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Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

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Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#241

Post by kbenson »

DanBC wrote: post #235
ovidnis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well feel free to correct him then.

What's the point? Why bother when we know what the response is going to be?

Is that directed towards me? If so, please don't assume I'm acting in bad faith, or am unprepared to to be open to this discussion. I'm just honestly perplexed at what "notion that men are psychologically torturing women just by enacting common male body movement patterns in the workplace" could be referring to.

> Why bother when we know what the response is going to be?

Perhaps I should have refrained from getting out in front of a possible reply, but I'm really interested in what that statement is referring to, and beyond what I speculated, I'm completely clueless as to what it could be, and I would rather be aware of a way behavior of mine might negatively impact others. If it is what I speculated, I'm prepared to have what I consider a substantive discussion on about that topic.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#242

Post by eli »

xnull2guest wrote: post #185
eli wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked at how many people are so upset. Maybe you should be PGP signing your posts if their integrity is your top concern.

So you're a media dsitribution contractor in Washington, DC and you don't see how covert editing of social media posts is upsetting, overreach, abuse, or illegitimate? And you're making fun of expectations of the integrity of social media posts?

I think editing critical Reddit comments as part of a prank or maybe as a jokey form of retribution is an extremely ill-advised and boneheaded move. I don't know if it was abusive and it was hardly covert, but it was definitely not cool. I doubt Spez will make that mistake again.

But did it tell us anything new? Are we surprised that Reddit admins have the technical ability to edit records in their own database? (As do the admins of other social media sites...)

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#243

Post by eli »

talmand wrote: post #229
eli wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked at how many people are so upset. Maybe you should be PGP signing your posts if their integrity is your top concern.

How would one PGP sign their post that prevent malicious editing after the fact?

If someone else edited your post, the signature would no longer be valid. So the attacker could remove the signature or sign it with a different key or leave it alone and hope no one notices, but they couldn't re-sign with your key since they wouldn't have access to your private key file.

Public key cryptography is really neat if you haven't played around with it before.

I was being half-facetious, but if you want to be able to prove that a post is actually written by you, you probably want something like PGP.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#244

Post by HCIdivision17 »

dang wrote: post #239
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not even all tech! I've actually started spending more time on Reddit because it's more interesting in general. When a post percolates up here about motorcycles or manufacturing or some cool analytics on an obscure topic, I have a great time. But they're not common, and there's always some StackOverflow-style "this doesn't belong on HackerNews". (But they also seem to pull people out of the woodwork like gangbust…

You two should post such stories here, then. They're explicitly on topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

To be sure, and you've done a masterful job encouraging it! I usually see you there to prop up the cool stuff, and I certainly appreciate it.

And in full fairness, when I made that comment, a whole bunch of stories were non-tech related, but interesting, so I probably should retract my comment =/. (One was about bread!)

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#245

Post by HCIdivision17 »

jonlucc wrote: post #155
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll see if I can find it, but there was a comment in an AMA on the topic where someone asked if they have a test server and they said no. Not because they're goofy noobs at the business, either, but apparently it's just too impractical. A lot of the testing really needs the load to be properly exercised, and simulating that is sufficiently hard to probably not be worth the effort.

So this update? Updating on Production, baby!

Edit: I bet they do have test servers, but nothing full scale. Which really may emphasize your point more: I would love to know how they tested it and merged it in when there's only so much they can do offline!

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#246

Post by HCIdivision17 »

eli wrote: post #242
xnull2guest wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're a media dsitribution contractor in Washington, DC and you don't see how covert editing of social media posts is upsetting, overreach, abuse, or illegitimate? And you're making fun of expectations of the integrity of social media posts?

I think editing critical Reddit comments as part of a prank or maybe as a jokey form of retribution is an extremely ill-advised and boneheaded move. I don't know if it was abusive and it was hardly covert, but it was definitely not cool. I doubt Spez will make that mistake again. But did it tell us anything new? Are we surprised that Reddit admins have the technical ability to edit records in their own database? (As…

It seems Reddit admins don't have that ability, if I read the thread correctly. Rather, Spez helped build the system and just knew how to manage the prank. It wasn't even really a backdoor thing, he just had the know-how to do it (like being able to log into the database and update a row).

