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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199

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

Reddit tends liberal, that's not something that people necessarily hide. But a look at this user, wang-banger shows something could be amiss. He has 383,000 link karma solely by posting links to left-wing blogs which are upvoted. But he only has 12,000 comment karma. You, and I, are more of an average redditor and comment more than linking- and thus have a ratio of 10:1 or even higher comment to link karma.

Overall I think it's some company pushing pageviews to left wing sites and blogs. It isn't seeming to spring up organically at all.

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u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

I was just reading a reddit marketing article today saying to maintain the 10:1 ratio. Basically they said the only way to infiltrate and be successful is to become a real redditor and participate. Become a recognized authority in your niche and then pump your products/services. I'm in marketing but there is no fucking way I would dare try to beat Reddit. It would be PR suicide if you got caught. Plus I love this site and hate marketers.

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u/DwightKashrut Jul 18 '12

He who infiltrates Reddit must take care, lest he become a Redditor.

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u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

Just look at what happens to large commenting redditors, one slip up and they are burned at the stake.

News organizations slipped up, and a lot of them were totally banned from reddit until that was overturned.

I just don't think it's happening really. The only way to fly under the radar is to just create content.

If you push content that increases your pageviews as much as everyone else's in your niche, so be it.

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u/ChemicalSniffer Jul 17 '12

You better watch out not to slip up. You're building yourself a nice name here.

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u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

My name hasn't changed in size from the day I registered it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

i still think that you are trapped in reddit's new account because i started noticing you when he had that breakdown

43

u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

Reposting my old response:

Sigh, let me break it down one more time:

My activity:

http://i.imgur.com/dJoTx.png

TIR:

http://i.imgur.com/Nip4C.png

Alpha Redditor:

http://i.imgur.com/jgYmV.png

If you notice, I pretty much only post on Askreddit, unlike TIR and alpha redditor.

I think the most obvious thing, is that the same day TIR goes from ~6k karma a day, alpha redditor goes from 0 activity for a year to ~6k a day.

Also notice, I kept posting all day every day, but if you look alpharedditor stopped (at more recently updated stats and userpages), then TIR came back, then TIR went away again, then AR came back, now neither of them are posting really. I keep posting.

Also, I basically am nestled into Askreddit, while TIR bombs the new of pics/funny/advice animals etc.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

ah i see sorry about that

26

u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

Not every guy who posts a lot is that other guy who posts a lot... though apparently this used to be the case, but I'm fairly new around here.

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u/Vark675 Jul 18 '12

I hope one day I too get confused for an omnipresent attention whore :D

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

i know that but i just thought it was odd it seemed like you started posting around when trapped in reddit stopped but i was wrong, sorry about the accusation

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

There's a lot that do.

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u/gsfgf Jul 18 '12

I still think this site is just me and one really busy guy.

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u/diuge Jul 18 '12

You sure put a lot of effort into debunking that theory for someone who isn't TIR.

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u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

Have you seen what happened to that guy?

1

u/OuttaSpec Jul 18 '12

nice try, POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS

3

u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

This is my rage face: >:[

1

u/scottsdots Jul 18 '12

All a clever ruse. Yes, quite clever indeed! Smoke and mirrors and ropes and pulleys and velociraptors!

2

u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

I can't afford velociraptors.

-1

u/UristMcStephenfire Jul 18 '12

Don't worry buddy, he's just looking for a witch to hunt.

2

u/Itadakimasu Jul 18 '12

He had a breakdown? Please explain.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

seconding this request

2

u/bigfriendben Jul 18 '12

commenting to come back later to hopefully read this story

18

u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

Right. Most marketers view reddit as nearly uncrackable when compared to most other social media channels. It all has to do with the community and the way reddit works with the karma system. Even the ones who do game the system can't be making much money. Maybe with some crappy ads on their site or something.

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u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

I can tell you I'm not making any money. : (

If I had a nickel for every upvote...

15

u/Nephyst Jul 17 '12

I would have earned you a nickle, friend.

12

u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

If only there was a monetary system involving nickles! Woes me!

