Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#21

Post by redthrowaway » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:22 PM UTC

greenyoda wrote: post #13

Here's an article that was posted in that Reddit thread that explains what The Atlantic was doing on Reddit: http://www.dailydot.com/society/atlantic-slaterhearst-jared-...

Thanks for linking to this. Contrary to what the general opinion seems to be in this thread, this was not a matter of reddit banning high-quality content because they didn't want it on the site. It was a matter of them banning an admittedly high-quality domain that nonetheless intentionally broke reddit's submission rules.

Spamming good links doesn't make you any less of a spammer, just a less onerous one.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#22

Post by Zarel » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

benologist wrote: post #19

paulhauggis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was happening on HN, the majority of domains would be banned. When did this start being a "shady business practice"?

This is happening on HN - bostinno.com literally has dozens of accounts, macobserver.com, bgr.com, extremetech.com and a bunch of other sites all have a handful of accounts each. A lot seems to slip through the cracks.

I think you're missing paulhauggis's point - by "if this was happening", he means "if we banned domains that were being submitted by paid marketers". His point is that doing so shouldn't be considered a shady business practice.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#23

Post by furyofantares » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

taylorbuley wrote: post #4

pdubs wrote: post #3

BusinessWeek.com, Phys.org, ScienceDaily.com, TheAtlantic.com are all banned sitewide? The Atlantic is a pretty well-respected publication, as is BusinessWeek. Why a content aggregator would ban actual content is beyond me.

There's a potential issue in that Reddit is owned by Conde, technically a competitor of The Atlantic, but I believe this to be the reason for TA's banning: http://www.dailydot.com/society/atlantic-slaterhearst-jared-...

reddit is not owned by Condé Nast as of September 2011, rather they are both owned by Advance Publications

http://blog.reddit.com/2011/09/independence.html

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#24

Post by SnydenBitchy » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

pdubs wrote: post #3

BusinessWeek.com, Phys.org, ScienceDaily.com, TheAtlantic.com are all banned sitewide? The Atlantic is a pretty well-respected publication, as is BusinessWeek. Why a content aggregator would ban actual content is beyond me.

When was the last time your typical redditor read anything from The Atlantic or Businessweek? On reddit, high-quality content bans itself.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#25

Post by pliny » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

adestefan wrote: post #15

I've lost a lot of respect for reddit over this decision. I'm okay with banning users or even IP blocks from posting or voting, but banning entire, legitimate domains because you can't create a valid anti-spam service is going too far.

This is simply extending the IRL justice system into the internet, where the point is mainly to create an incentive against committing crime (banning domains the spam reddit), rather than to directly prevent crime (implementing an effective anti-spam service).

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#26

Post by gjm11 » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:39 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #7

The Atlantic? That's one of the best news sources on the internet. The only thing I could guess there is that The Atlantic /requested/ this. Science Daily? Also a fantasic secondary-source for science news.

Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc.

ScienceDaily may be a very handy secondary source. It may be a great place to browse looking for what's been happening lately in the world of science. But if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily.

(I expect the actual reason why Reddit banned it is some sort of spammy malfeasance, which would be sufficient reason even if it were a first-rate purveyor of entirely original content. But, as it happens, it isn't.)

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#27

Post by wickeand000 » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:41 PM UTC

pdubs wrote: post #11

catch23 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TheAtlantic pays people to spam the reddit with content, and buys high karma accounts to vote up content. Essentially, the companies being banned are the ones with shady business practices.

So...? I guess I naturally assume that most companies with a marketing department try to get their content popular on social media. Sure some site users may break the ToS by trying to game it...so ban the user. A halfway-decent anti-gaming layer should handle stuff like this without an issue. It seems petty on Reddit's side to me.

I would assume their 'anti-gaming layer' is perfectly adequate. Admins and employees have stated multiple times that much time and effort goes into making sure that Reddit is run by actual users posting content they want to. This is affirmed by the fact that virtually none of the comments are of the style 'slj2wkvje Said: please review my site: w w w dot myxxxstuff dot c@m'

The automation becomes much less useful when real-live users are the issue. It's easy enough (and probably enjoyable) to spar with the onslaught of link-bots, but paid users (if such users really exist) create a problem which can't be solved programmatically.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#28

Post by lmkg » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:42 PM UTC

Seems a lot of people think Reddit should just "get better" at detecting this sort of stuff, as if effective anti-gaming systems are trivial to implement and will keep out an adaptable foe. If Reddit could wave a magic wand and make all the shady bullcrap vanish, I'm sure they would, but that's an unrealistic scenario.

It looks to me, Reddit simply doesn't want to get involved in a land war in Asia. Trying to tinker with the rewards systems means investing a greater and greater fraction of their resources to fighting opponents who are better-funded and adaptable, in an asymmetric fight that favors the attacker. Even if they could succeed, that comes at an opportunity cost of what they could have done to improve Reddit in ways that actually have an impact, instead of just treading water.

Perma-banning these domains could be the full strategy. The long-term strategy could also just be to negotiate with these domains, with these initial bans acting as the "No really, I'm fucking serious" threat that gives themj real leverage. I would prefer their strategy is the latter, but I wouldn't really blame them for picking the former either.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#29

Post by sciurus » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:43 PM UTC

greenyoda wrote: post #13

Here's an article that was posted in that Reddit thread that explains what The Atlantic was doing on Reddit: http://www.dailydot.com/society/atlantic-slaterhearst-jared-...

I'm curious what's actually undesirable about this? After reading that article, it seems like

* An employee of The Atlantic consistently submits their content to Reddit

* Those submissions are genuinely popular with Reddit users

Isn't this beneficial for both The Atlantic and Reddit?

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#30

Post by natesm » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

lmkg wrote: post #28

Seems a lot of people think Reddit should just "get better" at detecting this sort of stuff, as if effective anti-gaming systems are trivial to implement and will keep out an adaptable foe. If Reddit could wave a magic wand and make all the shady bullcrap vanish, I'm sure they would, but that's an unrealistic scenario. It looks to me, Reddit simply doesn't want to get involved in a land war in Asia. Trying to tinker…

Reddit presents themselves as a "platform for communities", not as a singular "community" (I'm paraphrasing kn0thing, I believe). This is directly in opposition to that ideal: previously, the administrators have only really interfered with, well, a bunch of subreddits targeted at pedophiles. Now, they're imposing blanket domain bans across every single Reddit community. I don't think that anyone would have a problem with allowing subreddit moderators to ban domains. I'd love to see image and meme hosts banned from almost everything to enforce high quality articles.

The Atlantic is a common sight on TrueReddit. I don't care if it was posted by an employee, because TrueReddit subscribers are pretty good about downvoting anything that doesn't fit. What I do care about is being able to read the great articles from The Atlantic that are upvoted on TrueReddit. However, the Reddit administrators have decided that I, and every other TrueReddit subscriber, shouldn't be allowed to anymore.

This is a fine technological decision, instead of spending years on heuristics, but it's implemented at the wrong level.