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Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests

312 points · 408 comments · p-s-v

  1. nomel · · focus · HN ↗
    > Thin accounts: few comments, low scores, no real standing in the subreddit.

    > Young accounts, or accounts with histories that are hidden or wiped.

    Nope, this is no longer an indicator of a bot account. Many that I've looked into will have active posts to local town/region subreddits (often times multiple!) and different sports subreddits, sometimes getting unusually high amounts of karma in them (which suggests a network).

    Turing test is looong dead, so no reason to assume the small fractions of a cent to make comments, to get a reasonable history, isn't being taken advantage of.

    1. sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
      Too many subreddits still have minimum karma or account age requirements. Most of those are ruled by tyrant moderators so you're not missing much, but it's made the site largely useless. I estimate 60% of discussions on Reddit are fake or fabricated on some level.

      Can't post honest questions anymore without posting obviously phony pandering banter first to increase your karma. What's worse, it promotes the bad behaviors the bots are actually good it.

      Bring back forums.

      1. Cider9986 · · focus · HN ↗
        > Bring back forums.

        Here&#x27;s an active and good privacy forum: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.privacyguides.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.privacyguides.net

        Here&#x27;s an active and good private OS forum where privacy is discussed along with Android apps and the OS, ofc: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.grapheneos.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.grapheneos.org

        1. someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
          AFAIK privacyguides is rather controversial among actual privacy-minded people (the kind who would use GrapheneOS)
          1. Cider9986 · · focus · HN ↗
            You may be out of date. I haven&#x27;t heard anything recently. Are you thinking of this?

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49880630">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49880630

            1. someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
              Oh maybe it was privacytools then
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