downvote – TruXter Tech

How Reddit is Manipulated

Posted on2013/09/032013/09/06AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

Reddit was a nice place full of what we considered opened minded people with open minded plans.
From time to time you could see a stubborn side to Reddit. When a group of people are on the wrong path with a story and if someone points logical answers to their slight misunderstanding, that person would most likely get downvoted and not seen. Of course their logic is not needed here.
But

This can be manipulated.
Like say, if you comment about a company that has a team of employees who scour Reddit ready to downvote any negativity mentioned about their workplace. Great for them right? The place they work doesn’t go out of business and they keep their job. but the sad fact is, if you are posting about a wrong doing from that company, your post will never be seen. And you will not be able to send out the first alert about a bad company.

Example 1:
If you comment anything negative about Comcast or Xfinity, you will get downvoted and disappear within mere minutes.
Here is an Ex-employee of Comcast trying to do an AMA (ask me anything)
Poor installation from Comcast. Compare the upvotes to the downvotes on the right
How to get even with Comcast
Caught injecting code in User’s traffic.
Caught throttling bandwidth for hulu and netflix. at least 7400 accounts downvoting this.
a Spoof account doing it for jokes but sets the idea that it can be done (read the comment after) Here’s his account how he hunts out Comcast posts to joke on them.
If you ask me how Comcast can do this… Well they have an endless number of I.P. addresses. use your imagination.

Example 2: If you create an original post that is worth being seen, either for humor or for art, if someone is logged on and has more than one account and each account is on a separate computer, using either some proxy service or some anonymizer type program, they could then downvote any and every post that isn’t their product they want seen, using every account they have and running down the list in the “new” section. and then turn and upvote their own and leave witty quips on their comments section, it looks 100% legit.
Sad part is, that Reddit is full of people looking for someone to relate to. and they all know that it is easier to survive that place if you go along with the crowd. No one but the new people will ever agree with you.

Here is an example of that happening
Screenshot of anyone speaking about the post… which is a video posted to YouTube in 2008

So in sum, if you do not speak great of the product, DOWNVOTE!. if you speak bad of the product DOWNVOTE!
If a person wants their product seen, they downvotes anything in the new section, and upvote their own. To ensure it works the way they want, they use lots of accounts to do this.

It’s a great way to push a product on you using the old means of television advertisements. “Everyone wants one, everyone’s buying these, you should to”. except now, you kind of get confirmation (as far as you know) that this statement is true.

Reddit is gamed.

Review of Reddit

Posted on2012/02/062013/06/24AuthorTruXter

The purpose of this Review of Reddit is to point out the facts of Reddit.

Reddit is a website where anyone can create an account and add their two cents to thousands of topics. Part of the account you create, shows a point system called “Karma”. When you post a comment, and someone does not like what you said, they can click the down-vote button and lower your Karma. and if they like what you said, they can click on the Up-vote and raise your Karma. Except.. It’s the internet. Full of lazy fat slobs who complain about having to click “one more click than normal” so the users never really click the upvote for something they like. They click the upvote for something they love. But yeah, the slightest sense of negativity, they will downvote you fast. People will go out of their way to tell you that you suck, no one makes any effort to let you know that you’re “just okay”.

The better part of Reddit, just leads regular people to care about things they never knew existed. This leads people to donate for causes that actually matter. This causes a large mass of people to stand up for what they believe in.

What is another result of this? Well. To stay in a good reputation with the site (higher karma) You will adjust your statements to match the consensus. You will continually motivate the conversation into a positive path. Anything that goes against the conversation, instantly gets voted down. With every down vote,the comment becomes less visible to the public. And buries the statement. While all positive statements get moved to the top and more visible and more Karma is given to the comment maker.

Great plan. Right?

Here’s the flaw.
There is no outside voice. No one can add anything new to a conversation, or tell why or how the current topic is wrong or misinformed. New people come right out of the gun, getting down-voted. If no one can interject with an outside opinion, while everything gets more and more positive, you get a bit of a cheesy lame super nice mentality that is in the end, useless. Like the hipsters who crashed in on the occupy movement and ruined the whole thing (you know…. brought an apple store with them)Apple… good, Cause… good, therefore bringing apple to the stand in against big corporations must be the way to go….

In the end, to be the perfect person on Reddit and fit in with everyone and not get labeled spam, is you have to be an atheist, transgender, black lesbian woman who looks white and loves men, is poor but has a mansion and a car and a company, not eat meat or vegetables, be someone who will never have a significant other, but give great tips on how to pick up, and how to fall in love, and your cat (that you rescued from some place) has to stay a kitten forever.

I am none of that. Made two accounts and am in the negative Karma on both. because I have an original opinion.
I stand alone.

If you say anything that doesn’t pet the ego of the group conversation, you get labeled as someone who is saying what 200 others have already said. So to fit in, you have to say what everyone else is saying, or you will never be heard.