest anytime now. You have a limited perspective. They had to make several internal rule changes specific to them (which they enforce) before any site wide changes happened. They get brigaded and attacked just like any other major political sub, but only they have unique rules made for them. Why are you purposefully ignoring why they act that way? It's like having a guy in the group who thinks…

>They had to make several internal rule changes specific to them (which they enforce) before any site wide changes happened.

And you can see the reasons for this expounded upon in the ancestor comments of this thread. There is a very clear cause and effect for these actions. Ignoring them is you being dishonest.

>They get brigaded and attacked just like any other major political sub

Of which there seems to be very little evidence for. On the other hand, the brigading and abuse other communities received have been well documented and brought to light both to the admins and the community at large.

>It's like having a guy in the group who thinks it's acceptable to push people around because they have a majority opinion

If you're going to insinuate that reddit is doing this because some sort of political bias, you are completely ignoring other subreddits that have remained completely untouched regardless of their political positions, despite sometimes even how questionable the subreddits themselves are, and are ignoring spez's previously stated political positions.

This claim lacks consistency at best and at worst continues to be willfully dishonest about the actions taken by the subreddit towards the community as a whole.

>They had several posts at the top of /r/all yesterday [1-4], but I guess they don't go as high.

Yes, they do not go as high and the frequency at which this happens has dramatically decreased. Indicating that previously front-paged threads were not organic.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#217

Post by MaxLeiter »

johnbrodie wrote: post #190
epistasis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Comments on the only big "Trump supporter" subreddit, that bans you for not being a Trump supporter. I think calling them "Trump supporters" is 100% appropriate.

It was on /r/Pizzagate, if I recall, which is a conspiracy sub accusing Hillary of running a pedophile ring - they were calling Spez a pedo.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#218

Post by squidfood »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #184
bpchaps wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had to raise a huge security risk to Comcast and resorted to a reddit post after very little luck raising it through official channels. It was a pretty sobering experience to how reddit users use downvotes for things they didn't understand or disagreed with. A lot of the downvotes came from folks who angrily commented that I was too vague. Giving specifics is just reckless, and if anything, I probably gave way…

I'm near expert level in one or two categories. Its difficult to post about my views because they're academic and involve history, the debate, popular consensus, etc. My comments just get downvoted because the hivemind just wants simple answers. Those simple answers are easier to digest, easy to know if you agree or disagree, etc. This is also why /r/askhistorians is so heavily moderated. If you just let it run itsel…

Anyone can complain about a security vulnerability or so forth. However, in getting it fixed, it is reddit that did it, because the "doing it" was getting the high-profile attention of someone who could fix the problem, which requires a reddit-level audience.

Similarly, if a newspaper publishes something about how a local company hurt a customer, it's the clout of the newspaper that "did it", not the customer.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#219

Post by koolba »

justinlaster wrote: post #213
koolba wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed it's hard for that to ever happen when your mods immediately ban anyone who doesn't fit a certain mold. That statement is false. Nobody is banned from that subreddit for being of a "certain mold". The rules for the subreddit are on the sidebar and they only ban users who speak ill of their candidate of choice. The same is true on the /r/SandersForPresident and /r/HillaryClinton. If you went on either of thos…

I was banned without ever having ventured there, and then proceeded to be called a "faggot cuck" (presumably because of my posts to /r/gaybros) by the moderator. So it most certainly is not false. There are many others who echo this scenario across reddit. >If you went on either of those and insulted Sanders, Clinton, or their supporters, you'd get banned on there as well. Funny, I was not very kind towards Clinton.…

> I was banned without ever having ventured there, and then proceeded to be called a "faggot cuck" (presumably because of my posts to /r/gaybros) by the moderator. So it most certainly is not false. There are many others who echo this scenario across reddit.

Perhaps a rogue moderator did this but AFAIK it's not the policy of the sub as a whole. I'd suggest messaging them (the moderator list) if you'd want to get unbanned.

> Funny, I was not very kind towards Clinton. Still can post in /r/HillaryClinton.

Then you must be an outlier. Forget insulting her personally, I know of people that were banned for being Democrats that disagreed with her specific policy positions. I'm not even arguing that's against any rule. Each subreddit is free to come up with there own rules for what content is acceptable.

What I take issue with is preemptive banning. At best it forces people to live a digital double life with multiple personas. If you're following the local rules then there's no reason they should be banning you for opinions you've expressed elsewhere.

> You can certainly argue that, the problem is having some kind of substantive evidence to base this claim on.

Create a dummy account, post a hello to /r/The_Donald and them see what happens. It's definitely real and goes well beyond the purely anti-Trump subreddits. You'll get banned from entirely unrelated non-political subreddits as well. The funny thing is you won't realize it until you go to them and try to reply to a post.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#220

Post by squidfood »

kbenson wrote: post #182

> Admin KeyserSosa Is it me, or is it weird to see what are likely a names chosen when someone is adolescent or at least interacting in a non-professional capacity making their way into professional contexts, especially when they refer to another person, real or fictional (even if slightly changed)? Are the corporate executives of the next generation going to go by the aliases the likes of BillGaytes and BarackOsama?

Having inappropriately-named users acting professionally is an acclaimed and talked-about part of the reddit "charm". You may or may not find it actually charming.
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