I downloaded Reddit Enhancement Suite and it has a feature that marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user when you see a post of theirs. It is absolutely eye-opening just how much content is posted by the same few dozens of usernames. GallowBoob is the most infamous but to focus on him would be a mistake. It's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of content on Reddit is heavily manipulated and artificial.
I have a little over half a million karma, about 200k from posting links. I think it's incorrect to suggest that the "vast majority" of content is manipulated. You see the same names because they understand the game of karmawhoring. If you have one link which can fit in multiple subreddits and your goal is to get as many points as possible, you post it to all the relevant subreddits, repeat for every other link you have. It's a numbers game. More posts means it's more likely for one to stick, and you get better at it with time. You eventually pick up on what times of day are most effective or which subreddits get more consistent results, things consumers of the content wouldn't ever know, so they try to do the same and their post flops and they say that clearly it's manipulation.
There is some manipulation, especially if you consider mods who remove posts at their discretion, but it's far from a "vast majority."
I do have concerns related to some political subreddits, where there is evidence of bad actors attempting to influence the 2020 election. A subreddit (whose name escapes me) just had all of its moderators removed because it ended up being one person running three or four dozen alternate accounts.
> I think it's incorrect to suggest that the "vast majority" of content is manipulated. You see the same names because they understand the game of karmawhoring.
What is the distinction between content manipulation and the game of karmawhoring? They seem more or less the same to me. I think I would consider SEO a form of content manipulation, for example.
I'm distinguishing it between the "intended" way of using the site by making posts and then the community organically votes on it, and some unintended "manipulated" way where content is artificially voted upon or otherwise given an advantage over other posts.
And when someone posts OC, a photo, for example, to a small subreddit or at a low-trafficked time of day and a "karmawhore" screenshots the photo and posts it to several highly trafficked subreddits would you consider those upvotes organic or manipulated?
It's my understanding that this is a common tactic used by people who are "karma farming" on an account. I can certainly understand how the karmawhore feels the upvotes are organic but I can also see how the owner of the original content would very much consider those upvotes manipulated.
And when a karmawhore lifts content and uses a title that insinuates it's their content ("My Dog Spike Doing Funny Thing"), I think the fuzzy line between organic and manipulated feels a little less fuzzy and lot more manipulated. Not just for the content owner, but for the content consumers as well. I think there's some expectation, at least some of the time, that an "organic" OP will interact with commenters and provide more detail in response to questions and it can be disappointing when you come across an interesting post only to realize that isn't the case because OP is just looking to maximize eyeballs & upvotes.
The _votes_ aren't manipulated though. The content is exactly the same even if the person "stole" it. It's immoral and scummy, certainly, but I wouldn't consider it vote manipulation by my definition.
I wouldn't call all of the votes on a stolen post called "My Dog Spike" organic though either. Users have been manipulated in some, perhaps small, way because they've upvoted a post they otherwise might not have. How many of those people would have upvoted the same post titled "Some Random Guy's Dog Spike"? I suspect fewer or karmawhores wouldn't frequently use that tactic.
> I wouldn't consider it vote manipulation by my definition.
I suppose that's kind of my point. Your definition and perspective come from your experience on reddit as someone who posts that way. But there are other people who don't play the game of karmawhoring who might see things differently.
It seems to me it's a very blurry line that is difficult to define and largely a matter of perspective. The people who have mastered the system feel it's a matter of merit while the rest feel its a matter a manipulation. Reality is probably somewhere in the middle.
Is the value of Reddit karma purely psychological? I know that you can sell accounts with high point values for significant sums of money, but I'm confused what the actual value is aside from the little dopamine rush you get when something is upvoted.
More entrepreneurial Redditors can use karma to signal that they know how to get posts to the front page of Reddit. Marketing companies might hire them to do promotions.
At least this is how it was years ago. Maybe marketing companies have this all automated anyway already and don't need people like that anymore.
I've never been approached about marketing once, but I am not prolific like other users. I imagine you have to be in the top 100 or 1000 users in order to get those sorts of offers. The closest I've experienced was when I organically made a post on the speedcubing subreddit asking for opinions a new cube by a fairly unknown company and I was contacted by an employee of the company thanking me for the post and offering to give me one for free.
Purely psychological. The most I've gotten out of it is that I've been active in a community for people with 100k+ karma for over 6 years, now, so I have some digital social ties that I'm grateful for.
I have never used reddit, and just know that "karma" is a type of points system like here on HN. Could you explain why you personally are interested in accumulating karma by "karmawhoring"?
I ignore the points system in HN too, but I think it's main function is to ban bad actors. So I don't understand on the other hand why someone would accumulate points unless they mean to later spend them on "bad actions".
Karma is a social proof for being able to astroturf and control the narrative. And depending on what group you're a mod in, can provide a great deal of influence and control.
I'm not saying that everyone who seeks high karma scores is like this, but astroturfing PR/advertising firms will pay real hard cash for accounts with an established history of trust from the community. I've read many stories from people who have gotten private messages from such places with an offer to buy their account. Or perhaps, like gallowboob, you want to parlay it into an actual social media gig (UNILAD for him).
