I assume you are talking about the drawing that shows machine guns for ww1 and 2, and a camera shooting money for ww3? Like ky1e says, it is an easily digested soundbite type of thing, and odds are, barring evidence to the contrary, that is why it is upvoted.

Regardless, these posts have much more value than you give them credit for. It's basically pro-conspiracy propaganda. People see this and after they shut the tab and pretty much consciously forget about it their brain continues to unpack the idea. The next time they watch the news, it may very well come to mind.

Most people will not read an article that states logically the ideas being presented by this image, but they will look at the drawing and internalize it. Were it instead a written exposition, they might skim the first and last paragraph and that would be it. The content would be hit and miss for 90% of the viewers, because that's what people do today. But this image is wholly consumed in an instant.

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Sure, and that isn't his point at all.

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I think you are wrong. Time and again, posts like the one in question rise to the top here, and as ky1e says they did in /r/books as well. In fact, go to pretty much any sub which allows them and you'll see that's the case. People subbed here aren't any special class of person, at least not collectively, as much as we may as individuals like to think so, and the evidence for that is this post and many many others like it being voted to the top. No offense, but you really need actual explicit evidence of manipulation to have a convincing argument to the contrary.

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You may very well be correct. I wasn't going to respond further, but I want to say one other thing regarding this, having to do with the submitter.

I don't find it that unusual a person may have nothing to do with a sub and still make a one-off submission there that gets heavily upvoted. In my own history, I've made some submission here in conspiracy, none of which did well at all, even though I personally thought them to be topical. My 'best' submission was to /r/aww/ which I never even browse much less participate in, I just know it exists. I'm not trying to game /r/aww/, though.

Comparing /r/books to /r/conspiracy is a false equivalent.

Thank you for saying that :') that is every mod's dream compliment

Exactly. One visit to /r/all and you will see that the first ten or so posts are nothing but memes, or cat pictures.

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A no image rule is poorly thought out suggestion.

What? So now you're just agreeing with me?

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All good and well, but I think you are wrong in your assessment that that post in particular discredits the sub. Do you understand the meaning of it? Even a surface reading will bring you to the hypothesis that war today is mere propaganda by moneyed interests controlling what you see on tv. That is a genuine topic which has a place here in this sub. I fail to see how that discredits this sub somehow.

If that post is gamed to the top, then the gamers are doing us a favor, all said and done, because as I said above most people are simply not going to read an article explaining that idea. I'll go further here and say that in fact most people are dimwitted plebes who cannot understand an article saying that, but can internalize the idea after being presented with it in a cartoon fashion.

I hear what you're saying, but you're arguing for censorship in /r/conspiracy. Let's just let it go. Move on to the next one instead of blowing this into a cluster-fuck-drama. They've won.

Edit: this isn't really me taking a stand, I don't care if it gets removed, I'm not invested. This is more or less a "fuck-the-258k-subs-they-either-get-it-or-they-don't-,I'd-be-more-worried-about-the-non-subs-,and-even-then-who-really-cares" type of thing.

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The users who care about this sub view /r/conspiracy/new.

"A legitimately wanted tread" It's not like this sub has so many submissions that people can't sift though the shit. I mean if people visited this sub once a day or every two days and just sorted submissions by "new" they'd be able see everything submitted and not just artificially inflated "top" posts.

You really want to fix this sub, make the default sorting the "new" submissions. Upvotes still matter, it is basically a visual flag the the submissions might be worth checking out; it may have been submitted 7hrs ago, and have 1400 upvotes but it is still next to that ones guys submission about the concave earth theory that has -3 and was also submitted 7hrs ago. Skip the shit you don't want to read, upvote the stuff that you think the community should see, and let the rest fix itself.

Edit: (sorry a lot of edits tonight). I think I realize why "places" in the top spots are so coveted. I don't browse reddit by a "front page" of my subscribed reddits, I view each sub (that I care about) on its own and sort through the submitted material.

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Actually you're right. I just went back and looked at the last 4 hours and there are about 70posts. Doesn't seems like that much on the daily, probably because there are a fair number of less interesting posts that just get passed by.

Look at the users that are posting them day after day. You'll see a pattern emerge. There's a handful that post every day and some that post every other day. Most of them don't even bother engaging in conversation on their own posts. Those that do seem to spend more hours in the day on Reddit than they do off.

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This sub has already gone to shit.

I have to agree with this statement. Most of the normal users here don't post any longer. Reddit in a whole has gone to shit with over powered Mods and admins in other subs. Plus the down voting shills that invaded this sub which used to be good.

Something new will come along and I hope we find it soon!

Reddit is slowly becoming just a propaganda hangout.

Exposed: Globally Renowned Activist Collaborated With Intelligence Firm Stratfor

Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) have also maintained close ties with a Goldman Sachs executive and the private intelligence firm Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the U.S. government. Popovic’s wife also worked at Stratfor for a year.

/u/AssuredlyAThrowaway is super interested in Stratfor, and you just recently told me how cool AssuredlyAThrowaway is. You also made this post to try and spread the whole Antique Jetpack thing, which AssuredlyAThrowaway has been touting for years. And oh wait, here you are mysteriously telling /r/conspiracy mod /u/Flytape that "it's me below," probably in reference to another one of your alts.

And look: here's evidence presented by multiple mods that AssuredlyAThrowaway has been shadowbanned multiple times for using alts and manipulating votes:

• example fucking one

• example fucking two

So I see that AssuredlyAThrowaway is still using alts to manipulate discussion. Color me unsurprised.

So I see that AssuredlyAThrowaway is still using alts to manipulate discussion. Color me unsurprised.