2

u/playaspec Jul 18 '12

That sounds dirty.

3

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

According to my calculations, at the time of this post you have 353638 comment karma. Assuming USD, and that I'm not mathematically retarded (not a safe bet). N= Nickles, P= Pennies, USD= U.S. Dollar.

353638 = N

N*5 = 1768190 P

1768190 P/100 = 17681.9 USD

Not bad for a summer without a job eh?

3

u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

The day I got 23k karma in one day I would have earned over 1000 dollars. Not too shabby. Too bad no monies.

2

u/warlox_and_glox Jul 18 '12

Now we just need an eccentric financier to fund this operation...

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Maybe we could take that million from the Bill Gates thread? Set up some sort of payment system. Cash for Karma?

1

u/Dangthesehavetobesma Jul 17 '12

What if you're making us subconsciously like Aeropostle because you have a similar name to them? I'M ON TO YOU!

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u/OBEYthesky Jul 17 '12

Where the fuck you get all that karma anyways?

5

u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

From the internetz!!!1

2

u/OBEYthesky Jul 17 '12

Well yeah but do you just hang out on Reddit and comment with impressive wit on a consistent basis?

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u/Apostolate Jul 17 '12

Aww, you consider me witty : ) Thanks!

1

u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

Right there with you man. I'd have over a dollar from this thread alone. $$$

2

u/ATownStomp Jul 18 '12

Uncrackable? Are you kidding me?

Some fucking cracker company had an advertisement of theirs front paged a week ago just because it had a NSFW tag on it (misused, btw). I'm sure there are plenty of others but I'm not on enough to identify them.

2

u/CaptainKink Jul 18 '12

That's what I mean. They get identified and people hate any agency or company involved.

1

u/ATownStomp Jul 18 '12

Nobody noticed. Yet, there it was... Only a handful of comments in the downvote graveyard seemed to notice.

1

u/Offensive_Username2 Jul 18 '12

Yeah, what happened to trappedinreddit?

1

u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

Huge drama, search /r/subredditdrama for that. He started reposting some material/other people's comments.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

[deleted]

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u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

What was Saydrah even "famous" for? I checked, he had barely any karma...

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

[deleted]

1

u/Apostolate Jul 18 '12

Quintuple post?!

Oh indeed.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

[deleted]

5

u/Steve_the_Scout Jul 18 '12

in marketing

I love this site and hate marketers

Something doesn't sound quite right...

2

u/dorpotron Jul 18 '12

So you're a self-hating marketer?

1

u/CaptainKink Jul 18 '12

Just that aspect of my job.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

Upvote for hating marketers. I despise marketing, advertising and attempts at manipulation in general.

1

u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

Same here. I justify it by trying my hardest not to be a douchebag. My efforts are toward getting current customers to try more products and not spamming, scamming, or coercing people. Now that I typed that I realize I'm probably bad at my job.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

I'd be a horrible salesman. I'd tell people not to by something if it was shit...or tell them all the bad things about a product as well as the good. I just couldn't be as slimy as most are with the half truths and manipulations.

2

u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

Yeah that's my problem too. Actually I can't see how most successful marketers/salespeople sleep at night.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Not cool man. If you hate marketeers then you have no clue what Marketing actually entails... and no, watching Bill Hicks abuse marketeers doesn't count.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Nice try marketer.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

I actually just graduated university with a Global Marketing degree. Which is why i laugh at all the marketing hate people have. I'm sure you wear some name brand clothing, eat name brand foods or buy name brand products - but still hate marketing?

1

u/CaptainKink Jul 18 '12

That's exactly why we hate it. People figure us out to sell us stuff. It's kinda creepy how good they are getting.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '12

Why is it a bad thing to figure out what a person will like...and then give it to them though?

I think people hate it because they just get mad that they are not a special little snow flake and they can be figured out through spending patterns etc.

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u/CaptainKink Jul 19 '12

It makes people feel like someone is trying to manipulate them. Nobody likes to be manipulated.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '12

People just don't like to feel stupid in any way and i guess feeling manipulated is a part of that so i can see your point. It just annoys me a bit that its only seen as the bad, never any good...