That's the confusing bit about the outrage to me: I think people expected it to be secure and tight, and ... well... I'm not sure what led to that conclusion. I can easily imaging that until Spez pulled that stunt, they just figured it was too hard to screw with and that the databases were sufficiently secure. After all, the techs have full access to the machines*. It's like being surprised that your ActiveDirectory admin can change your password at will.

But you can bet your booties they'll try to lock it down a bit better now. Wouldn't expect it to be the TarSnap of forums, though. Reddit's not exactly a bastion of authenticity :P

EDIT: What I mean here is that someone has physical access to the machines, right? Or at least some amount of root? Or can log in? I guess to me it's like being outraged that the guy who targets the Hubble telescope abuses his position and points it at Earth or something as a joke; huge amount of time and money on the line and it would be a dumb thing, but it's also pretty harmless. Might still get fired for it, though.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#247

Post by kbenson »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #224
amitdeshwar wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "men are psychologically torturing women just by enacting common male body movement patterns in the workplace" ?

This will probably be detached for being off-topic, but until then... Men and women move in very different ways due to gender policing. Things like how much you are allowed to/required to move your hips side to side are different for men and women. Sometimes in the workplace women are put in positions of less influence and less pay. They experience repeated instances of being passed over, thwarted, harassed, etc, whi…

Oh, just noticed you followed up here which. of course is where you should have followed up. I just wasn't looking in the right spot.

> Things like how much you are allowed to/required to move your hips side to side are different for men and women. I had interpreted "common male body movement patterns" as movement patterns unique to males, which severely limits the possibilities of what they could be, which is why I had speculated on movements regarding adjusting the crotch area. Given how I had misinterpreted that statement to limit the possibilities, that's the only thing I could think of.

Okay, if you're talking about double standards, and how a woman that moves her hips more might be seen a different way than one that doesn't, and this may affect perception of her, I totally agree. That's a double standard issue, to a degree, and it's not okay.

> The next day you walk into her cube with your male movement, and she's thinking "is this one on his side too?" It's possible that a more female-typical mode of moving and entering would've been less triggering for her even on an otherwise male body.

I don't really understand this. How is your mode of walking, which is natural, or any other feature, such as facial hair or just the fact that you are indeed male, anything you can help? It may sound like victim blaming to say that I think in this instance, it's really the responsibility of her to make sure she's not projecting her feelings onto innocent people, but I don't think it is. I'm not sure how this situation is any different than a white man that feels threatened by a black man one day, and the next day a separate black man approaches him casually and he feels threatened.

That is, I accept that some women, and men, might have exactly these feelings, but I'm not sure that it's the responsibility of the other party to solve that problem. Is that the point you were making, that just accepting that this situation is possible is not allowed by the point of view of those forums, or is it a step farther, and it's the idea that this is the responsibility of the other party (the man in your example, the black man in my example) to somehow change their natural state to address this? I understand the former, even if I don't know enough about Voat to assess whether I agree about them, but I'm not sure the reasoning behind the latter, if that's something you are trying to express.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#248

Post by DanBC »

kbenson wrote: post #241
DanBC wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point? Why bother when we know what the response is going to be?

Is that directed towards me? If so, please don't assume I'm acting in bad faith, or am unprepared to to be open to this discussion. I'm just honestly perplexed at what "notion that men are psychologically torturing women just by enacting common male body movement patterns in the workplace" could be referring to. > Why bother when we know what the response is going to be? Perhaps I should have refrained from getting o…

> Is that directed towards me?

No.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#249

Post by rfrank »

Terr_ wrote: post #212
rfrank wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So every sub is vote manipulating by nature of being a group that votes together on specific posts? I see. Don't break the site from the sidebar would have been a better option.

Re: Reddit overhauls upvote algorithm to thwart cheaters

#250

Post by Terr_ »

rfrank wrote: post #249
Terr_ wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So every sub is vote manipulating by nature of being a group that votes together on specific posts? I see. Don't break the site from the sidebar would have been a better option.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his internet-ego depends on his not understanding it."

If you refuse to see the distinction between vote-manipulation and organic vote behavior, then I think we're done here.

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