Vote brigading, in theory, is organizing offsite or onsite to effect the votes of other content. For many years, this rule was enforced by the admins if you made posts such as "Help me out here!" or "Support needed!" when crossposting.

Recently, this has changed a bit; and simply following a link to another subreddit and engaging in voting can cause your account to be subject to a shadowban. Because of this, we recommend using redditlog or the np domain when crossposting.

The reason why there is controversy surrounding the enforcement of this rule is two fold;

Firstly, subs like bestof routinely vote briagde but the admins let it slide because it helps the site.

Secondly groups like srs/sa (srs= somethingawful goons for the most part) are allowed to brigade to "control content" as a reward for their help during project panda (if you wonder why the predditors tumblr was allowed to spread for 18 hours on reddit, it was because the admins wanted VA, PIMA and the creepshots founder gone, and they used the goons to do it). So that pisses people off.

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That was an ugly situation.

PIMA was a reddit inc insider who turned on the Brooklyn mod cabals and leaked sensitive information tieing Alexis to the default mods IRL.

VA used to mod /r/funny and /r/wtf among other defaults, until he resigned after watching masta take payola to turn this thread exposing what Chris Brown really did to his girlfriend into this barren wasteland.

Both PIMA and VA were targeted in what was called project panda.

Project panda started with the SA goons creating a subreddit called /r/preteengirls. Then they filled that sub with CP and emailed Andersoon Cooper (about their own sub). Cooper was then directed by the goons to /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots, which he ran a story on.

Right after that story ran, a document started spreading around on reddit called the predditors tumblr. This tumblr doxxed VA, the creepshots founder and PIMA (although PIMA was only involved in creepshots because davack asked him to quell the flow of cp that was being raided there by the goons, also part of project panda).

This tumblr was what eventually got into the slimy hands of a gawker media reporter; who used it to get VA fired. His piece also lead to death threats against the creepshots founder. IN response, mods of all major subreddits permanently banned gawker from reddit (against the wishes of the admins).

Here's the mod chat where the mod revolted aginst the admins in response to the shady shit that went down over that 18 day period from when /r/preteengirls was created by the goons to when VA and others were doxxed..

The intention of all of this was such that reddit inc could throw its hands up in the face of a "free speech problem" and say "We didn't remove anything, we simply bowed to internal pressure and instituted community standards." And now you know why srd called that incident doxxtober.

*Oh also, srs gets hands off treatment from the admins as a thank you for that incident.

**Also, let me make myself clear; I do not think jailbait and creepshots, while legal, were appropriate communities for this site. But that said, they way in which the admins chose to get rid of them (using doxxing) was fucked and wrong.

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subredditdrama.

i think its shitredditdoes and srs is shitredditsays?

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that makes a lot more sense actually....derp.

I'd xpost this to /r/redditinsider if it weren't for shadobanphobia. There'sa thread in/r/theoryofreddit on brigading if anyone is interested.

This doesn't explain what happened to me at all. I did none of the things you listed.

Sorry, can you refresh my recollection as to what happened with your ban?

re: Shadow banned.

from Sporkicide[A] via /r/reddit.com/ sent 6 days ago

That post actually had nothing to do with the ban. You and hundreds of other users followed a link from /r/conspiracy/ into /r/Needamod/ and you all voted/commented on what was linked. This sort of activity is considered a type of vote manipulation, and is against the site rules. If you can promise not to engage in this type of behavior in the future, I'm happy to unban you.

**Here's the crazy part: I never did this and I never went there!**

Yikes, I have no idea how you would have got caught up in that.

User id strings are hex offsets, so it's possible you got caught up by accident; although what's more likely is that you commented in the /r/conspiracy post so the admin dolling out the bans threw you in. Either way, that's fucked.

That's the annoying thing here: I never went to needamod nor commented on any such thread!

It's interesting; only once in the history of reddit have I seen the admins pull out user id strings to justify a ban, so you will probably never find out the answer sadly. To that end, I think they avoid using user id strings to justify bans for 2 reasons;

Firstly, it takes a good amount of time to translate the code into english that an end user would understand.

Secondly, in a situation when they are saying "hundereds of users from one sub went into another"; in order to back that up they'd have to release the user id strings for all parties involved and that's territory they do not want to go into one bit, imo.

As an aside; I think the admins probably have a fascinating picture of reddit that they can't talk about. Because what they can do is easily chart people's alts and what not, so they know every network of power users and how they operate but they can't say a word about it publicly (most of the time; see Ian Chong and Saydrah as two big examples).

Lets all play along to just get along.

For the time being, this sub is still a place that oddly keeps me grounded.

FYI: I can access half of my phones capabilities...

Edit: removed a thingy and up-voted your comments.

This must have been the bipolarbear0 incident.

I've never read nor linked to anything from that poster.

He wanted to be mod in futorology I think . He is not so well thought of in certain circles I.e /r/conspiracy since he posted anti semitic content here as an 'experiment'.

