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Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

forbes.com

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Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#101

Post by CamelCaseName »

Slackwise wrote: post #82
mrfusion wrote: post #15

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

1. Make the website invite-only. 2. Give out X invites to everyone. 3. Every user now has a reference pointing to who invited them. 4. Require that you must vouch for the behavior of the people you invite, and their behavior may impact your participation. 5. Use tree traversal and analysis for pruning bad sections of the population of users. (i.e. If you see a series of bad users, go up the tree to find the source an…

Sounds a lot like how most private trackers work.

As you mentioned, it is too difficult to get off the ground with an invite system, but it may be interesting if an existing community became invite-only. Unfortunately the high risk of torpedoing your business is a deterrent.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#102

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#103

Post by CamelCaseName »

kneel wrote: post #80
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give an allowance of upvotes per day/week. More can be bought for very cheap, like 2 cents? Every time a "what would kill off Reddit" thread comes up limiting up/downvotes and paying for more comes up. I feel it would kill off Reddit. (But I'm not a Reddit fan so I wouldn't stand in their way if they wish to add it).

Yeah I think if the idea took off it could work but the actual payment screen and entering cc info would turn off >99% of users.

And the 1% of users it doesn't deter will be the ones who were previously manipulating results and can now do so for much cheaper.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#104

Post by anon2837134329 »

oconnore wrote: post #63
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…

In Susan Fowler vs. 5.5 billion dollar company, why on earth would you suspect that Susan is the one contracting with reputation management firms?

Lyft is a company that exists, and has a lot to gain.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#105

Post by ben174 »

Slackwise wrote: post #82
mrfusion wrote: post #15

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

1. Make the website invite-only. 2. Give out X invites to everyone. 3. Every user now has a reference pointing to who invited them. 4. Require that you must vouch for the behavior of the people you invite, and their behavior may impact your participation. 5. Use tree traversal and analysis for pruning bad sections of the population of users. (i.e. If you see a series of bad users, go up the tree to find the source an…

This actually sounds like it could work. If you do decide to build it, I'd love to help.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#106

Post by kakarot »

Zaheer wrote: post #11

Trend to watch in next few years: Phony Actors This same thing happens on all social networks - facebook, instagram, reddit, twitter, etc all have accounts on them that may have naturally grown and are now paid to post / influence content on their respective platforms. I've seen this first hand on Instagram how large of an effect it can have in promoting apps, products etc. Previously disclosing affiliations / paid p…

This is a lot more serious than most people think. And a lot farther along technologically. Most of what has been exposed in the wild so far just falls under Level 0 Character.

If you asked me how we could potentially combat this coming information implosion? I would say you fight fire with fire.

http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Persona_Development#Persona_...

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#107

Post by strgrd »

nix0n wrote: post #75
strgrd wrote: post #64

Link to this post in three years and ponder in its prescients... Web 3.0 will be born in the death of the heavily botted social networks. Reddit, Facebook & Instagram, Twitter... are all basically pay-to-win schemes at this point, benefiting greatly in terms of adoption from the grey market pay-for-likes botnets, where marketers and propagandists know they can make their content highly visible if they're willing to p…

I find it hard to believe people will complete captchas or give up anonymity in order to vote. The bot vs captcha arms race will continue, but I would be very surprised if the captchas started winning.

What will make Captchas valuable in the future is their ability to act as signatures, verifying you, the owner of the account, were physically present when you did whatever action required verification. They will not just be roadblocks, but checkpoints verifying not just that you are human, but that you are the person you claim to be.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#108

Post by pmoriarty »

This is a very old phenomenon called sockpuppetry[1]. Any online forum of sufficient size and popularity is bound to be a target of it. It's no surprise at all that Reddit would be targeted.

Most reputable forums try to deal with it somehow, but it's difficult to stamp it out completely -- especially if the site administrators are ever themselves compromised.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#109

Post by strgrd »

chadwittman wrote: post #81
strgrd wrote: post #64

Link to this post in three years and ponder in its prescients... Web 3.0 will be born in the death of the heavily botted social networks. Reddit, Facebook & Instagram, Twitter... are all basically pay-to-win schemes at this point, benefiting greatly in terms of adoption from the grey market pay-for-likes botnets, where marketers and propagandists know they can make their content highly visible if they're willing to p…

I think strgrd must be from the future, I strongly agree with your prediction of the future. There feels like there is an analogy to our civilization. We existed as very primal beings operating in a world of high anonymity. A real world with high anonymity meant a more dangerous environment (theft, murder, assault, etc). In order for us to congregate & live a collectively improved life, we decreased anonymity. We did…

chad, in regards to history and how the internet will play out, I think you have to look at the power accumulated by information disparities. These online social networks have integrated population-scale monitoring into their design. For the most part, the entire internet has adapted to monitoring the individual in terms of groups and populations. This population-scale knowledge has created a huge information disparity between the people, the social network businesses, and their governments. For the governments especially, the social networks provide a bird's-eye view of the world with macroscopic detail. This amount of knowledge is unprecedented, and the implications of governments operating on this knowledge in secret, I think, are not yet understood.

Re: Reddit is being manipulated by big financial services companies

#110

Post by wcarron »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #56
wcarron wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach is probably the most reasonable. Stackoverflow seems to have implemented it fairly well.

I can't agree. Stackoverflow does some things well, but there are reasons that it hasn't caught on outside a certain cohort who were either there first, or who are very dedicated to cultivating their karma. HN user jfc said it better here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7650975

I have to disagree. Those invested solely in cultivating karma are the reason to institute systems like "earned privileges". Any forum with a voting system will always be misused and abused by those who don't have the priority of the community in mind.

Moreover, jfc has valid points about negativity and unhelpful responses, but it remains anecdotal. As a counter, my own anecdotal experience has largely been positive on SO, and I rarely run into those problems. I am definitely not part of the cohort that was there first, and think it's a rather fair system. For example, preventing downvotes until a certain level of reputation is reached is a small check on those looking to farm karma by blanketing out competing answers. Obviously it isn't foolproof, but it at least ensures that you have actually contributed to the community at least a few times.

Perhaps his comment speaks more to the quality of the userbase than to the efficiency of the voting system?

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