1) The first thing they did was take away r/reddit.com.

This took away the only tool for communicating with reddit about reddit. If you had any concerns about the website as a whole, you could address them through r/reddit. Taking that away was the first step.

2) The power now resided in individual subreddits, obviously the most popular ones. There was a power grab to become moderators of these subreddits.

I remember as the upcoming election loomed, all of a sudden, r/circlejerk (one of the old default subreddits) became completely obsessed with bashing Ron Paul. I am not even a RP supporter, but that was definitely orchestrated, and NOT by some kids trying to be funny. Also, it coincided perfectly with this highly suspicious campaign to filter him out of the election.

3) Once the subreddits were controlled, drastic changes began to occur.

I remember when r/IAma was open to anyone and the popularity was decided by voting. Now it is nothing more than a cheap place for celebrities to whore out their products and you need to be "approved". Someone named Victoria is involved and how does that makes any sense whatsoever? Celebrities have entire teams of branding/PR/social media teams that work for them. Why do they need to be at reddit HQ and/or required to have a reddit rep? Because these AMA's are extremely organized and sponsored with money.

4) The appearance of shills soon became VERY apparent.

All of a sudden new accounts started popping up out of nowhere. Cue the birth of r/HailCorporate. "Feel good" military posts started appearing, like a soldier coming home to his dog. New users entered AMA's to lob softball questions "Mr Burns, your campaign has the momentum of a runaway freight train, how does it feel to be so popular?" From brand new accounts that never posted again.

Eglin Air Force Base = Reddit's most addicted city! I would hate to be the poor reddit intern who got fired that day! "Didn't you read the memo Billy. US military bases are never to be included in our yearly stats!!!"

Anyone who tries to convince you that shills don't exist is either grossly uninformed or a liar.

5) Now we have blatant censorship on r/news, r/worldnews etc... saying that X site is not allowed.

What ever happened to letting people vote on the content of this website? Trash tabloids constantly go viral on political subreddits due to sensationalized headlines and the fact that most Americans are unaware of different overseas publications.

6) Speaking of voting, they changed that too.

We now have an entirely new way to view upvote/downvote scores. A user used to be able to see their score. But now, everything is fuzzed. For example, if you made a semi-controversial comment before, but many people agreed, you may have a score like (47/45), leaving you with a -2 next to the comment. Now you just get a -2 and nobody knows if anyone agreed with you.

7) *Hey guise, us nerds who run reddit have decided to shuffle all of the front-page subreddits, tee-hee we are so random ^{‿^} *

No more r/circlejerk, that pesky subreddit hits too close to home. Lets add 2X to the mix, (even though they wanted to remain an anonymous sub), fuck them, we need to show our shareholders we represent the female demographic. Lets also add a bunch of subs that we can use to share propaganda like r/nottheonion.

And speaking of the female demographic and "gender discrimination" being represented, that happened around the time this person took over reddit.

8) You are posting too much, please wait...

It now doesn't matter if you have confirmed your email, or been posting on this site for years. If you anger the wrong mod/admin or your posts aren't doing "well", then you get benched.

9) Reddit is not a meritocracy.

tl;dr: Your votes do not matter. The front page is not decided on merit. Different subs are given different algorithms. There is a behind the scene ranking system that gives certain content a "head-start". As we have learned at r/conspiracy, if they don't like our sub, then we are banished from the front page, forever. Just like we were banished from r/bestof, after this amazing comment that was gilden 8X and received over 3000 upvotes. They actually gave that user the boot. How dare you bring your unique, first-hand perspective to a web-forum!!!

10) The arrival and subsequent take over of r/undelete.

Due to the now rampant censorship on the site, users took it into their own hands to bring the truth into the light. They created a part of reddit where users could see what was being deleted. Nope.

11) All of the proper "checks and balances" are now in place.

R/worldnews has become the ultimate modern-day version of the Two-Minutes Hate from George Orwell's 1984:

a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies and express their hatred for them.

But when we really want to drive a point home, the entire front-page gets in on the action!!!

It wasn't always like this. A few years ago, there were just as many disagreements and differences of opinion on reddit, but they were REAL. And the site was still a democracy. People voted and things swung from side to side, everybody learned in the end.

Now we have a completely one-sided mess that pretends to be democratic but is quickly becoming the Fox News of the internet.

And I believe this can essentially be boiled down to greed. Reddit gets billions of views. The people who run reddit are not the "cool bloggers" they try to portray themselves as. There is a head running things, and it is sinister and they are making A LOT of money, and have A LOT of power, and A LOT of influence.