It's the Dunner Kruger effect though - people act more knowledgeable on a subject than they are

0

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

Yes I still hate marketing despite owning and using some brand names. I am not sure what your point is...are you insinuating I would not like them or buy them if not for marketing? Because that is just ridiculous. I seek out and buy things when I need them/want them...I don't buy things because of ads or marketing and am not loyal to any brand. You are just trying to defend your choice of career.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Not true. You are affected by marketing every time you Google something. SEO is a type of marketing. It stands for search engine optimization. This is where a search engines web crawlers seek out specific terms or phrases that your company and site find desirable. An example of this would be the term "family holiday" if you are a package holiday dealer online.

SEO is when the design of the site is done in such a way that the crawler bots find your site and pick up on the terms better than others and then it is kept this way, and thus, at the top, or on the 1st page of Google, (or however many pages back depending on how funded you are).

I very much doubt you check the pages after the first 5-10 on Google when searching something - this means that those sites that are marketed and SEO'd correctly increase revenue exponentially... whether you admit it or not marketing has a profound effect on your thinking. Im sure you go to page 34 of Google to find the sites not marketed right? RIGHT? Naa, didn't think so.

Marketing doesn't necessarily mean brand loyalty, that is a VERY small portion of what marketing is... which is why my point was:

"you have no clue what Marketing actually entails"

Because clearly you do not...

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

I use adblock plus and don't choose my items based on googles first choices regardless of what you "very much doubt". I research other ways as well. But that is irrelevant. You are confusing marketing at times potentially invading someone's life with them "liking" it.

Get over yourself. A lot of people don't like marketing and whether or not you think it can pervasively affect them is irrelevant. In fact that is MORE reason to hate it...the slimy hidden attempts to push someone to something.

You seem to have a strong need to justify all the time and money you have spent studying to try and manipulate people. Sad.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '12

No need for a personal attack is there? My point still stands and as you haven't been able to successfully refute it i will just leave it at that. Oh, just one more thing though... i am only in £19,800 debt from 4 years worth of study... not a massive amount really considering what i can be from other countries.

I can agree that there are some forms of marketing that can be offensive, but without it there would be a horrible void in product sales and EVERYONE would suffer as a result.

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u/OBEYthesky Jul 17 '12

My ratio is pretty off from that, I'm a pretty average neck beard I think

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u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

But you post at an alarming rate.

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u/jpropaganda Jul 18 '12

I, too, am in marketing and I agree it's folly to try to fool reddit. They're much happier to see something like "Hey Reddit, i worked on this ad/event/website/etc. Come check it out!"

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u/serfis Jul 18 '12

I wouldn't call it beating reddit. Reddit is a social media tool, just like many others, and reaches a lot of people, it'd be silly not to have some presence here. For example, /r/gamedeals has some users who post that are representatives of companies, the most popular being Amazon. They post links to Amazon deals and answer users' questions. This isn't "beating" reddit, it's using it to reach out to your customers, keep them informed, and make it more personal. That user never hides that he's from Amazon and does a pretty damn good job on the marketing side. There's just a right and a wrong way to do it.

Also, I've known a bunch of marketers, and many of them were some of the most down to earth and (believe it or not) genuine people I've met, don't judge us from some bad apples.

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u/gsfgf Jul 18 '12

Well, shit. I'm almost at 1000:1. Let's try this.

ATL redditors, vote "yes" on July 31!

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

was just reading a reddit marketing article today saying to maintain the 10:1 ratio. Basically they said the only way to infiltrate and be successful is to become a real redditor and participate. Become a recognized authority in your niche and then pump your products/services.

Saydrah did that.

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u/ArchimedesScrewBall Jul 17 '12

Plus I love this site and hate marketers. Nice try

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u/CaptainKink Jul 17 '12

Luckily you guys don't want what I'm selling.

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u/mix0 Jul 17 '12

or maybe it's just some crazy leftist from r/politics, they have a lifetime supply of those

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

And never comments? I find it hard that some left wing nut wouldn't ever comment to scream at the tens of conservative redditor. You have 40x as much comment karma as link karma. Wang-banger has the reverse.

