I don’t have solid proof if that’s what you’re looking for. Hard to pierce the veil of the reddit poweruser cabals otherwise these tactics would have been exposed already.
We can go as far back is the QuickMeme fiasco or the Unidan saga if we want to study some notorious cases of those who got exposed for manipulating reddit. The former was for money. I think it was reported taht they made out like bandits in ad money. These days I think the state of the art must be much more advanced. What with the mod tools, the botting, and the explosion of ML tech.
The reddit admins openly said they generated content in the early days to create the illusion of user activity. Smoke and mirrors is the unspoken characteristic of reddit. The platform always had an aire of fakeness since inception.
Something more recent was the_donald subreddit. In 2016 they found ways to instantly hit the top of r/all and keep flooding posts into the top sort. So much so that the admins had to recode the site to prevent this.
Like I said, reddit is not an organic user driven platform by any stretch of imagination. It’s all very fake. Always has been.
The particular type of manipulation observed on WSB nothing new. They use the same tactics as the crypto currency subreddits. It looks almost exactly the same on WSB these days except replace shitcoin with stocks.
Organically driven communities don’t auto delete content or auto ban users that go against the narrative. Such communities don’t have bot accounts spamming narratives they want to push. These are the most transparent characteristics of manipulated communities. Many political subreddits are like this.
There’s money at stake. There’s political ideology at stake. Some times maybe it’s just for the lulz.
Thanks for elaborating! I think your suspicions are very right. There’s an amount of infuriating and inexplicable poweruser stuff happening that I think many are oblivious to. Whether it’s just the way that reposts have been like industrialized factory production lines. I thought I was a curmudgeon when I complained about reposts after the exodus from Digg to reddit, but what happens now makes that look like nothing in comparison.
I agree with your observation about the parallels between thedonald and WSB. Also reminiscent of 4chan - there’s something about shitposty shittiness that I think is a standard baseline for inorganic content and behavior that amasses the capability to mobilize people.
The reddit admins openly said they generated content in the early days to create the illusion of user activity. Smoke and mirrors is the unspoken characteristic of reddit. The platform always had an aire of fakeness since inception.
I remember that!!! Reddit founders apparently posted under multiple user names to get the site started. Unfortunately I can’t find articles now that talk about this but I wish I knew the original sources for this stuff.
I don’t have solid proof if that’s what you’re looking for. Hard to pierce the veil of the reddit poweruser cabals otherwise these tactics would have been exposed already.
We can go as far back is the QuickMeme fiasco or the Unidan saga if we want to study some notorious cases of those who got exposed for manipulating reddit. The former was for money. I think it was reported taht they made out like bandits in ad money. These days I think the state of the art must be much more advanced. What with the mod tools, the botting, and the explosion of ML tech.
The reddit admins openly said they generated content in the early days to create the illusion of user activity. Smoke and mirrors is the unspoken characteristic of reddit. The platform always had an aire of fakeness since inception.
Something more recent was the_donald subreddit. In 2016 they found ways to instantly hit the top of r/all and keep flooding posts into the top sort. So much so that the admins had to recode the site to prevent this.
Like I said, reddit is not an organic user driven platform by any stretch of imagination. It’s all very fake. Always has been.
The particular type of manipulation observed on WSB nothing new. They use the same tactics as the crypto currency subreddits. It looks almost exactly the same on WSB these days except replace shitcoin with stocks.
Organically driven communities don’t auto delete content or auto ban users that go against the narrative. Such communities don’t have bot accounts spamming narratives they want to push. These are the most transparent characteristics of manipulated communities. Many political subreddits are like this.
There’s money at stake. There’s political ideology at stake. Some times maybe it’s just for the lulz.
Thanks for elaborating! I think your suspicions are very right. There’s an amount of infuriating and inexplicable poweruser stuff happening that I think many are oblivious to. Whether it’s just the way that reposts have been like industrialized factory production lines. I thought I was a curmudgeon when I complained about reposts after the exodus from Digg to reddit, but what happens now makes that look like nothing in comparison.
I agree with your observation about the parallels between thedonald and WSB. Also reminiscent of 4chan - there’s something about shitposty shittiness that I think is a standard baseline for inorganic content and behavior that amasses the capability to mobilize people.
I remember that!!! Reddit founders apparently posted under multiple user names to get the site started. Unfortunately I can’t find articles now that talk about this but I wish I knew the original sources for this stuff.