That Tencent investment money is coming home to roost.
Archived link so we’re not sending any traffic Reddit’s way.
I love the “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” admin response downthread, too. They’ve really gone full mask-off over there, haven’t they?
They have their own happy cheering crowd, so nothing to worry about from their pov.
They’ve also done some fuckery with the downvotes. I noticed that right around the time of the mass exodus, certain comments could not be downvoted lower than zero, and posts could not be downvoted lower than some percentage in the teens (14% or 12% upvoted, something like that). Even Spez’s infamous town hall post where he laid all that shit on Christian Selig in June, which was literally getting downvotes in the thousands, never went below some teen percent upvoted, when in reality it had to be far fewer.
I got the same impression looking through the above post as well: lots of people disagreeing with the admin (who disappeared VERY quickly when asked anything of substance) but they somehow seemed to maintain a vote count in the single digits anyway.
I could be wrong about this second point, I haven’t been there in a while, but the first one I’d swear to: check it out on old Reddit if you’re interested.
Posts can’t go below zero score
There’s also artificial Reddit votes where someone upvotes and Reddit adds a downvote to delete their vote
Posts can’t go below zero score
On old Reddit if you look up in the upper left of a post, it will give you a “% upvoted” figure, and that’s what I was referring to, just so we’re clear. But you’re right, in terns of actual (sort of) vote count, posts can’t go below zero.
There’s also artificial Reddit votes where someone upvotes and Reddit adds a downvote to delete their vote
That one is new to me. Though I do not doubt it: it goes hand in hand with all the other vote manipulation they’ve gotten up to lately. If I may ask, where did you see this?
Posts used to be able to go below zero. Years and years ago.
I haven’t been on since June, but I noticed it for the last 1-2 years or so. Especially on the smaller subs where any given comment would only get a handful of upvotes. Someone would write a long helpful explanation, I upvote, and nothing happens. The score would stay at 1 or whatever.
It’s not like I was spamming votes either. I would make a point of only voting on one comment per post so my vote would count. But it was still usually 50/50. Vote fuzzing was there for years, but this was different. The comments that were less popular seemed to be affected the most.
It’s called Reddit “vote fuzzing”
Lots of posts talk about it, here’s the quickest one I found: https://apps.uk/why-do-reddit-votes-fluctuate/
No, individual vote fuzzing started years ago, and is a separate factor. This is new. What I am speaking of started within the last year, and involves the percentage upvoted to not dip below a certain threshold. To reiterate:
On old Reddit if you look up in the upper left of a post, it will give you a “% upvoted” figure, and that’s what I was referring to, just so we’re clear.
I use Old Reddit myself (you can see my link in OP was an Old Reddit link).
I was not aware of manipulation of the percentage beyond the effect vote fuzzing would have on it (e.g. if you had 5000 upvotes + 1000 fake ones, and 500 downvotes + 1000 fake ones, this would affect the percentage)
i miss when you could see the actual up/down totals on reddit. it was legitimately valuable, especially on controversial comments to see that some people still supported your point
people said at the time, oh it’s fine, it’s not that bad of a change. and now that we have them back on lemmy it’s a breath of fresh air
lots of people disagreeing with the admin (who disappeared VERY quickly)
Reddit is taking the “post and ghost” approach these days. Probably the right thing to do. There’s nothing they can say to justify this. Gone are the days when they engage at all, or give a single shit what anyone wants. Take it or leave it.
Left it, lol. There’s no place for genuine interaction over there anymore, or very little.
So many ads on that link
Back when I used to mod Reddit, starting maybe a year or so ago we’d occasionally get users who would be inexplicably targeted by the auto-filter.
The accounts weren’t new, weren’t shadowbanned, weren’t using any filter-triggering words (that I could guess at), and an examination via Pushshift didn’t reveal any kind of spammy behavior. Nonetheless, their posts would get silently removed by the site-wide filter, and frequently we wouldn’t even know until they modmailed us.
Now I can’t help but wonder if this was a result of a beta-test of something like this. Something they had done had invisibly lowered their “Reddit credit”, leaving us as confused as them.
I mentioned lemmy in a comment reply 6 months or so ago, and it very obviously had an effect on my account. Akin to a shadowban but not quiet. I think they’ve been doing this for a while. It’s just public info now…
I got verified as a webcomic creator on r/funny long ago, and over the years it’s been a 50/50 shot whether my original content would get removed by an autofilter, at which point I would reach out to a mod, at which point my submission would maybe be restored hours after I submitted it, with no chance of getting any actual visibility because it never had a real chance when sorting by “new. “
Sometimes a mod tells me I can resubmit, but the timing of a submission matters, and if you’re outside of a good timeslot when you get permission to resubmit, it means less of a chance your submission will do well.
