Former Digg refugee now Reddit refugee

submitted by PopASquatt from self.Introductions

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]LockeDemosthenes 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Beginning of the end was banning "unpopular" conservative subreddits from showing up on the front page.

When i saw a thread about some space drone constructor game skyrocket across r/gaming with thousands of superficial comments and 20k upvotes per hour - each one of those superficial commenters having multi-year accounts with posts across NHL, movies, golf, etc. it struck me that these were huge operations astroturfing reddit for money.

Then came star wars, holy shit, the most inorganic fake social media blitz I've ever seen outside of typical liberal reddit political spam until the recent BLM "stuff."

Reddit is done. Other websites will fall prey to this machine as well. The future is either anonymous astroturfing or verified ID accounts. Both suck.

[–]magnora7 13 insightful - 4 fun13 insightful - 3 fun14 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

You saidit. And also the US presidential election cycles, you can practically see the propaganda swell up in the months prior. And then it suddenly all stops right after the election is over. Shareblue and Cambridge Analytica probably control a good portion of the American social media internet between the two of them, at this point. Internet cultural astroturfing is definitely a "thing" now, and every organization is doing it because it's cheap and very effective. And it's effective, because many people are still under the mistaken impression that social media votes and comments 100% correlate to public opinion. When in reality they can be bought and sold just like giant billboards. Which is basically what reddit has become. A giant billboard.

[–]ManWithABanana 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I will never forget the first time I saw this in action.

The Los Angeles CA area has a subreddit, and very few republican congressmen left. The Democratic party identified one who they could defeat, and decided to work extra hard (spend extra money etc) to defeat this guy.

The subreddit suddenly gets a picture of this Republican, with a title showing unsubstantiated nonsense. It's not even a meme - just a picture of the guy. It's all about the stuff they put in the title, to smear him and get people to vote for the other guy. And from the time I last checked the subreddit (1 am) - no picture posted - to getting into the office (6 am) - the picture has the most upvotes of all time in the subreddit.

It was clearly a phony account getting mass machine upvotes, but it got people super riled up about the congressman and tons of comments from regular posters. Nobody wanted to hear me when I said "Hey something's wrong here".

Same thing OP is mentioning, but this is literally politics.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah it's one of those things, once you notice it, you can't un-notice it

[–]asterias 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's a similar situation with subs dedicated to specific countries, which are actually controlled by foreign entities.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Anonymous works fine. When Digg was better than anything we have now, I had a quite anonymous account and all was fine. It's just a canard by people who want to control information.

In fact if we can't be anonymous, we can't speak freely at all. We all now now in the back of our minds that almost everything we write can be traced to us by law enforcement or others.

Recently I tried to log in to a secondary youtube channel I own, registered to a protonmail adress. I even still knew the password. Yet to "pretect me" google won't let me log in to my own account again EVER unless I give a cellphone number which they than can easily trace to connect with all the other data they have.

Anonymous speech is the only free speech.

[–]twosheds 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Just discovered that not only does yahoo not let you create an email without a phone number, but they "don't support" google voice numbers.

I just want to be anonymous enough that some blue-haired landwhale admin at reddit or some other sjw infested company can't try to get me fired for wrongthink. I'm sure my data at my isp is not safe, I'm sure my data at reddit is not safe, and I'm sure my data at google is not safe - and it's not likely I'd have any legal recourse if some social justice psychopath managed to get me fired.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Same here man. I've been censoring myself for years now on most platforms especially the big ones. I work in a field where I could easily be fired for enough rumors (mental health field, with juveniles). Luckily I saw this coming in the times of the Snowden revelations, so well before the cancelling truly began.

Either I'm anonymous, or I can't really speak on many subjects. It is simply too dangerous now. For example: I've smoked weed for 20+ years. That alone could get me fired possibly where I am. I'm not going to test it.

Anyone who thinks you can have honest conversations without anonymity is dreaming the sweet dream of perpetual delusion.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

i years ago had a twitter account, litterally named "fake name" but now they don't let me log into it for same reason you mention.

[–]FreeJulianAssange 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Oh you must ba a Russian BOT then :D. I had a twitter account briefly. Now I read for info, but will never make one again. I am always keeping an eye on new platforms though. Sooner or later one based on privacy must arise and have at least decent success.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I do like to read twitter, lot of trash there but some people post good thoughts, and I'd want to make a name for myself jujst to be able to save peoples twitter accounts I like but yeah anyway it's not worth the trouble

[–]iraelmossadreddit 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

sadly I think reddit will stay around for a long time. The dumb masses are all on the internet now and reddit is like the new "news". They are just fed what they want and there is no real discussion. that's what the dumbed down poisoned food masses on anti depressants and anxiety pills love. It's a well oiled propaganda machine that seems no chance of stopping unless the internet itself is completely changed. Lets be real, if a site like sadit ever got to be any real competition to reddit, the powers that be of conde nast dav would shut this down in a heart beat.

[–]LockeDemosthenes 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's not about toppling them, as the end of reddit is guaranteed already. Its about having open platforms where we can argue about things most of us arent experts in without being censored for given opinions. Without that, reddit has happily and enthusiastically jumped off a cliff headed for the rocks below.