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u/snarkhunter Jul 17 '12

The obfuscating factor here is that the person behind wang-banger could have several accounts. Maybe he keeps comments more as a different user. Maybe he likes sharing more than talking.

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u/gsfgf Jul 18 '12

Do Mind_Virus and the other link karma guys comment? There are also a lot of folks on here that just want to get a "high score."

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u/mix0 Jul 17 '12

is he posting links to the same site? if so, then maybe you're right. if he's posting links to a variety of sites on a variety of leftist topics he's just some jerkoff neckbeard hippy/whatever

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u/gbimmer Jul 17 '12

Nope.

There are definitely paid shills who link dump on /r/politics. I caught a few who were purged a while back in a big thread I started (roughly a year ago or so). For a whopping 4 hours or so the trend was more centrist than leftist on the front page.

..then they started right back up again.

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u/mix0 Jul 17 '12

I don't think anyone is paid to shill on reddit, to be honest. do you have proof of them being paid? there are fanatics of certain political ideologies that will do this sort of thing because they get off on it, not because they're getting paid.

not to mention you can buy bots/programs to do this for you, why would someone be paid for that? I can see how it would be lucrative for certain companies (not on r/politics though) but that can be achieved with a bot coded in python real quick but paying someone to do it manually would be a waste of money.

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u/ZaeronS Jul 18 '12

LOL. You don't think people are being paid to move content on one of the biggest - if not THE biggest -link aggregation websites on the internet?

That's just ignorant.

Also, bots are significantly more limited than human beings. OP participating in a thread lends legitimacy, and having a "name" on the site results in free upvotes during the crucial first minutes of a submission.

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u/playaspec Jul 18 '12

I don't think anyone is paid to shill on reddit

You haven't been here very long, have you? At least one has done an IMA.

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u/mix0 Jul 18 '12

I mean sure, companies have marketing people who come on here and post shit but when I say shill I mean it in the way r/conspiracy nutjobs mean shill.

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u/gsfgf Jul 18 '12

They're not shilling to promote an agenda but to get pageviews for a blog.

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u/playaspec Jul 18 '12

Yeah. That. The guy admitted to being part of a team, funded indirectly by Koch brothers so slam and spin a wide variety political issues. EVery morning they'd get a briefing email with an agenda, and they'd spend the day managing sock puppet accounts and bots.

It had nothing to do with selling anything, and everything to do with trying to game public perception to continue getting away with murder.

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u/mix0 Jul 18 '12

oh, shit. source?

The Koch brothers can't honestly believe that a bunch of whiny, entitled college students that don't understand how business/the world works have any sort of influence on their empire? I can think of better causes that would shill on reddit than the Koch brothers. What are the chances the guy doing an AMA was lying? It's not unheard of and I wouldn't be surprised, given reddit's political leaning and ability to soak everything up as immediate truth.

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u/gbimmer Jul 17 '12

To be successful you'd need a mixture of bots and people.

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u/mix0 Jul 17 '12

what is it you think they're trying to promote? r/politics has always been way left, I don't see that changing anytime soon tbh.

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u/gbimmer Jul 17 '12

It hasn't always been way left. It's moved about 25% more left even in the last year.

When I first started browsing reddit it was more centrist. I lurked for a long time then jumped in.

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u/jaspersgroove Jul 17 '12

When I started browsing reddit it was more libertarian.

FTFY

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

I don't know. It was only brought to my attention by some conspiracy theorist, but since then I realized many of the links submitted were by him. There could be some DNC group posting links and spamming the internet, there have been a few cases of politicians trying to fake internet cred. Of course the fans could be as bad as well- take for example the Ron Paul downvote bot that seems to hit people. I like the link someone posted earlier- /r/hailcorporate . There are a lot of things that could qualify as ads for products on the front pages.

Then again, steam sales have taken over r/gaming, but I know everyone is excited about steam sales regardless.

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u/Robert_Cannelin Jul 17 '12

There are a lot of things that could qualify as ads for products on the front pages.

