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I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

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Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#11

Post by MaxBarraclough »

dgritsko wrote: post #3

A couple of years back, it was announced that the trailer for one of the new Star Wars movies would debut during halftime of Monday Night Football. There's always a rush to post stuff like links to new movie trailers "first" on Reddit, so as to get the most fake internet points. I guessed that the trailer would probably get added to the Star Wars YouTube page at around the same time it aired on TV, so I wrote a scrip…

> it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit

I think you put in far more effort in writing that script, than the average karma-farmer puts in.

Far easier to just repost photos without attribution.

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#12

Post by Jtsummers »

gadders wrote: post #6
dgritsko wrote: post #3

A couple of years back, it was announced that the trailer for one of the new Star Wars movies would debut during halftime of Monday Night Football. There's always a rush to post stuff like links to new movie trailers "first" on Reddit, so as to get the most fake internet points. I guessed that the trailer would probably get added to the Star Wars YouTube page at around the same time it aired on TV, so I wrote a scrip…

I'm sure you could do similar with certain blogs and posting to HN. EG PG's blog, anything written by Patio11 etc.

HN is small enough that timing matters even more than on Reddit. So a script would have to take that into consideration. HN also works against duplicate posts, so a post at midnight US eastern time wouldn't see much activity, and then reposts later in the morning would only add to its upvotes rather than getting new (better timed) listings.

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#13

Post by oh_sigh »

I know that spammers, PR firms, marketing teams, etc will buy accounts with good karma(for how much, I don't know). I wonder approximately how much $/hour a good karma farmer could generate with techniques like this? Could it be an alternative to mechanical turk for some?

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#14

Post by IggleSniggle »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #7
dgritsko wrote: post #3

A couple of years back, it was announced that the trailer for one of the new Star Wars movies would debut during halftime of Monday Night Football. There's always a rush to post stuff like links to new movie trailers "first" on Reddit, so as to get the most fake internet points. I guessed that the trailer would probably get added to the Star Wars YouTube page at around the same time it aired on TV, so I wrote a scrip…

> But it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit, and how useless it is as a proxy for "trust" or "reputation" or anything other than what it is - fake internet points. More than fake internet points, it's a distilled popularity contest, and we know popular people isn't necessarily trustworthy. Reddit calling it karma gives it more credit than it deserves.

Reddit calling it karma is a throwback to its early days when "upvote posts that meaningfully contribute real value to the discussion, even if you disagree with the content" was a closely held ideal of the reddit community. Sort of closer to how Stack Overflow upvotes are currently intended.

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#15

Post by gadders »

Jtsummers wrote: post #12
gadders wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you could do similar with certain blogs and posting to HN. EG PG's blog, anything written by Patio11 etc.

HN is small enough that timing matters even more than on Reddit. So a script would have to take that into consideration. HN also works against duplicate posts, so a post at midnight US eastern time wouldn't see much activity, and then reposts later in the morning would only add to its upvotes rather than getting new (better timed) listings.

But if you were polling, say, PG's blog and posted it here within minutes of it being published you'd accrue all the benefits of the dupes, no?

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#16

Post by minimaxir »

This is a reminder that account karma on Reddit and Hacker News doesn't really mean anything and doesn't make your posts more valuable, or give it any additional benefit in the algorithms. (I say that as someone with 153k Reddit karma and a user ranked #57 on the HN leaderboards: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders )

Going truly viral on Reddit/HN is still ultimately random as well, which is why reposting (within reasonable amounts) is allowed on both platforms.

As someone who works on social media automation/tooling for their day job (2018 rough overview of my work: https://tech.buzzfeed.com/how-were-building-superpowers-for-... ), I do agree that ML/AI can be helpful to aid human curation, but definitely not a magic end-all-be-all that growth hackers nowadays want it to be. Simple heuristics can be very powerful as well.

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#17

Post by Jtsummers »

gadders wrote: post #15
Jtsummers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is small enough that timing matters even more than on Reddit. So a script would have to take that into consideration. HN also works against duplicate posts, so a post at midnight US eastern time wouldn't see much activity, and then reposts later in the morning would only add to its upvotes rather than getting new (better timed) listings.

But if you were polling, say, PG's blog and posted it here within minutes of it being published you'd accrue all the benefits of the dupes, no?

Yes, but limited. It'd depend on whether the mods reupped the post the next morning so it could have a chance of hitting the front page or if a dupe managed to get through (which does happen). Either because the system permits it, or because the submitter added a #nonce to the end.

If the mods reupped it, then it'd work out really well for the original submitter. If karma mattered, I suppose it'd be worth trying a few times to see how it worked out.

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#18

Post by gadders »

Jtsummers wrote: post #17
gadders wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you were polling, say, PG's blog and posted it here within minutes of it being published you'd accrue all the benefits of the dupes, no?

Yes, but limited. It'd depend on whether the mods reupped the post the next morning so it could have a chance of hitting the front page or if a dupe managed to get through (which does happen). Either because the system permits it, or because the submitter added a #nonce to the end. If the mods reupped it, then it'd work out really well for the original submitter. If karma mattered, I suppose it'd be worth trying a fe…

Yeah, I'm not going to bother with it just for imaginary internet points, but I bet if you wanted to take it further you could analyse the top sites that hit the front page and poll all of them.

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#19

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

oh_sigh wrote: post #13

I know that spammers, PR firms, marketing teams, etc will buy accounts with good karma(for how much, I don't know). I wonder approximately how much $/hour a good karma farmer could generate with techniques like this? Could it be an alternative to mechanical turk for some?

How do you know they purchase reddit accounts?

Re: I got 10k post karma on Reddit with (and without) fast.ai

#20

Post by FalconSensei »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #14
ASalazarMX wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it did make me think about just how easy it is to farm karma on Reddit, and how useless it is as a proxy for "trust" or "reputation" or anything other than what it is - fake internet points. More than fake internet points, it's a distilled popularity contest, and we know popular people isn't necessarily trustworthy. Reddit calling it karma gives it more credit than it deserves.

Reddit calling it karma is a throwback to its early days when "upvote posts that meaningfully contribute real value to the discussion, even if you disagree with the content" was a closely held ideal of the reddit community. Sort of closer to how Stack Overflow upvotes are currently intended.

> even if you disagree with the content

yeah, the intention was good, but that's not how it works, unfortunately.

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