But if you risk waiting for another day, there’s no guarantee it won’t just happen again, and the mod that gave you permission to resubmit might not be working that day, and then you run the risk of some other mod thinking you’re a spammer, and you having to work it out again with them at the risk of a ban.
EDIT: According to at least one measure, my credit under this new system isn’t bad at all, so I’m without explanation for why this keeps happening.
Blackmirror is supposed to be dark fiction not a fucking blueprint
Two words: too late.
More words: Black Mirror will be the least of our concerns in 10yrs at this rate.
Damn that thread got removed quickly
Removed by mod
I doubt there’s going to be an investigation or anything. As scummy as it is, it’s perfectly within their rights as a private company. People should refuse to give business to such a company though, but they (probably) didn’t do anything illegal.
No official investigation- but a curious journalist could still document it and sour Reddit’s reputation enough to sink them even faster.
People can’t exercise their rights if they don’t know how they’re being violated.
I have tons of explanation-based comments removed/shadow removed for no apparent reason.
Wonder if that’s why
The longer the comment the more likely to hit some sort of automod rule.
Include a phone number? Shortlink? E-mail address? the word “sremoved”? Were you talking about “Suicide Squad” or “Camp Kill Yourself”? All those and so much more can hit something and depending on configuration your post could be removed or filtered.
Your comment triggered the Lemmy slur filter lol
Good to see thats one a lot of folks fuck up.Makes me feel less dumb.
Unless it was a Scunthorpe problem, it’s probably good we have a slur filter though
Reddit has been employing all kinds of sketchy shit for years - including some fairly invasive behavioural fingerprinting techniques. And a lot of it has been abused by “powermods” who figured out how to game it.
Good chance these people simply said something that someone didn’t agree with and got flagged by some prick with a runaway ego.
I wonder if it’s admin abuse at the corporate level. I experienced a few very strange situations on Reddit that simply never made sense.
I got permabanned from /r/politics for using the word “retardation”, despite the fact I was using the technical/scientific definition of the term (the action of delaying or slowing the progress or development of something.) , and specifically referring to the entire US political instution.
I told the mods this is a word in the English language that is often used outside the denegratory sense, and that I was clearly not in any way targeting those with special needs. They called me “ableist” in response (“that word is ableist and there are no exceptions.” )
Like… Wtf? I used to literally hang out and defend special needs kids regularly back when I went to public school. But sure… I guess I’m ableist. The entire situation simply made no sense. I had contributed heavily to that sub over many, many years. I get the impression they were looking for a reason to get rid of me.
Eh. That seems more like typical out-of-control jargon and labeling ideology than any admin malfeasance. It’s unfortunately something I’ve seen a few times - I had several debates with people who likewise insisted that even using it in the sense of ‘to slow something down’ was improper, or that using potentially insulting words in any context caused “harm”. It’s a mindset that goes beyond any Reddit issues.
We’ve heard from you that dealing with spam is taking up more of your time, so the goal of this update is to help catch spammy and abusive users at a faster rate so that you can spend more time engaging with your communities and redditing.
So instead of restoring the tools the mods originally had that helped control spam effectively, reddit is rolling out their own ‘tools’ that will undoubtedly be less accessible, harder to use, and only available in one specific way. Because fuck everyone who isn’t a reddit admin.
it’s sad to see reddit decay like this. 10 years ago it was amazing, and it’s been a slow decent from then to now.
I think it’s about time to finally leave Reddit. I’ve been there for almost 15 years and I just got my first permanent ban from a legal advice sub for one single comment. I’m not sure what I said wrong because I never use inflammatory language. Oh well, I already left Twitter, time to bail on Reddit too.
I got banned from star trek for asking about people’s view of worf and discussing his character, there was some rule against opinion pieces, I appealed saying it was a discussion and not an opinion piece and that people were taking part. The mod made the bán permanent and highlighted the part of the post with my opinion in it and said case closed. I told him he wasn’t a good mod that I was trying to discuss something and gave my view and that this heavy handed approach is bullshit. The following day I got a permanent ban sitewide. No explanation. Googled the message content and apparently it was an issue with a lot of people getting the same treatment.
