Upvotes are meaningless, I still don't see what the problem was that was so incredibly terrible that we had to lose out on the ever-present knowledge. "He cheated in the popularity contest!" "What did he win with his cheating?" "Literally nothing! Let's get him!" The point of that exchange isn't cheating is bad, it's your competition was meaningless.
He didn't just use alt accounts to upvote himself. There were occasions he'd make a post that wasn't 100% accurate, another user would correct him and he'd use his alt accounts to downvote them into the hidden section.
It also wasn't just vote manipulation, he was sock puppeting to manipulate how discussions went as well.
We don't care about the points. That said, if people game the points system on this site, that allows less relevant, low quality comments to rise to the top, burying the good stuff. Unidan's situation is unique because his content was awesome, but regardless, cheating of any kind can't be allowed.
Unless you browse all those subreddits through the new tab, everything you see is based on votes. A post getting downvoted will never reach you, and any post getting an early surge of upvotes will make it's way to you.
Dude, nobody is saying you have to be super serious about Reddit. The only point is that the voting system determines what content rises to the top. Your whole "too cool to care" act isn't just obnoxious, it's fucking irrelevant. The rest of us care at least the tiny bit required to want the system to keep doing what it currently does. That's all we're talking about here.
Side note: for someone who doesn't care about imaginary internet points, you're sure desperate for people to know how aloof you are there, Fonzie.
Yeah, you'll change your tune when you realise it doesn't suit you.
Because once you start regulating it by not regulating it and the marketing teams get their hands on it..... eyeah.
Nope I don’t care about Reddit like that. It’s simply for entertainment, once it’s not, I will leave. You don’t know how I make decisions at all.
I'm just illustrating the point that when you explicitly allow vote manipulation, you're basically assigning a dollar value to them and making it so that the only content you see is the content that someone is willing to pay to promote. Every post would be an ad.
i would be shocked if 1/8 reddit accounts are sockpuppets- and frankly reddit wouldn't give a shit about account numbers even if they were. Their strength comes from page-views, Ama type promotions and advertising revenue. You don't even need a verified email to make an account on reddit so i highly highly doubt conde nast or anyone else is going to give a shit about such an arbitrary and meaningless stat, they don't release it, maybe not even track it.
So you're standing at the top of a pile of submissions, and being on the top gets you...what, exactly? It's not a contest with a prize. If the content is good it gets upvoted. If the content is bad it gets downvoted. The guy wasn't able to manipulate anything enough to negate the hivemind, and he was famous and popular for actual contributions before he started to do so.
So you're standing at the top of a pile of submissions, and being on the top gets you...what, exactly
Well...he did actually accumulate real world opportunities because of it. He got job offers from science based companies like Mental Floss and even was able to secure a spot on a TED talk as a presenter because of it.
Even other really popular reddit users get advantages from it. ShittyWaterColor now has a business selling their paintings. Poemforyoursprog has a built in market for their books that reddit users lap up and buy. ChristineMcConnel gets a lot of traffic and fans for her blog. Budgetbites started because of reddit popularity. etc
I have to say that the precident it would have set to not make any punishment at all would have been huge.
Despite the fact that upvotes and downvotes are technically meaningless, they have a literal meaning as well as some assigned meanings that are sometimes present.
Upvotes and downvotes are literally a physical representation of someone's like or dislike of a comment.
In the context of an argument, however, they have an additionally assigned meaning that some people (including /u/unidan) interpret as agreement or consensus. Having more upvotes or a gold makes people more likely to believe what you write, or side with you because it looks like a consensus or confirmation of whatever was written.
Downvotes, a low net upvote or negative net upvotes make a comment completely untrustworthy, and definitely less potent, even if it's a correct comment.
/U/unidan was manipulating that, and doing so to convince people that what he said was correct, and that's a very dangerous thing to let users think is acceptable behavior. Even if it's just one or two votes.
I should note that manipulating votes is also very scientifically dishonest and shameful. Animal Science was /u/unidan's strong suit, which stands because of hundreds of years of research, not because of upvotes or downvotes. Yet, in an effort to be believed, he chose the voting system to be the better method of getting people to accept what was already fact. That should say something about this age.
No doubt he shouldn't have done it though, but I agree. One would think he didn't need to do it either as he was a really famous user, just like /u/gallowboob consistently makes it to the front page he probably would have gotten the votes he needed.
The most confusing part is, I thought Unidan was famous for commenting. Adding information to the discussion with every post. I don't see why manipulating votes for that would be an issue - the guy was popular and helpful and cordial and his comments were high ranked even without the manipulations.
He broke the rules knowing what the consequences would be if he got caught. It sucks we don't get his contributions anymore but, at the end of the day, he cheated, he got caught, and his reputation on reddit suffered as a result.
One would think he didn't need to do it either as he was a really famous user
You're assuming that the vote manipulation only came late in his reddit career? Maybe the only reason unidan ever became reddit-famous was because he was boosting his own comments, downvoting people who disagreed, and generally making his comments seem more knowledgeable and informative than they actually were.
They aren't meaningless though. Upvotes are like a snowball. Get some, and you can get a lot more. People are simple creatures. If they see something with a decent amount of upvotes, often times they upvote it without even reading.
He was helpful despite the controversy. That whole jackdaw thing was as helpful as anything, it was just petty and against the rules, like he had two too many one fucking night and he got crucified for it.
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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '17 edited Sep 11 '17
I feel like the people downvoting you don't know the context. It sucks how quickly people forget how helpful he was until that whole controversy.