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

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#31

Post by jlarocco » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:06 PM UTC

sciurus wrote: post #29

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?

I think the point is that there's no reason The Atlantic should post their own links. If the site is truly popular with Reddit users then some "regular" user will submit the interesting links sooner or later.

I'm not saying I agree with it, or that I think banning the entire domain makes sense, but that's my understanding of it.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#32

Post by planetguy » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:07 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…

I love this decision just for the cold-hearted Keyser Soze game theory of it. It's a classic shoot-the-hostages-first move.

It's not just about these publications, it's about whatever other publications are gonna show up next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, with ever-increasing levels of sophistication in attempting to game reddit. Reddit can fight the threat while it remains small in scope, but they can't fight it if it really gets big.

So they demonstrate a willingness to annihilate their opponents, even if it's quite costly to themselves. If you can do that, pretty soon you won't have any opponents.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#33

Post by eli » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:08 PM UTC

This is already being discussed http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108115

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#34

Post by pdubs » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:21 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…

The thing is that, according to the DailyDot article that's been posted around here, the account that lead to The Atlantic being banned was posting hundreds of links to The Atlantic and their subsidiaries. What's non-trivial about detecting that?

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#35

Post by mistercow » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:22 PM UTC

x1 wrote: post #16

This is the fundamental problem with a static point system. Up/Down votes should be personal and entirely void from the process of agree/disagree. It should be about pushing individuals closer or farther away from your perspective. I'd like to see something like Reddit that was more like a network. As you "downvote" something or someone you push yourself away from that network. As you upvote something/someone you pus…

>I'd like to see something like Reddit that was more like a network. As you "downvote" something or someone you push yourself away from that network. As you upvote something/someone you push yourself closer to that network.

If I understand you correctly, you could still game that; it would just take more effort. Instead of selling accounts with high karma, people would sell accounts centered in large clusters of users.

Also, I'm not positive, but I think the system you're describing is computationally prohibitive.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#36

Post by x1 » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:35 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #35

x1 wrote: post #16

This is the fundamental problem with a static point system. Up/Down votes should be personal and entirely void from the process of agree/disagree. It should be about pushing individuals closer or farther away from your perspective. I'd like to see something like Reddit that was more like a network. As you "downvote" something or someone you push yourself away from that network. As you upvote something/someone you pus…

>I'd like to see something like Reddit that was more like a network. As you "downvote" something or someone you push yourself away from that network. As you upvote something/someone you push yourself closer to that network. If I understand you correctly, you could still game that; it would just take more effort. Instead of selling accounts with high karma, people would sell accounts centered in large clusters of user…

>computationally prohibitive

yup it'd be a nightmare :)

I'm not sure if you could even sell users with large clusters... as the only way to generate a large cluster would be to generate more fake users around that cluster. So you'd have a large cluster of fake users. That or make good content that people cluster around... but then again that isn't gaming the system, just putting content next to people that want it.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#37

Post by starrhorne » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:40 PM UTC

pdubs wrote: post #34

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…

The thing is that, according to the DailyDot article that's been posted around here, the account that lead to The Atlantic being banned was posting hundreds of links to The Atlantic and their subsidiaries. What's non-trivial about detecting that?

It becomes non trivial to detect when they start spamming using 100s of aged accounts run through proxies. You can detect that lots of people are submitting stories to the atlantic, but it looks organic.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#38

Post by mistercow » Thu, Jun 14, 2012, 12:04 AM UTC

x1 wrote: post #36

mistercow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd like to see something like Reddit that was more like a network. As you "downvote" something or someone you push yourself away from that network. As you upvote something/someone you push yourself closer to that network. If I understand you correctly, you could still game that; it would just take more effort. Instead of selling accounts with high karma, people would sell accounts centered in large clusters of user…

>computationally prohibitive yup it'd be a nightmare :) I'm not sure if you could even sell users with large clusters... as the only way to generate a large cluster would be to generate more fake users around that cluster. So you'd have a large cluster of fake users. That or make good content that people cluster around... but then again that isn't gaming the system, just putting content next to people that want it.

>as the only way to generate a large cluster would be to generate more fake users around that cluster.

Oh no, people are very predictable, especially at the median. Getting a reddit account to a high karma score is trivially easy, and getting to the center of a dense cluster in relative networked karma system would be similarly easy.

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#39

Post by spambot » Thu, Jun 14, 2012, 1:45 AM UTC

Zarel wrote: post #22

benologist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's wrong because employees are getting paid to submit as many links as possible to increase page views.

Here's another bostinno spammer: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dmcgregor

Re: Reddit is now banning entire high-quality domains

#40

Post by benologist » Thu, Jun 14, 2012, 4:54 AM UTC

spambot wrote: post #39

Zarel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's wrong because employees are getting paid to submit as many links as possible to increase page views. Here's another bostinno spammer: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dmcgregor

That really is just one of dozens... pg went through and hellbanned a bunch of them a while ago but they've started up again with a handful of accounts already.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3929297