I had this happen to me. It seems like even talking back to a mod is a total sidewide ban. It’s time to archive old posts and jump ship. The fediverse is big enough we don’t need reddit anymore and our effort is better spent building communities here.check out startrek.website
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I fucking hate worf, like I like to hate him. He is so shit at everything, no one pays him any mind and he was raised on earth. His Klingon bullshit is all stuff he read.
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I like lemmy a lot more now!
My favourite best of is Worf giving security suggestions and Picard ignoring them or just saying no.
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Paramount basically owns the mods of that sub. Found out myself. They’ll ban anyone with a slightly critical opinion. If you didn’t think reddit was astroturfed enough.
Can’t say I’m surprised. There is an understanding between mods and admins that whatever the mods do, the admin will agree to. Only in extreme cases will there be interference.
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The original post there was about somebody who had to pay back $6000 to the food stamp office because there was a year’s worth of overpayments. I said that even though the error was no fault of his own, he still had to pay it back. That is in fact true and I found myself permanently banned 30 minutes later.
I just find it strange that you can get banned for life just because you made one comment that the mods did not like. It’s not like I called the guy a scumbag or loser and that he should go to jail or something equally vindictive.
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What probably got me banned was asking the guy how was he not aware of such a gross overpayment. Oh well, I suppose most people look at a noticeable bump in SNAP benefits and don’t even question it. I would think something was amiss and double check on it.
The slur, “welfare queen” never really has gone away and it’s been 40 years now. Heck, the colloquialism “hipster” barely lasted 10 years. Anyway, a lot of people unaware the fact that the people that get food stamps are pretty much split down the middle race wise. There are just as many white folks getting food stamps as there are African-Americans.
I’m a senior citizen I know a lot of people in my age bracket that get them because their Social Security is not quite enough to cover everything, especially since inflation has run amok the last few years.
I have been banned from ask Reddit for almost 8 years people are stupid. The thread was a thread asking for insults and definitions of those insults. Somebody called somebody else a thot among other slang terms. The person it was directed to did not understand and asked for clarification. I transcribed the sentence into English vernacular. The guy who said the f***** up s*** never got in trouble but somebody reported my comment and then a thoughtless admin read it and I’ve been banned for 8 years.
There are still a couple of niche subs that I use like quitting vapes, my hometown sub and a couple of others but I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I never went back to Reddit. I left Facebook and Instagram almost 10 years ago and bailed out of Twitter about a month ago (had nothing to do with Elon Musk).
As usual, whenever a social media type of site gets immensely popular, it starts going downhill from that point forward.
I haven’t been on Reddit since RIF stopped working. I was on Reddit for more than 10 years
My last permaban was because I quoted a guy who was saying some racist shit, in order to out him as a racist when he was trying to steer a conversation in the “man, we really need to do something about those people” direction.
I got banned, racist didn’t.
I was permabanned from… some sub, I don’t even recall which, in a discussion about why LGBTQ+ rights were still incredibly important and cited the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates F***s” signs (just like that) as an example of the kind of hate and vitriol LGBTQ+ people have to face daily. I was banned for using a hate slur.
You don’t have to say anything specific to get banned in that sub, you just have to catch a mod on a bad day, which is basically every day. I got banned for a reply to a comment on that sub - not even the OP, just a very buried comment, because they said I was off topic of the OP. My comment was very much on topic and involved how to report an abused child. One of the mods lost their fucking minds that day and banned dozens of people in that post. It wasn’t even a controversial post with a lot of contentious comments and rule breaking, most of us were just discussing child abuse resources, which directly related to the OP. Those mods are power- mad fucking nutters.
It was a slow descent over the years. The past six months have been a landslide.
I’ve been on the Internet over 30 years and it never fails that the more popularity site gains, the less utility that it has. Reddit, Facebook and Twitter will always have tons of users but I don’t think any of those sites are as useful as they were a decade ago.
the more popularity site gains, the less utility that it has.
I think there is a “goldilocks” popularity zone. Right around the time with shitty watercolour and the hell in a cell guy, and when people would ask obscure questions and some ridiculously specific professional would chime in. Those were the days.
I think it was really a matter of being able to downvote poor content and comments into non-existence so those people would never return.
Shitty watercolor, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time.
legal advice subs are particularly austere and shitty.
there are too many rules on reddit – years and years of byzantine fixes atop fixes. very unpleasant environment to try to interact in
I suppose the larger the mob, the more it needs to be reined in but some of the subs have a number of “overzealous” mods.
