Is your thought exercise merely to ponder the existence of shills astroturfing specific views on reddit (promoting some, deleting/votegaming others), a site that has a massive amount of uniques daily?

You would be hard pressed to find any legitimate users here who would disagree.

Or maybe your thought exercise is to take this to its logical conclusion, and state that this is indeed the purpose of reddit (now), while it was just a cute geeky link aggregator initially.

Then we have one of the site creators (Aaron) commit suicide, and the other linked with Stratfor

http://www.stratfor.com

via Wikileaks

https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=282044

and you can see how they had a plan to

Bring in those social media dollars

But it's never just about the money, and at some point it becomes about power, and control of information is a fantastic way to gain and keep power.

Because knowing is half the battle.

http://www.sourcecon.com/media/2010/12/gijoe-300x145.jpg)

Is that what you meant?

Edit: forgot how to link apparently.

"suicide"

...yep.

Yes, you hit on many great points.

I've noticed some interesting things. Consider this from r/worldnews as an example. I posted a comment that basically supported recognition of Palestine and got 11 downvotes in one hour. Not one single rebuttal or even a reply, just downvotes.

So what does that mean? It means Reddit has become part of the battleground. There are those who aren't just interested in having their story heard, they want to control the narrative.

That means Reddit has become part of the battleground. No bullets, no blood... but definitely a struggle to influence or even control your opinion.

That means shills hanging out in various sensitive subs. It also means vote manipulation and targeted deletion of user submissions on sensitive topics.

As a lowly individual who is neither an admin or a mod, what can I do? I can at least be aware of what's going on and know that the content I see is being subjected to various influences.

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As much as I don't really like infoWars or Alex Jones, I still like the phrase "there is a war for your mind." Its true - its a war of perception and it uses information to wage it. Bullets are words, bombs are videos, etc... etc...

Reddit is just a 'country' in the theater of this war, this theater being the 'online front.'

You were sifted through someone's shillbot army algorithm. Don't take it personally!

I've noticed some interesting things. Consider this[1] from r/worldnews as an example. I posted a comment that basically supported recognition of Palestine and got 11 downvotes in one hour. Not one single rebuttal or even a reply, just downvotes.

Here is a little experiment to do to determine if you are being hit by a group of people trying vote game or if your opinion is just in the minority on that sub.

Keep making similar comments about the same issue even post some links yourself about the same issue. Do so at different times during the day and night. Do this for a week or so and see if you get more down votes during certain time of the day. If that is the case then your comments are most likely getting hit.

I have noticed on /r/worldnews that there is huge explosion in what I would call pro-Russian comments around 1:30 pm CST to about 3:00 pm EST. Then again around 6;00 pm CST to about 8:00 pm CST. Also the same thing happens in the AM on Saturday and again in the PM on Sunday. I noticed this because I have been following the Ukrainian and Russian thing for a long time now.

Bingo. I noticed the exact same thing. Post a comment that favors Palestinian statehood (or criticizes some Israeli policy/action) and in come the downvotes. As the day goes on and it's the middle of the day in USA/Canada (and nightime in Israel) the reaction tends to change. Downvotes stop coming in and it changes over to upvotes.

Here's the thing though. Most people, when they see a comment that has even 3 or 4 downvotes, tend to view the comment in a negative light. "Oh look, other people didn't like this comment and there must be a reason for that even if I can't see what it might be". This is part of a well-known tendency for individuals to conform to the group opinion.

On reddit, the group opinion can be implied by up or downvotes. There are people out there who know thi and that's why they get shill teams to search out comments they don't like and slap them with a few downvotes.

There's a couple of reasons why. One, people start noticing that expressing certain opinions results in downvotes. Two, the people who still express those opinions have their comments voted further down the page where they'll be less visible.

This results in that same groupthink effect. People see the general trend of the comments for any given article and get a false idea of what most people think.

Mission accomplished.

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Reddit, like the mainstream media in general, is a vortex of truth and lies--but ultimately the details are inconsequential before the invisibility of the great pattern. We, the masses, are not privy to the clairvoyance of the great pattern, which is always before the eyes of our undeclared masters.

Its funny. Leave out a few keywords from the title, and you don't get swarmed.

Thanks for fighting the good fight.

What's this "propaganda" pushing? What views?

That Michael brown was not a victim.... That he was a massive thug that got what he deserved

And that the public reaction of looting and burning is because they're stupid black people, not because they're extremely pissed off about this farce of a justice system we have in the US.

[deleted]

Yes, because ALL the protesters were looting. /s

[deleted]

Ah okay, yeah I agree that seems to be the case. They're working their hardest to drum up racism and hatred toward the protesters. To cement the status-quo in place.

