Could the new reddit voting policy be a way for mods/admins to control content without getting caught?
31 2014-06-21 by [deleted]
Text: Oh no, I'm sure they have (what they [want to] believe to be) a legitimate reason for it: money. Think about it: who does this change benefit? People who want to manipulate votes without getting caught. Well who wants to do that? That would be people trying to people trying to get something seen by more people. Advertisers do literally only that.
There's also the idea floating around that it has to do with AMAs: big-name celebrities were getting scared off by downvotes. Rereading the announcement, it makes a lot of sense with that context.
Either they were paid to implement this change, or, more likely, they just hope it will make the site become more attractive to advertisers/celebrities. I think success has gone to their heads and they think reddit is to big to fail. It's not, and while this change won't be the ultimate death of reddit as some have hyperbolized, it has greatly shaken our faith in the administration. The way they've handled it is shady at worst and idiotic at best, depending on how conspiratorial you're feeling.
They claim it's about preventing automated voting bots, but it really only makes it easier for them to hide.
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, and I don't want to latch on to this idea too hard just yet, but it's the only explanation that makes sense to me right now. Feel free to come prove me wrong though admins.
11 comments
3 chamaelleon 2014-06-21
Sound reasoning.
A crowd-sourced solution ought to be applied to the problem of voter-bots, not a veil of ignorance.
0 retrobuddha 2014-06-21
Yes, like all media the powers that be want to control you by controlling Reddit.
-2 Macbeth554 2014-06-21
I really don't understand the hatred of this small change. You can still see how many points a post has, and the percentage of the people who like it. The only difference is you can't see how many up and down votes it has.
5 SovereignMan 2014-06-21
Now there's no way to recognize brigading so it's also impossible to report it to the admins. That used to lead to shadowbans for brigaders. Now that's not going to happen anymore so we'll see much more vote brigading. That's not a small change.
0 Macbeth554 2014-06-21
Wouldn't the percentage upvoted, that is still shown, basically give you the same info?
Just as a disclaimer, I'm asking because I don't understand, not trying to say the change is good or bad. I have no opinion on it since it doesn't affect how I use Reddit at all.
2 [deleted] 2014-06-21
If you see a post that is "2 points" that could mean it's score was 2/0 or 105/103.
There is a significant difference between the two.
1 Macbeth554 2014-06-21
Yes, there would be a significant difference between the two, which would be reflected in the percentage liked figure.
1 [deleted] 2014-06-21
There are no percentages next to comments.
1 Macbeth554 2014-06-21
That's true, but there was not change to the comments. They are the same as before.
1 [deleted] 2014-06-21
No, they aren't. The comments no show "?"s instead of your score. This was useful in situations where someone asked for advice in the field of math/science/medicine/etc. and you could tell their opinion. Now you might be inclined to trust "5 points" where before you could see "187 upvotes, 182 downvoted" which indicated that the person was sharing a controversial or incorrect.
you should read this thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/28hjga/reddit_changes_individual_updown_vote_counts_no/
2 Macbeth554 2014-06-21
Is that just for RES or something? The comments show exactly the same for me, but I don't use RES.
2 Macbeth554 2014-06-21
Is that just for RES or something? The comments show exactly the same for me, but I don't use RES.