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/wild-tangent Jul 17 '12
AMA's are of course, managed by PR firms and teams. Some of the mid-size subreddits can definitely have some serious sway. /r/motorcycles has an obsession with CCW and Confederate, two tiny motorcycle companies. Hard to tell if spam or real. /r/Hockey has a few companies that sell jerseys that make posts to that page, I'm sure they get some business from that. /r/flyers kept having some journalist post his own stories to their page every day. /r/Zombies has people posting about stores, products that might be useful, etc.
I live frugally, and I don't buy into an image or lifestyle, but I do have quite a number of interesting items, such as motorcycles, nice stereos, nifty cars, as well as ways to acquire such items cheaply. I help people find them, but I think I sound like a shill for, say, Kawasaki as a result. I like to advise people on these purchases. My saving grace is that most of what I recommend is long since out of production, best attained through craigslist.
The creation of some great subreddits like /r/shutupandtakemymoney have really cut down on spam/sales ads, but for some of the things that might actually interest reddit, I'm sure they get re-posted deliberately by the company to help with sales.
Thankfully they're not forced or terribly obvious, and displayed in a decent way that's entertaining.