The problem is the mods and the admins. The mods choose to use massive, opaque automod filters. The admins develop even more opaque scoring systems to feed into the automod configurations. It didn’t have to be like this. They chose to make it this way.
And I’ve already seen comments that it’s not available in the official Reddit app. Shocking (/s if that wasn’t obvious.)
It is much easier to control a score. Karma completely depends on user arbitrary choices. Scores are optimized to satisfy reddit KPIs
Hahahaaha wait, so like, they’re basically applying something that sounds an awful fucking lot like the CCP’s social credit score thingy to all of Reddit’s user data and metadata…?
Jesus tapdancing christ. I’m happier by the day since I bailed on Reddit.
Jesus’s middle name is Fucking, not tapdancing.
Behold, Jesus was feeling particularly agile and motivated that day, so for that single moment in eternity, verily He said unto His holy self, “Holy self, today I’ma be a fucker AND a tapdancer.” And lo, so it was. Hence the recent confusion.
But can he do both at the same time? Yes. Yes he can.
It’s Jesus H. Christ and the H is for Harold, like his dad. As in, “Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name.”
When ridiculing the dystopian mess that is the “social credit score” system in China it is good to always remember that it is called like that because it was based of the “credit score” system used in many libertarian countries, where it is regularly used to deny access to essentials of societal life, like housing, energy, and communication.
If you use Lemmy like the news aggregator reddit started as then it is basically the same thing.
Except not so anonymous. You can look up who voted how on what.
Only matters if your account is tied to anything personal. I use lemmy as anonymous as possible. IDC if anyone sees how I vote or what I say on here because I’m not tieing any personal info to it. Can do the same on Reddit but it feels more necessary here for some reason.
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what do they need beyond karma though? how isn’t this just karma?
The Fediverse has reddit to thank for it’s growth.
Spez: Bad news. The money guys say the IPO projections are cratering. We need to do something.
The one admin who still cares: Maybe we should try to walk back some of the stuff we’ve been…
Spez: SECRET INTERNET POINTS THAT ONLY WE CAN SEE!
Admin: …
They already have this. I was denied a request for an abandoned subreddit because my social credit score was too low (effectively).
I was denied a request for an abandoned subreddit because my social credit score was too low (effectively).
Well at least you can always start a community here on Lemmy. I’m sure you’d be welcome.
I made six in mid-June.
Thank you for doing your share.
Yeah I really gotta pull my finger out and contribute more, I feel my commenting holds much more weight, and is considered far more fairly than on Reddit, but I have yet to make a post or a community.
Super lazy engage
Yeah I really gotta pull my finger out and contribute more
Just be sure to wash your hands, before you do so.
I had a 15 year old account shadowbanned from a community I contributed to daily because I don’t register emails on Reddit accounts. Apparently that was more important than my record of thousands of productive comments.
The new “Social Creddit Score”
This will certainly go extremely well for Reddit. I see no problems here. Now move along.
Most of us already have:-P
If I may suggest. Cross post Lemmy posts to Reddit. Even in the apps you can share the url to a post. Time to make those being abused on Reddit aware there is another place for them.
That assumes a Lemmy link doesn’t just instantly get you shadowbanned
Truth. I posted about Lemmy when the whole app fiasco was going on and my posts were removed.
People such as yourself are the reason I’m here, wouldn’t have known about the Lemmyverse without all you folks spreading the good word.
I’m paying it forward where I can, but I think I understand many folks frustration with the sheer indifference and laziness of the general public regarding these major issues.
I have several posts in Reddit communities about Lemmy and they’re still all up
There are many instances to link to
And easy to look them all up. There’s a handy list linked at the bottom of every Lemmy instance. Absolutely trivial to put them all in a database and ban anyone who mentions any of them.
Which would become a story of and in itself and would get more attention to Lemmy as a viable alternative. it doesn’t happen currently but if it does we’ll hear all about it
That’s why I mention Lemmy in my Reddit bio
Ooh, smart. They’re obviously not very smart, I wouldn’t be surprised if they straight up forgot to scan bios.
Credit scores?
Like China’s social credit system?
And reddit is owned by a Chinese company?
Huh.
Like China’s social credit system?
or just like… credit scores… ppl act like china invented the dystopian social credit system but the US has been doing it since the 90s…
China:
where every citizen will be scored based on their behavior. Good actions, like volunteering, and bad, like littering, are tracked using algorithms, artificial intelligence and facial recognition — and there are real consequences for a high or low score.
