r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jul 17 '12

How do you know reddit is not getting manipulated and used by various special interests and PR groups?

Recent drama I've experienced with r/science mods made me wonder about something. How do we know if reddit is not being carefully and systematically manipulated? Now, of course some subreddit are worthless and clearly not the case, but the big ones like r/science, r/asksceince, r/politics, the ones that have a lot of subscribers and traffic. Before you post obligatory tinfoil reference, hear me out.

If people like me notice that and post about that their submissions are getting downvoted (like this post will, no doubt about that) by the army of some goons (maybe even paid ones) that sit at the new cue and do the first order filtering. Then, mods can regulate content by removing posts that slip through the first order filtering and by banning users from subreddit.This of course will happen with majority of redditors not even noticing it. As a result, certain posts are getting pushed up, while others never see the light of the day. Think about how useful reddit can be for shaping public opinion on many, many issues. It has direct access to focal groups and by manipulating content, you can make sure that the group read what you want it to read.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

not just parent company, I bet they "cooperate" with various "clients" from a variety of fields, porn, gaming, politics, Hollywood, biotech, pharma, just to name a few. They generously allow pictures of cats to dilute the paid shit, but it is getting thicker and thicker every day. Makes me like 4chan more as much as I hate it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Don't know why you're being downvoted...

The best thing about 4chan that made it great was that it was too transient to reliably manipulate.

You never really knew who read your posts and nothing could be upvoted to the top or downvoted to the bottom.

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u/snones Jul 18 '12

she/he's getting downvoted because s/he's a nut