And they know it. You should too.

EDIT: added more stuff

As someone playing catchup, this is a fantastic post. Thank you.

he stole it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2nhv01/how_reddit_was_destroyed_ver20/

If he hadn't, I would not have seen it.

This is an interesting comment coming from someone who stole someone else's work.

https://www.np.reddit.com/r/911truth/comments/2avb5u/jim_miegs_gets_his_hypothetical_handed_to_him_in/ciz8flf

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that was so informative and eye opening, holy crap! thank you for such a detailed run-down and analysis! do u think this can be changed or reversed, or would it be better to just switch to alternatives for reddit?

Unfortunately I think we have passed the point where reversal is possible.

I am eagerly waiting for the next place so that we can go there and start to put up defenses and spread awareness so we can slow down the next takeover or at least make it much harder for them to do it again.

If we can prevent friendfeed from being shut down by facebook http://friendfeed.com/search?q=friendfeed

yea if we can all spread this and raise awareness maybe more people will stop using reddit for news and issues and go somewhere else

Where now are the digg and the reddit? Where is the troll that was trolling? Where is the upvote and the downvote, and the bright flair flowing? Why is the narwhal on the bacon, and le maymay's growing? Where are the OC OP's, the lurker and the old fag going? They have passed like a raid on 9gag, like a trend on Twitter; The days have gone down in the front page behind the shills into shadow. Who shall gather the smoke of the default subs burning, Or behold the golden years from the summer returning?

But really, where is a good reddit successor site?

If you build it, they will come

I think you mean more like msnbc, not fox, because the bias is definitely collectivist liberal bullshit.

Cool. Go back to Fox News, then.

You should edit this comment to add an "/s", so that it appears as if you actually understood the comment you replied to.

Yeah, it's the symbol for sarcasm, unofficially at least.

Which begs for the introduction of /i, for headboarding. /i

And for cynicism? I doubt many ppl will actually admit to being it... Unless it's with pride. /c

Greed and fear.

One of the recent changes has been the addition of the "no shill accusations" rule. Pretty much just on subs where mods are shills. Here's a screen shot I grabbed from g mo my ths.

It's a whole shill sub network! http://imgur.com/2t3ck78

Anyone have the original link to this comment?

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2nhv01/how_reddit_was_destroyed_ver20/

Its time we vote with our feet. Drop this place like yahoo chat, leave it as a barren bot haven.

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2nhv01/how_reddit_was_destroyed_ver20/

please credit your sources.

(Actually, I wrote it originally too)

Not that your comment isn't valid! Because it would have obviously been impossible to know I was the OP, since I deleted that account.

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

• [/r/DarkFuturology] /u/shark_shank lays out how Reddit was taken away from the common user by the corporate owners

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bravo!!

It's not just Reddit; it's the whole internet. Anywhere that has influence has been corrupted.

the aristocrats gotta shut down Guttenberg

[deleted]

It's not all bad. History shows that something new and subversive will be created. Then taken over. Repeat.

It's not all bad. History shows that something new and subversive will be created. Then taken over. Repeat.

Please let me know when this happens. Reddit is going downhill fast. Shills - shills everywhere.

how do we kick them out lol

This is why we can't have nice things. Too many morons in real life have to invade the Internet as well. Facebook is a perfect place to contain them though.

I don't think Reddit is as popular as you think it is. Think about all the users that stopped contributing because they were banned from subs by overzealous mods

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites

Reddit's pretty popular.

The internet is limited by a number of factors including language, accessibility, geography.

and...?

It means that the internet is not a magic network that tethers mankind together. It is compartmentalized

I can read. I'm looking for an explanation as to why you said this.

It will not be like this forever.

[deleted]

Hopefully things will get better once we have more p2p technology.

I'm currently looking into creating a reddit-like p2p platform using something along the lines of https://syncthing.net/

My hope is to create a truly decentralized, modless community. Something more usenet/bbs; less facebook.

maybe you could set an example bro.

The internet is the biggest threat to the establishment since...well since forever. No way they wouldn't invest loads of resources into fully influencing it.

The internet is the biggest threat to the establishment since...well since forever. No way they wouldn't invest loads of resources into fully influencing it.

This.

Surprised this wasn't deleted by the gov. Single most influential response in the entire post.

