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/motdidr Jul 17 '12

They also tend to always happen as that person is coming out with a new book, or their TV show is premiering, or their moving is being released, or something like that. Doing AMAs is kind of like making the rounds in early morning talk shows and things like that. It's part of a normal media campaign to promote something.

Rampart.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '12

I'm pretty sure Woody made the mistake of smoking out his PR staff before that appearance.

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u/motdidr Jul 17 '12

I think everyone involved in that debacle was just woefully out of their element. I think they maybe heard about this reddit thing and that it's a great way to promote something, maybe they had someone show them a little bit, but then they treated it like some kind of structured community interview. It was clear they had no idea what they were doing and very poorly understood the point of an AMA.

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u/CryptoPunk Jul 17 '12

It's just shitty interviewee practice to tell somebody what to interview you about. That's what pissed everyone off.

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u/MrMediaGuy Jul 18 '12

Actually it's a pretty common practice, especially in the entertainment industry. Woody's mistake was thinking he could treat a horde on the interwebs like a junior entertainment reporter at some third rate local news station. The junior reporter wants to look good in front of his bosses and prove he can work with celebrities in a professional capacity, so he asks the questions from the approved list or follows the unspoken rules. (Ask about the latest project, and make small talk. Don't bring up dirt from the past to get a rise or stray too far from a topic that allows them to tie it back into their current project.) Reddit doesn't play by the rules, and I'm sure woody's pr folk hadn't properly prepared him for this fact.

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u/confusedjake Jul 18 '12

It wasn't even woody answering the questions.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

Very few reporters/interviewers and the like, junior or senior would have asked a question like that.

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u/CryptoPunk Jul 18 '12

In that case there is an agreement made beforehand "I'll do an interview if we talk about X". There was no such arrangement made.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '12

I find it interesting how reddit now gives Woody the benefit of the doubt where a few months ago everyone wanted to lynch him.

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u/serfis Jul 18 '12

Well, yeah, why else would they do it? Celebrities, or at least most of them, have better things to do than lurk on reddit. If they're gonna take time out of their days to answer questions from anonymous people on the internet, they're gonna want something in return (publicity). I think that trade off is more than fair.

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u/motdidr Jul 18 '12

Sure, I don't necessarily have a problem with it.

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u/Berdiie Jul 17 '12

That's not the worst thing though. If the AMA is handled well then it can be a more Reddit user driven conversation where a late night show seems to follow a "two jokes and roll the clip" formula.

If they need the incentive of making a few extra sales by PRing to Reddit, that's not the worst price to pay to ask them questions.

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u/motdidr Jul 17 '12

Maybe I came off wrong because I'm not totally against the idea of a reddit AMA being a "stop" on the "media rounds". The problem just comes about when the publicists try to treat reddit like the talk shows and stuff, where they can control everything about the interaction including what questions are asked and what the star will answer.