So I've read and avoided.

What happened to you?

re: Should I not give a damn about Aaron?

from AssuredlyAThrowAway sent 9 days ago

Aaron's dream will live on, it can and it must.

If you get this message let's chat offsite.

**I honestly believe that my comments about Aaron were the catalyst but the Admin said I was in a vote brigade, which I did not do.**

The other day someone was banned for a "vote brigade" that only they took part in. As in they clicked a link and gave a single comment a single downvote and got shadowbanned for it - this is the fuckery we're dealing with.

I'm actually a little surprised they even bothered making up a reason to ban you.

And yet they did exactly that. Hmmm?

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That is okay, the simple version is;

do not vote or comment if you click a link from one subreddit going into another.

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You can go from sub to sub, voting as you like.

What you can't do is follow a link from one subreddit into another subreddit and then vote. If you do that your account can be shadowbanned, so be careful.

It really only affects front and hot pages, but it is when a group of people get together to collectively downvote certain topics so that they never reach the front page or the hot topics page.

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People who have websites know what website you were on when you clicked the link to get on their site. So, if you click a link and then vote on that page they can see that you got to that page through the link, and if it's a link calling for everyone to go vote on the subject then it is considered a brigade.

There is something called no participation which means you change the www in the link to np and it blocks people from voting. This is to try and help stop brigading and is always encouraged when linking to another post on reddit.

If you are browsing normally and not arriving on pages by being linked directly there then you are not going to have any issues.

Theres a trick in firefox that doesn't pass on referrer info.
http://www.technipages.com/firefox-enable-disable-referrer
Maybe a chrome user could tell you how for that browser.

This extension does it

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hnkcfpcejkafcihlgbojoidoihckciin?hl=en

Eff's privacy badger also does that plus more privacy good stuff, I believe, but you may want to double check the specifics of it's effects.

(I figured it's worth linking because you can likely trust an EFF plugin to not fuck you over)

Available here.

https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

Note: this won't make a jot of difference to your behaviour on reddit. They obviously have all your stuff logged there, but it may protect you from shadowbans after following an off-site link.

fwiw Brigading is pretty shitty IMO, but it's very true that enforcement is selective here and it's almost second nature to follow a bestof post and upvote good content. Try and avoid engaging in links where your response is negative - particularly if it is a dated post.

Disclaimer - somebody probably understands this stuff far better than me, and you should wait for them to clarify or dispute this advice before following it.

I generally avoid voting or commenting on NP links anyway, it's shitty when conspiraturd do it here and I won't stoop to their pathetic level.

Indeed, I try and avoid 'meta-conflict' anyway because it is rarely conducive to good discussion, but we all forget or get carried away sometimes -especially when not paying particular attention to what you are doing.

True, the most likely outcome would be banning another account though, ho hum.

This doesn't work sitewide . Only if mods include the vote disabling code in the css.

Somebody get a rope.... er, several ropes....

Vote brigading is calling on others to 'destroy' a favorable link or someones comment you don't like. Shadowbanning is to ban someone without them knowing and basically ridding them from your sub or site even if its an admin doing the banning. This is how I have come to understand them at least.

Brigading definition is changing or has changed. It seems as though brigading is implied when a crosspost occurs regardless of any stated plea for support.

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Just to be its not crossposting submisdions as appears in the 'other discussions' tab but crossposting comments. As mentioned posting with np instead of www I.e np.reddit.com/conspiracy is seen for now as showing good intent.

Yeah I've noticed that, its an invitation to speak your mind in another part of the site. Its like a trans dimensional worm hole to invade through! That was the visual I had in my head...I need to get back to work.

Very sad that this is happening. Another possible nail in reddits coffin.

It actually affects new far more. If something gets downvoted first in the new section it wont get to the front page no matter now many upvotes it gets. That's how Reddit works it seems.

Vote Brigades are against the rules, they are seen as a cheap way to keep certain content down and spam the hot with pointless things that are unrelated.

Certain subs do it to so stop content that they disagree with from reaching "hot". Usually they would be about the following (Israel, Anti Obama, Monsanto, GMOs Chemtrails and other stuff)

Being shadow banned was a weird experience. The admin explained that I had participated in an vote brigade. I had done no such thing and asked for proof. The admin gave me none but unbanned me.

I've almost always been thoughtful, considerate, in my votes. Up-votes are a straight click as the comment is in line with my thinking, they said it better than I could or it was insightful.

Down-votes I've used sparingly and I almost always try to engage as I'm down-voting or during the process. Then again, there are comments that just deserve the down-vote but now I'm very cautious/paranoid...

but now I'm very cautious/paranoid...

That seems to be the goal.

Sad but true.

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Don't forget /r/circlebroke and /r/shiredditsays

Incorrect and total fail of informing.

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Again... failure to communicate anything worth anything.

So I've read and avoided.