Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#41

Post by dowjones »

grzm wrote: post #31
dowjones wrote: post #24

And HN and other tech sites are somehow exempt from this phenomenon? With billions of dollars at stake at Uber and its various competitors, is it impossible to think, for example, that Susan Fowler had professional authoring help, or was offered compensation to publish her recent blog post? Or that paid/professional/fake commenters downvoted, attacked, and drowned out any voice who simply requested documentation, or…

Without substantiation of any of these types of things occurring, it actively destroys discussion to engage in speculation of them, particularly online. People are left with no good faith upon which to have constructive discourse.

I agree with you. Which is why the entire Susan Fowler discussion and subsequent holier-than-thou proclamations (i.e. Mitch Kapor) are odious, since there is currently zero substantiation of any of her claims.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#42

Post by [deleted] »

existencebox wrote: post #6

Previous 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))

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#43

Post by sfaxon »

mrfusion wrote: post #15

If you were designing Reddit today what would you do to prevent this kind of stuff?

There have been a few articles claiming bots are being used on Twitter to impact trending topics. One solution I talked to a friend about was having a yearly subscription fee to make it less cost effective to create hundreds of fake accounts. Of course hitting a critical mass of users would be very difficult. And even if the service did become wildly popular, and trusted, it would only increase the value for companies to game the system.

I think the general population is becoming more aware of how intrusive ad networks are, possibly moving the needle on making a pay service more viable. But I don't think I know any non-tech people that would be willing to pay for a Twitter/Facebook/Reddit type service today.

So, I have no good solution. But I sure hope someone figures out a good solution. The whole concept of "pick your own truth" has some terrifying consequences.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#44

Post by grzm »

dowjones wrote: post #41
grzm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without substantiation of any of these types of things occurring, it actively destroys discussion to engage in speculation of them, particularly online. People are left with no good faith upon which to have constructive discourse.

I agree with you. Which is why the entire Susan Fowler discussion and subsequent holier-than-thou proclamations (i.e. Mitch Kapor) are odious, since there is currently zero substantiation of any of her claims.

by "types of things" I mean speculation of shillage/astroturfing as to discussions on HN, not the content of the articles themselves. Those are two different issues, and to conflate them means we can't discuss them at all.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#45

Post by r_smart »

tptacek wrote: post #18
anon2264 wrote: post #14

Reddit has some pretty extreme heavy handed political censorship. All Republican posts from the main Republican subreddit (the_donald) are censored from the front page (what most read). Techdirt is censored from r/news and r/worldnews and some of the other main subs. And for pretty repulsive apparent reason... All of the posts from r/conspiracy about the DNC corruption and subversion that was proven were censored. Wi…

Objection! Claim that /r/the_donald is the main "Republican" subreddit assumes facts not in evidence.

I think /r/the_donald is the largest subreddit on the site at this point. It's openly in support of the Republican president. So that seems fair grounds for the claim.

On the other hand, a lot of Republicans don't like said president, and it's been observed that he's kind of a democrat from 20 - 30 years ago rather than an actual Republican. But then, a lot of Republican voters think Republicans aren't Republicans, hence the RINO thing.

Seems to cut either way to me.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#46

Post by anon2264 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #27
anon2264 wrote: post #14

Reddit has some pretty extreme heavy handed political censorship. All Republican posts from the main Republican subreddit (the_donald) are censored from the front page (what most read). Techdirt is censored from r/news and r/worldnews and some of the other main subs. And for pretty repulsive apparent reason... All of the posts from r/conspiracy about the DNC corruption and subversion that was proven were censored. Wi…

> Reddit has some pretty extreme heavy handed political censorship. > Techdirt is censored from r/news and r/worldnews and some of the other main subs. You are confusing "reddit" and "users of reddit who have created subreddits and run them as they see fit".

Those subs are the two of the top 5 most popular subs on reddit, you can bet management is closely involved in managing those subs. However You make it sound like I was referring to some fringe community.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#48

Post by TheCapn »

hacker_9 wrote: post #7

It'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…

The political subreddits are almost a weird case study of trends and tactics right now. If you pay close enough attention to /r/politics over the last month or so you saw general tones of the stories being raised to the top: "Trump is being manipulated like a puppet", "Trump is too stupid to be president", "Trump is sabotaging ____".

And neither title is all that surprising withing the context of the echo chamber that exists there, but for a little while you'd see the same types of posts just circulating the page for days when suddenly the entire direction went to the next phase or tactic, there was actually quite little variety in my opinion.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#49

Post by gmarx »

vostok wrote: post #9
hacker_9 wrote: post #7

It'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.

I think he means the headline seems generated to get clicks and the underlying implied article isn't expected to contain any news.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#50

Post by hacker_9 »

codingdave wrote: post #8

I'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, th…

> If you watch carefully

I thinks the problem; many browsers don't care to fact check, or even click through to the articles underneath. Indeed I just scroll through the list a few times throughout the day, and might click on anything that sounds interesting. But with the constant and obvious BS it all gets a bit tiresome. If there was an alternative site where they had rules in place to deal with the problem, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Post reply on HN