I do believe for most people though it's just a sort of fame-seeking thing, for whatever reddit 'fame' is worth.
You yourself said the extension marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user. So, unless you yourself are engaged in this conspiracy to inflate GallowBoob's upvotes, then all this is evidence of is that GallowBoob seems uniquely skilled at finding and posting viral content.
He also submits posts dozens of times, deleting them if they don't gain traction quickly.
People don't dislike gallowboob and others because the content is necessarily bad... it's just inorganic and lame. I want to see content from other regular users, not power posters working for firms.
He has also been repeatedly caught abusing his moderator status to gain more karma. This works by suppressing, or outright deleting, posts made by other users before they can gain traction, and then immediately reposting their content with his own account. And he is by far not the only power mod who is using this tactic.
I should have been more clear. RES keeps track of both upvotes and downvotes. Even having a single upvote or downvote will change the color of the submitter's username and make it clear you've voted on their submissions before.
I tend to upvote news articles and downvote reposts. I have definitely noticed that these power users recycle a lot of content.
Shortly after GB's rise to fame he was offered a job at one those horrible viral licensing companies, which definitely suggests he's skilled at finding viral content.
Some people follow the big accounts directly, so their posts are guaranteed to get early traction then build off exponentially and make the front page all the time.
Right. No one complains when big Twitter accounts go viral more often than small accounts, because it's obvious why. So why the conspiracy-mongering about the same effect on Reddit? Is there any actual evidence that moderatorship confers an outsized likelihood of virality vs. a non-moderator with a similarly gigantic following / karma count?
Someone should start a competing service then. My recommendation would be to have a "maximum karma" limit, at which point the account (mod or not) and all of its activity are deleted, and the owner has to sign up again and work their way back up from zero.
You get paid in power, money, fame, access ect for being president. Providing content for free to make someone else money doesn't have the same appeal that could tolerate term limits.
You'd lose any privileges associated with a high number of karma points, also all of your previous content would be removed, so people could cover the same territory in possibly new ways with less fear of being called redundant.
It basically compensates for first-mover advantage in forums.
As a thought experiment, your idea is interesting!
I see a few problems though. This wouldn't work for just any karma-based site. For example, on StackOverflow where there are good "canonical" answers to tech problems, and these get heavily upvoted (because they are useful), having them removed and later rephrased (possibly incorrectly) by a new user would be detrimental. So any system where "good" posts are archived and referenced wouldn't benefit from this.
Even when there are no canonical/permanent answers, the thought that every "good" post you make takes you nearer to account deletion is not exactly enticing. Why not simply get rid of points and make all posts ephemeral, kind of like Instagram stories? What good do points even do in a system where your account and posts will get inevitably deleted?
Also, wouldn't mediocre/bad accounts stick longer than "good" accounts, making the whole system worse? I don't mean terrible or troll accounts -- I understand the point system would still be used to ban or hide them -- but mediocre accounts which post mediocre/bad posts. Wouldn't they dominate in this kind of system?
If upvoting a post/comment (which gives the author karma points) would risk triggering its deletion (by making the author cross the karma threshold), then is that not effectively turning the karma system on its head?
Under such a system, if I think a post is valuable, I would then try to "protect" it and its author's account by downvoting it. Similarly, if I think a post is not valuable, I can help trigger its eventual deletion by upvoting it.
That would only really matter if the poster were really close to the threshold. Moreover the gaming of the system would be unlikely to work forever, requiring too much coordination of effort.
But to answer your question, yes, it is turning the karma system on its head for people near the top of the standings; the idea being that having "titans of karma" in the community becomes detrimental at some point.
I think deletion would be counterproductive, but maybe a karma limit after which you no longer accrue any points.
Say it's arbitrarily 1000 points (or whatever makes sense, as long as it's low enough it can be earned after a medium term of active contributing, but high enough very new users will have to learn the ropes of the community in order to reach it). After you reach this, people can tell you're a good contributor, but you can't earn any more points. Anything you do from that point cannot be done solely to earn points, removing that part of the "game".
Most of the discussion about any products such as coffee makers, bikes, etc are manipulated and placed there by the companies selling those products. The front page is also heavily manipulated, political posts often end up there artificially.
Top subreddits are pretty much all like that. The smaller subs are really what makes reddit a great place. Often as the smaller subs grow bigger, I tend to find myself unsubbing from them.
Yes a lot of social media relies on cycling news and has the potential to slide in rumours that come out the 'other side' as fact. It's a flawed system, but it's worth watching the washing machine spin because a lot of great clean clothes come out from between all the suds and dirt.
I'm not sure if that's what it shows. That's the same pattern you see on all kinds of sites: most Wikipedia edits are done by a handful of users. There's a small core of ridiculously-active people answering questions on Stack Overflow. Of the millions of people who try streaming games, a few are wildly successful and account for a significant share of all watched streams. Reddit, with it's super-submitters, seems to fit right into that pattern.