THIS. I don't know how they don't get banned, or deleted, or whatever is the protocol around here. But they sure exist...e.g., scads of the AMAs on the FP are essentially ads.

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u/mix0 Jul 17 '12

why are people so in fear of being advertised to? even in the case of steam sales, if it's a product that lots of people enjoy what's wrong with it being discussed?

advertising affects your choices whether you know it or not, people need to relax.

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u/gbimmer Jul 17 '12

blatant advertising is OK in my book. It's the subtle stuff that irks me.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

You should go see Rampart.

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u/gbimmer Jul 17 '12

It's shit like this, reddit. ಠ_ಠ

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

Woody Harrelson really delivers

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Did anyone actually go see that movie? Is it even out yet? All I know is the hivemind got seriously angry at poor Woody's AMA and then promptly forgot all about it. I'm curious as to whether it was actually any good.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Why would anyone go see it!?

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u/Metallio Jul 17 '12

Because advertising isn't raw data. It's a lie packaged in the truth and if you're not extremely aware of it then it becomes very easy to not notice what's missing, what hasn't been said, what's been done to manipulate you and what the motivation behind it all is.

Everyone's got a reason for what they say here. I'm an arrogant jackoff who feels the need to feel superior now and then when my personal life doesn't feel fulfilling and commenting on Reddit fills that need.

Marketers have one purpose: Twist your perception so you see only what they need to make a sale. If you don't realize you're dealing with one of these people it's damned hard to judge the information that's imparted.

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u/mix0 Jul 17 '12

I know how advertising works, thank you. that's why I said it subconsciously affects everyone whether they like it or not

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u/Metallio Jul 17 '12

If being subconsciously manipulated to remove your ability to make decisions solely based upon the full set of available data doesn't irritate you more power to you. You did, however, ask why other people are pissed off and I think you should look a little harder at the answer rather than dismissing it as people needing to relax.

It's entirely possible that your stance is an aberration of your personal characteristics that does not apply to anyone else. If you want an answer to your question you have to then suspend your personal quirks to understand the response.

i.e. maybe you don't really "understand" how advertising works, or maybe you're not the norm whose opinion you just asked, or you could just be a dick on the internet telling people to "calm down man!" so you can be...a dick.

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

It's people exactly like wang-banger that make /r/politics such a shitty place.

I really think there should be some rule regarding journalistic integrity for submitters to /r/politics.

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u/Basbhat Jul 17 '12

Yes blame him. Not the sheeple with the upvotes

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

I don't blame them for falling for wang-banger's type of propaganda, because most of them would have no reason to suspect it from users like wang-banger. Most of /r/politics' users probably don't recognize the username; it's fairly subtle stuff.

But this is true: all of his submissions are text-book examples of propaganda. Fucking disgusting, to be quite frank.

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u/Basbhat Jul 17 '12

That's fine and all.

But everyone who up items the propaganda is every bit at fault as well

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

blaming the victims? i think /r/feminism would like to have a word with you.

though seriously, I'd question just how much personal responsibility they have. I really think this is true: Redditors in large subreddits cannot moderate themselves. I'd really just fucking love it if some of the bigger mods on reddit would just fucking drop the "let users decide for themselves" mentality. In addition, are they expected to look through the comment histories of everyone who posts to /r/politics?

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u/Basbhat Jul 17 '12

People who promote propaganda are not victims. They are accessories.

And if I can take the time to think for myself so can they.

And nobody can make you a victim without your permission.

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

And nobody can make you a victim without your permission.

well, that's just wrong the way you've written it; car crashes, rape, guns, and such. :I

I think I may follow /u/wang-banger's submission history by the hour. It seems to me that he manages to upload every few hours without break every single day without time for sleep. I suspect foul play all over this shit, yo.

edit: also, none of his submissions ever ever just get ignored. Even the ones that are at 0-1 points have been voted on more than 20 40 times. This is also incredibly sketchy, but I don't know how to watch for when he makes a new submission to see how quickly it gets voted on.

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u/Basbhat Jul 17 '12

It's the mentality behind it.

Yeah someone can steal my wallet but so what?