Really? Does your bank change your credit score if you’re a good boy? Your credit card company if you volunteer? Your home loan company give you a better rate if you make a viral tiktok video showing how great the United States are?
No? Of course not. Because they’re absolutely not the same thing.
My mom adding and subtracting Good Boy Points based on whether I do my chores or not is literally communism
Only if your mom is the government
She makes the rules and grounds you if you don’t follow them, sounds like government to me
Yes, your credit score goes up if you’re a good boy (helping rich people get more rich) and goes down if you’re a bad boy (being financially responsible by not borrowing money).
You do realise the thing you’re describing doesn’t exist? Like you’ve amplified the exaggerated headlines from people imagining how bad a social credit system could be but that’s not something that has ever actually existed.
Amplified and exaggerated?
It’s a direct quote from the site.
Not the Reddit thing the china thing, it’s nonsence. The actual reality of it is nothing at all like described above
Credit scores need to go away too, but if you are unironically comparing a credit score with what China is doing, you are either extremely naive or extremely biased.
I hate the ccp but credit score in China is a giant propaganda lie, it is the same as in the us. They wanted to make experiments with more advanced scoring system but never did, and for some reason every media say they did. But you ask someone from China and he won’t understand what you’re talking about. Still fuck the ccp (and reddit)
The Chinese government is testing several systems in the country and last I checked nothing is formally in place. There are versions whose system does include non-financial elements which is incredibly disturbing but nothing is formally being followed so it is possible they abandon those versions.
Do they? They are based on your finances and financial history.
In the UK you can be blacklisted from all sorts of services if you have a criminal record or poor financial history. And our police have experimented with facial recognition + have arrested people for posts on social media. Not to mention the Tory government trying to outlaw protest & dissent.
But we’re quick to make jokes about China
US credit scores are entirely based on your finances. My understanding is China has multiple systems being tested some of which are not based purely on finances but nothing is formal or universal at this point.
China’s system could be more authoritarian but we cannot know until they choose a version that is.
The Karma system was a credit score system from the start. Why is everyone surprised Reddit is acting like reddit.
Because Reddit karma is a score openly visible to everyone based on a simple and direct vote system, while this turns out to be a behind-the-scenes score users have but can’t see, understand the calculations behind, or respond to directly.
One issue with that was pointed out by reddit user tharic99 in the top comment to the linked post:
So users have this hidden score in the back end that they’re not aware of. We as moderators can use that hidden score to make automod determinations based off of the hidden score and we can’t even see it as a moderator.
Correct?
Why does this feel like years ago when trying to get a loan or credit application and being told you don’t have enough credit, but no one will tell you what your credit score was or what number you needed. It was this mythical number in the back end that only the credit agency knew about.
I always thought the karma score was a weird system and I compared it to that one black mirror episode. This is just an extension of an already fucked up idea.
So the number itself for a specific user cannot be seen except by admins, but moderators can use the field in concert with AutoMod to have AutoMod take actions based on its value.
Considering how much Huffman likes to do manual overrides on things that Reddit The Company claims are done algorithmically, this is just an autocratic way to tune the content of the site to Huffman’s preference.
“Fuck u/spez” you say? Criticize Huffman’s idol Elon Musk? Voice any opinion that Huffman doesn’t like? That’s a low CQS for you!
I’m pretty sure somebody will create r/WhatsMyCQS where AutoMod flairs each post depending on what range the poster’s score is in.
It already exists. If you’re still on R*ddit, it’s r/whatismycqs
Edit: Altered reference because r/cqs was banned September 19, 2023 at 02:10:44 UTC.
Do it.
It already exists. If you’re on R*ddit, it’s r/whatismycqs
Edit: Altered reference because r/cqs was banned September 19, 2023 at 02:10:44 UTC.
I overwrote all my comments with links to Lemmy, and I’m still at “High”. Guess I can still do a bit more lobbying for Lemmy before I lose credibility.
So if I do a rgpd request, I should get it, right ?
general data protection regulation
gdpr, not rgpd
but yes, you should.
RGPD is the French way of spelling it, pretty common for acronyms to be backwards in French, for example UE instead of EU.
Lots of things are backwards in France
Haw-yee
You can’t directly see your score, but mods can interact with it. Guaranteed tomorrow there will be a dozen subreddits with automod set up to tell people what category their score is.
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I have a high one despite having a harassment warning on my account for calling spez a loser
harassment warning on my account for calling spez a loser
Not a bad hill to go out on, lol
