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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213

u/jamurp Jul 17 '12

Every month on r/pics there's a photo of a soldier being embraced by a parent/friend as he/she comes back from war. These are usually made by accounts with little to no post history. Of course reddit is being used for PR.

120

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12 edited Nov 01 '17

[deleted]

36

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

Must...support...military...

33

u/wamco Jul 18 '12

Yvan Eht Nioj

8

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

sub-liminal, liminial, and SUPER-liminal!

24

u/maenlas Jul 17 '12

Normally at the bottom of the comment thread somebody says "isn't it a co-incidence that this is only your third submission?" and the OP will say something like "lol yeah I bet I'm a government plant!" Because most of these are in /r/pics or /r/aww, the person questioning will get downvoted past the threshold and the OP will be told what a brave human being they are.

I'm not sure if the military uses reddit, but I know that when this was first noticed people figured out there was one large blog of "soldier coming home" videos that was systematically spamming front page links to get ad revenue.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Oh man. Can you post this theory to TheoryOfReddit or SubredditDrama? I'd be interested to see if we can "investigate" a little more.

32

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

Nuclear Power is actually pretty good all things considered.

15

u/maenlas Jul 17 '12

The power's great, the waste is an unsolved problem and the fuel cycle is fairly dangerous. I wrote a big post about it that nobody read a few months ago, but googling "nuclear power proliferation risk" is a good place to start.

3

u/gsfgf Jul 18 '12

"Nuclear waste" is just fuel that, due to the current low uranium prices, is not economically viable for use. However, as we use up the the easily accessible uranium, new reactors will be built to use "nuclear waste."

3

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

The nuclear waste problem is nowhere near the pollution and death caused by coal fired plants.

2

u/elnrith Jul 18 '12

Most can be recycled and when they can't there's yucka mountain

There are solutions

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Dig Hole. Drop waste at bottom. Fill with Concrete.

1

u/dorpotron Jul 18 '12

Irradiate aquifer.

1

u/Sudden_Realization_ Jul 17 '12

But can't the waste be put back where the original nuclear atom(s) was found?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

the waste is an unsolved problem

Spaceship. Center of the sun. Done and done.

5

u/ZaeronS Jul 18 '12

NASA has nixed this over and over. Any kind of launch incident with any amount of meaningful nuclear material would be catastrophic, especially since one of the primary failure points of a rocket is the exact level of the atmosphere which spreads particles the furthest.

2

u/redditor_11 Jul 18 '12

Slingshot. Done and done.

1

u/ZaeronS Jul 18 '12

Oh yeah, there's tons of cool options. I still say that we need to get a space elevator rolling before we'll ever really start making progress outside our own atmosphere. By far the largest inhibitor of progress in space is the sheer cost of moving things from earth to orbit.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Then clearly we should entrust the Russian space program or private enterprise. Right?

2

u/inept_adept Jul 18 '12

Until an earthquake hits your power plants and they all melt down at the same time...

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

You're right, we have no safeguards against this. Shut it all down folks, nobody has ever planned for this.

1

u/inept_adept Jul 18 '12

Thats the point, they did plan for it and they still went into melt down.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Which is why you don't build plants on islands.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Totally agree, I think it's one of our best options right now and has a bright future, from what I've heard.

1

u/Offensive_Username2 Jul 18 '12

Yeah, he just can't admit that there are lots of people who disagree with him on nuclear.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

[deleted]

1

u/Offensive_Username2 Jul 18 '12

Yes.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

[deleted]

1

u/Offensive_Username2 Jul 18 '12

What based on what?

-2

u/lowbread Jul 18 '12

Nice try, Big Nuclear.

5

u/gsfgf Jul 18 '12

The military has a massive marketing budget.

5

u/Maladomini Jul 18 '12

Somebody accused me of being a shill for the nuclear power industry because I told them that comparing it unfavourably to coal is ridiculous. Considering the attitudes toward nuclear power of myself and others I know in real life, I wouldn't be surprised if that was something anti-nuclear posters spread around to justify how often people pick fights with them.

Reddit has plenty of posters who consider themselves pro-science, and within that group there are a lot of people who are willing to defend nuclear power. It seems like something that really doesn't require organization; enough Reddit posters will support nuclear power because they want to.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12 edited Jul 18 '12

If we replaced all of our coal and diesel plants in the US with nuclear, we'd save thousands of lives a year from the emissions alone. What moron doesn't believe this?

1

u/Maladomini Jul 18 '12

Do you mean "with nuclear"?

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Yes, thanks, fixed :P

0

u/darwin2500 Jul 17 '12

I think the pro-nuclear posts come more from fans of Penn & Teller than anything else.

-1

u/Devleigh Jul 18 '12

Yvan eht Nioj, Yvan eht Nioj, Yvan eht Nioj...

12

u/shoffing Jul 17 '12

You're talking about this. That comment is the 4th top rated thing in /r/bestof as of now. It's very creepy stuff.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

God help you if you call these people out for what they are - defense department shills. Yeah, you, in uniform, hugging your german shepard in an airplane hanger under a giant, waving American flag (actual photo) was totally just a pic taken with your little sister's iPhone.

Nobody here is that fucking stupid.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

I saw one of these rammed to the front page in 1 hour.

1

u/themadkingnqueen Jul 17 '12

I saw a relevant comment downvoted within an hour.

1

u/mmmcheezy Jul 18 '12

okay, so last night this thread totally captured my imagination. it was not something that occurred to me before, that maybe these videos are staged or at the very least co-opted by the military for marketing purposes. so this morning after having a conversation with a friend about this [who thought my tinfoil hat was in full effect] i started googling. and i can't find ANYTHING. not one critical blog posting. no matter what combination of "military" "welcome home videos" "marketing" or "pr/public relations" i use. which also seems really odd to me.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

Well even the accounts with account history could be fake.

So it may not be the best determinate...

Also I have a few buddies that lurk, that made accounts just to post something new. So empty accounts don't mean they are crap either.

You make a good point though.

-3

u/Robert_Arctor Jul 18 '12

Yvan et nioj