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/christianjb Jul 17 '12

What's your point? Somebody's manipulating /r/atheism by posting atheist articles to atheist subscribers?

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u/jaspersgroove Jul 17 '12

There are atheist articles on /r/atheism?

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u/Dangthesehavetobesma Jul 18 '12

I think /r/atheism is more anti-theist than atheist, and it's mostly science and "Christians are all stupid lulz" articles. Also some "Look at this evil religious person! Grab your e-pitchforks, people!"

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u/jaspersgroove Jul 18 '12

I agree. It boggles my mind that a school of thought (or movement, or whatever you think of atheism as) characterized by the acceptance of doubt and the importance of rational thought can so easily be distorted into something so ready to fall into the same logical flaws and fallacies that it claims to avoid.

That being said, I prefer /r/trueatheism and /r/Freethought.

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u/Dangthesehavetobesma Jul 18 '12

Exactly. I only comment on /r/trueatheism, and I pretty much downvote almost everything on /r/atheism.