We are witnessing large tanks of gasoline being thrown onto a highly-combustible and controversial subject.

Propaganda is not always used to push specific information.

The strongest propaganda is designed to drive people into a frenzy and bring out their flawed and aggressive animalistic nature. This is how wars start.

When you bring out the animal in people, they tend to cling to nationalism, or race, or religion. Things like that.

We are witnessing race at the moment.

When the propaganda starts about Russia, we are witnessing nationalism.

When it kicks in about Muslims, we are witnessing religion.

"The strongest propaganda is designed to drive people into a frenzy and bring out their flawed and aggressive animalistic nature."

Brilliantly observed.

Just about every headline on politics, news, worldnews, tech, etc is propaganda.

Ok. That doesn't answer my questions.

Since you don't name the people you say "cannot be named" I have no idea what you're talking about.

You must have been absent when this subreddit completely shot itself in the foot and declared that nobody can call anyone a shill anymore.

Since then the amount "those who shall not be named" has tripled. Because now they have inpunity.

Do you understand now?

[deleted]

Exactly, if I were to write a manual on preventing independent thought on web forums, the first thing I would write would be: "Ask a lot of basic questions and make the user waste their energy answering. Play dumb."

Hypothetically speaking, or course.

"Someone is asking basic questions, I guess they're trying to prevent independent thought?"

Jesus

Well that shows how much you know. This tactic has been proven and is part of countless manuals on disrupting online activism.

So maybe you should accept that you don't know how these things work and let those of us who are informed continue talking.

Countless. That seems a lot.

Strikes me if someone refuses to answer basic questions on the grounds that the questioner is trying to prevent independent thought, then that someone is in no danger of convincing anyone of anything.

And indeed in no danger of appearing anything other than ridiculous.

Anyone who disagree with him

Are you projecting?

What am I projecting?

Since you assume that I am full of shit and "making a post because I am angry that people don't agree with me", then I can only draw the conclusion that that is something YOU would do.

Because I am much more self-aware than that. But I guess you aren't.

And anyways, what you are saying is absolutely basic. Do you really believe that a large slice of the biggest web forum in history is not being targeted and attacked? One specifically called conspiracy.

Is that really your argument? "Hey guise, there is nothing to see here, just a quarter-million people having discussions about controversial subjects. I am sure we are completely alone."

And since YOU have come to this grade-school conclusion, I guess it is not difficult to understand why you would base the rest of your opinions on that ridiculous premise.

"Hurr, this guy is here and he actually believes the completely anonymous voting scores are being manipulated. He actually believes that!!! Why would anyone come onto the internet and just lie to us like that?

So yeah, I guess in the mind of someone who thinks like that, it makes perfect sense to write "Anyone who disagrees with him".

Here's a question? Why are you even here?

Why are YOU in this subreddit if you have no desire to look past the most basic explanation. Actually, it is even worse than that. You are actually making comments that take away from the conversation and aggressively try to ridicule the person asking the questions.

If I don't play the cello, I don't go into r/cello and mock the people talking about music and making dumb jokes about them.

Get. A. Life.

Big difference between disagreeing and condescending?

I didn't make a thread about it. I'm not projecting shit, honey.

You get a life. I wrote 2 sentences in 2 posts and you followed up with an essay assuming a whole slew of bullshit and stuff you made up in your head. You seem mentally unstable.

Also I post in here frequently and browse this subreddit. You're a joke with that "don't come here if you don't believe every single conspiracy I can imagine herp derp" people are allowed to disagree and think different things, you (someone from this subreddit) should understand that. Get out of here with your delusional anti intellectual rants.

An essay huh?

You call a hand-full of paragraphs an essay.

I wonder what you would call an entire book? Would reading a whole book be like climbing Mt. Everest for you?

[deleted]

Calm down honey.

Calm af right now hun. You should listen to your own advice doe. You're bugging out over this. Funny how you think the gov made that account to follow you when it's just some kid trolling you.

Sure thing.

You're bugging out over this

Says the guy writing volumes of angry messages...

Yeah, sure, angry.

Nice username...

Based on your posts and username, I've never been more confident that a user is 13.

You must be one of those top minds of conspiracy that I hear so much about. You're quite the sleuth.

Only warning for racial slurs and attacking other users.

You're a straight up phony though and it's obvious

Are you implying I'm a shill without saying shill? Lol.

I didn't make a thread about it.

#rekt

You are a joke.

You must be one of those top minds of conspiracy that I hear so much about. You're quite the sleuth.