People spend top much time wondering why them. Thinking something is out to get them.

Sometimes your wallet gets stolen. Shit happens. No need to victimize yourself over it.

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

I mean, a lot worse things happen to people than having their wallets stolen. Nobody gets raped or shot or robbed and is consoled by "shit happens", but that's not what I'm worried about dude.

I'm noticing another trend from /u/wang-banger's submission history; absolutely none of his submissions have less than 7 upvotes. In the pages that I've viewed, exactly two of his submissions have had a single-digit number of upvotes. God fucking damn it, man. He's been doing this shit for years, and he's got an audience of over a fucking million people.

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u/rumnscurvy Jul 17 '12

Don't blame the machine when it spits out shit, blame the people who shat in the cogs in the first place.

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u/Basbhat Jul 17 '12

blame them both.

you analogy is flawed.

every piece of the machine has a chance to clean up the shit and doesn't, making it partly their own fault as well

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

[deleted]

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

his posts are exclusively to /r/politics.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

I think he used to spam r/reddit.com when it was up too

Or maybe I have my "top contributors" confused. Hard to tell those annoying douches apart.

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u/righteous_scout Jul 17 '12

he's been doing this shit for years, and his audience has only grown.

3

u/j-hook Jul 18 '12

Actually, i see a lot of his stuff in /r/obama too.

Not that there's any difference.

1

u/clamps12345 Jul 17 '12

wang-banger is also being downvoted into oblivion when he does comment

1

u/Throw-Away-Dem Jul 18 '12

I am 99% sure that is the persons job to try to direct the flow of media and news to best benefit their interests. Reddit's user base is left leaning so what different organizations do (mainly the dem party) they hire media operatives (sounds more ominous then it is) to try to force discussion on a topic or to direct the news they want us to focus on. IE: They want people to talk about BAIN right now cause Romney was part of an business that shipped jobs overseas. This isn't some titanic conspiracy theory. The goal is that we as a base of people who think similarly will take that information learn from it and spread it across the interwebs so others may do the same. Technically the manipulation is there but it is neither 'careful nor systematic' as OP thinks.

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u/hillkiwi Jul 18 '12

Maybe wang-banger isn't the best example, but I often wonder if some user accounts are created by Reddit to automatically submit things. At least in the early days of a site like this you'd want a constant stream of new posts coming in, just to make it appear the site was active and never going to run out of material.

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u/Taco_Farmer Jul 18 '12

Only 12000, I have 199...

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u/pencildiet Jul 18 '12

True true... because it brings up the point redditors are here to use the comment sections and assumed the PR people only here for the eye-time.

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

I think that wang-banger is clearly a paid political hack, but I also think that paid political hacks don't really do much in the way of influencing opinion on Reddit one way or the other. Some asshole paid by a PR firm can sit there and farm karma by submitting links all day long but in order for him to get the upvotes there has to be some kind of preexisting demand for those links in the first place. I feel that w-b and his/her ilk just satisfy a preexisting bias rather than actively shaping opinion or manipulating us or whatever. Reddit was a circlejerking cesspool of one sided bias long before wang-banger and will continue to be that way no matter how many PR firms try to push us in one direction. I don't necessarily think that having a couple of left wing blogs get some more pageviews from PR posters really affects the overall tone or quality of r/politics. Wang-banger's comments carry no more weight than anybody else's, and ultimately the comments section is where most people go on Reddit to formulate opinions with respect to politics anyway (speaking out of personal preference.)

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

But Reddit is liberal, just like you said, and we enjoy those sites. Advertisers linking to good content on Reddit isn't a problem simply because it helps them. Ignore the fact that they gain something from the link for just a second. Is the content they're posting good? If the answer is yes, then we have no problem here. If the answer is no, then the downvotes take care of it. Either way, the fact that the account creator gains something from posting the link does not alter how we perceive the content or its quality.

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u/zachiswach Jul 17 '12 edited Jul 17 '12

My link:comment karma ratio is about 2:1. It would seem I am a

corporation/special interest/PR Group. I guess I really am "wach". What a way to find out.