I'm pretty sure many people use alts to manipulate content.

And oh wait, here you are mysteriously telling /r/conspiracy mod /u/Flytape

This was done because my /u/swisstoe was banned for posting in /r/politics.

I think you are looking too deep and not making the correct connections.

Makes absolutely no sense and doesn't explain that comment. Try again.

I'm not sure what you are looking for. Based on your chat history you like to battle with other Mods so trying to associate with with Throwaway makes sense. Again you are making inaccuracie assumptions and would appreciate if you'd back off since you have nothing.

I've asked you directly on your AssuredlyAThrowaway account, but you haven't responded.

Because that is not me. Flush your allegations in the toilet!

prepare the the shitboat, a shitnami approaches

If you're a theorist and worried about being discredited, you're gonna have a bad time.

I can tell you why that post was upvoted. I am an experienced moderator, having moderated /r/books for 2 years now and built other small subs. I personally wrote the rules in /r/books that bans image-only posts, and it was because of the shitposts like the one you mentioned that kept getting upvoted to the frontpage from /r/books.

That post you are talking about, which I'll link here, is an image post with an eye-catching title. It is very easy to consume, or in other words, you understand what it's trying to say in 3 seconds or less. It's also an Imgur post, the most popular image hosting source on reddit.

Redditors love images, especially those on imgur, and people in /r/conspiracy love anything that puts popular media in a bad light. They also like WWII. Putting all these things together, I can't see how you're confused that this post ended up on /r/conspiracy's frontpage. It's easily consumed content that is relevant to this subreddit.

I saw the same kind of shitposts in /r/books when I started moderating there, and the comment sections were always complaining about the material. There's just more people on reddit that like upvoting simple pictures than reading whole articles and making comments.

You have not given any evidence whatsoever that "a military contractor manually upvoted this to the top." I think that is an absolutely crazy assumption, and it does /r/conspiracy no good.

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Oh hey, you?

Nerf_gun_hero is his name. I can see how that confused you.

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I explained my experience with having content upvoted and having comments complaining about it, I guess you missed that since you still think it's somehow evidence of foul play. When I say "evidence," I mean proof that there was manipulation, proof of motive, proof of involvement, really anything of substance. What you gave me are mildly relevant half-truths and your own personal opinion.

Btw, please back yourself up when you say that the cost for such an action is low and the benefit is high. Explain how it benefits anyone if such a shitty post is at the top of this reasonably large subreddit yet reasonably small web forum.

While not required, you are requested to use the NP domain of reddit when crossposting. This helps to protect both your account, and the accounts of other users, from administrative shadowbans. The NP domain can be accessed by prefacing your reddit link with np.reddit.com.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Can we get rid of this ridiculous bot?

No; because it is important that people remember to use np links when linking to other subreddits. If we don't use the bot, we'll have to make it a rule and we'd rather not require the use of np.

What we will do, however, is work further on the syntax of the automoderator rule so that it won't have so many false positives on links to other conspiracy threads.

It took me three months of finagling to get the automod rule setup due to complications with the language, and I am still working out the kinks. Apologies for any inconvenience.

It is not important in any way for people to do that. Reddit admins state they don't give a shit about np links, and besides not every sub follows this hack.

If you really want to have an impact on brigading, you'd make a bot that simply states the admin position on brigading, as a reminder to the user.

While the admins may not care about the np domain; what the domain does is help users who have multiple tabs open in their browser window remember on which submissions they are not to comment or vote.

We are always open to considering a change in the language of the bot reminder; but the issue is that the admins have been quite opaque with regards to what exactly constitutes vote brigading (for example, nearly every submission in /r/bestof results ins a brigade but shadowbans are never handed out); and we wouldn't want to write something like, "following links, and voting or commenting, from sudreddits which are disagreeable to the admins can result in your account being shadowbanned"

Yet that's exactly the thing that needs to be stated. Your bot mentions shadowbans, and avoiding shadowbans is it's purpose, yet it does not tell the user how to avoid a shadowban.

I understand that it is supposed to be a prod to get the linker to link in a way that could potentially prevent those who follow his link from getting shadowbanned, but in fact it is not the linker who needs the warning. The one who needs the warning is the link follower, and he is neither warned nor informed.

I'd keep your bot but alter the message to say "do not vote in linked threads as doing so entails the risk of shadowban". I think that would do more to promote this agenda.

On the whole, though, I am simply tired of seeingthe same damn thing over and over again, often multiple times in a single thread.

Cheers.

I've already spoken to the mods here about it. They don't care.

While not required, you are requested to use the NP domain of reddit when crossposting. This helps to protect both your account, and the accounts of other users, from administrative shadowbans. The NP domain can be accessed by prefacing your reddit link with np.reddit.com.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Maybe the bad guys shitpost your sub, then upvote the fuck out of it with bots to make you guys look crazy(er).

Actually you're right. I just went back and looked at the last 4 hours and there are about 70posts. Doesn't seems like that much on the daily, probably because there are a fair number of less interesting posts that just get passed by.

/u/AssuredlyAThrowaway is super interested in Stratfor, and you just recently told me how cool AssuredlyAThrowaway is. You also made this post to try and spread the whole Antique Jetpack thing, which AssuredlyAThrowaway has been touting for years. And oh wait, here you are mysteriously telling /r/conspiracy mod /u/Flytape that "it's me below," probably in reference to another one of your alts.

And look: here's evidence presented by multiple mods that AssuredlyAThrowaway has been shadowbanned multiple times for using alts and manipulating votes:

• example fucking one

• example fucking two

So I see that AssuredlyAThrowaway is still using alts to manipulate discussion. Color me unsurprised.