Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
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Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#2I think it goes without saying that a social media site with millions of users and place 23 on the Alexa rankings is an interesting advertising platform, and that it happens on a regular basis and a large distributed scale across the platform.
The far more important problem in my opinion in this situation is to be able to differentiate a "normal" user submitted post from an advertisiement, a skill that is missing in 80% of today's youth:
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#3And I wonder which discussion forum isn't... the closer any site gets to money (example: stock discussions), the more is at worth with manipulative conversations.
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#4I don't understand why "financial services" are called out in the headline. They're being manipulated by shady digital marketing companies who have some financial clients among many others.
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#5IIRC didn't reddit use fake users and content when they launched?
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#6Previous discussion here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714159
(I would like to give a more substantive comment, so I'll leave the somewhat jaded perspective of rephrasing the title: " is being manipulated by ". The question I contemplate is where we draw the line of what social engagement is above the bar acceptability. (To answer my own question, I typically consider "disclosure" the answer to that))
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#7It's a shame this has happened. It used to that aggregated news was the best news because it wasn't opinionated. It also didn't need to focus on the big ticket items (murder, sex, drugs) like newspapers, as sales weren't a concern, so you have science, tech, and I kid you not, actual good news to read about!
But now with the pay-to-get-upvotes scams going on, we get utterly biased and even ridiculous stories constantly on the front page. And how to even start on the comments, which just read like blurbs to the title. A great example on the front page at the moment:
"Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy' says Navy Seal who brought down Osama Bin Laden".
I almost feel like this stuff is AI generated at this point, just throwing together keywords that get clicks. As someone across the pond looking in, the bias is laughable obvious. I just hope that more people realise that manipulation is present, and remember not to believe everything they read.
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#8I'm not sure how anyone can think discussions on reddit are not manipulated at this point. If you watch carefully, you see the exact same verbiage used from multiple accounts on the same topic used to steer conversations. And as new responses come up, there will be a multi-hour delay, then new verbiage will get posted simultaneously to multiple accounts. There is clearly behind-the-scenes writing efforts going on, then being distributed to accounts. And if I see this just as a casual observer, I can only imagine what you would find if you really dug deep.
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#9It's a shame this has happened. It used to that aggregated news was the best news because it wasn't opinionated. It also didn't need to focus on the big ticket items (murder, sex, drugs) like newspapers, as sales weren't a concern, so you have science, tech, and I kid you not, actual good news to read about! But now with the pay-to-get-upvotes scams going on, we get utterly biased and even ridiculous stories constant…
> "Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy' says Navy Seal who brought down Osama Bin Laden".
What is this an example of? This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that I would expect on the front page if there was no vote manipulation.
Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies
#10I think it goes without saying that a social media site with millions of users and place 23 on the Alexa rankings is an interesting advertising platform, and that it happens on a regular basis and a large distributed scale across the platform. The far more important problem in my opinion in this situation is to be able to differentiate a "normal" user submitted post from an advertisiement, a skill that is missing in…
It's not fair to call it a missing skill when the other side of that equation is a $500B+ industry of university-educated advertisers with decades of experience who are working to obfuscate the difference between ads and content, if not practice outright deception.
What exactly are "today's youth" supposed to know in the face of that?