The world is 100% marketing now. The truth doesn't matter. It's a good job to work as a corporate or govt. PR shill. When you see this happening, you react with disgust.

When most people see it, they think "an adult does what he is told". And they jump right on board.

When you act out of line there are consequences and to make sense of the world people associate actions that are punished as actions that are wrong - otherwise they would have to admit to themselves that they are living in a fascist surveillance state.

(mis)education

The occupy movement scared the hell out of TPTB.

I disagree.

The occupy movement was a carefully constructed and co-opted movement (If not initially, it at least became this) designed to act as a pressure release valve.

It accomplished nothing but made people feel like they were doing something.

It got over 2,500 people arrested and hundreds more intimidated.

but the ron paul revolution in 2011/12 was real and completely snuffed out the occupy movement lol

It was co-opted because it scared them, though I don't think it was anything compared to some of the widespread protests in decades past.

I honestly think many counter culture movements are controlled by the elite from the very beginning. E.G Alex Jones and Kokesh are known shills for the conspiracy movement.

Assange too most likely, check out some of the details of his childhood - reads like something straight out of the MK-Ultra handbook.

Same with the "hippie movement", which was artificially created and promoted in order to usurp and distract from the peace movement that was gaining steam in the years prior.

Occupy? LOL. Compared to the Vietnam War protests, the MLK marches, or the 1920s union organizers? Occupy was a damp squib run by idiot trustafarian drum circlejerkers. It scared precisely nobody.

Yes, Internet is starting to suck and thats why we are working on the Ethereum project. If you know how to code, get involved. Web 3.0 is coming. Decentralize ALL THE THINGS!

I don't, but want to help :(

It's ok! learn about what it's trying to accomplish! there are dozens of videos about the vision of ethereum. Let the people know, and pass along the news. You can help that way, if you don't code.

First I'm hearing of it so I'll check it out.

My research has lead me towards the other low-tech (not the best way to describe it but I'll go with it) options a d the capability of Amateur Radio (HAM). Didn't even know you could use he internet with it, but it makes a bunch of sense, in a mesh-net kind of way.

Be in touch. I'll be around for a bit more I suppose.

Problem with meshnets are incentive to participate. Earning crypto tokens by joining the meshnet will hopefully fix that problem

Makes sense.

/r/ethereum /r/meshnet /r/diaspora

Too many morons from the real world using reddit as Twatter or Instabook.

Well, this post finally convinced me. I am leaving Reddit, had enough of the US trying to control fucking everything. You guys residing in the US are prisoners of bankers and bureaucrats. Good luck, it seems most is complacent loosing their liberty and freedom.

Good luck all, may we experience real justice in our lifetime.

Fuck, tell me about it. Made a post yesterday and got brigaded by about 5 different subs downvoting all my comments. The dickheads are still going today, paging me into random discussions about Pangea and shit.

I don't think those subs are just an epiphenomena of bored morons. I reckon they're set up o try use social pressure to stifle any alternative ideas

marketing and memes. creating an emotional relationship with your consumer. creating a culture of expression reliant upon products and advertisements.

I just want to be able to submit my content to my peers and have them give me their opinions... I don't want it to be corrupted by machinery working behind the scenes, it instantly loses its value to me then.

Only certain subs are okay, limit yourself to those.... and look at alternative sources.

Please consider subscribing to /r/corruption or /r/conspiracyhub

/r/askreddit used to be where people asked questions and got answers. They weren't always very interesting but you got the idea they were actually posted by Reddit users. Now at some particular times there's a flood of supposedly clever questions obviously posted by someone working for Reddit. Why?

no shit, that shit be crazy, yo

Easy shill karma. The people I suspect are shills usually have a lot of Askreddit karma.

lol like which questions

Money happened.

reddit is to the mind what facebook is to the ego

Here you are, sir. An admin announcement with 0 points (49% upvoted).

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why don't a group of us band together and make our own forum on these topics? Away from reddit where we won't be censored? There is enough people here that, should you let them know, some should follow. And the ones who do are the committed ones! I'd be up for it.

Reddit turned into Jewwit. Everywhere I go there are supportive posts about Jews and brainwashed people praising Israel. The hate for Russia and any European that's Anti-American/NATO is frightening: everytime I tell people that a war with Russia would be a terrible idea and would result in attacks by Russia on homesoil im downvoted.

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

• [/r/TopMindsOfReddit] Top Minds says "Reddit turned into Jewwit. Everywhere I go there are supportive posts about Jews and brainwashed people praising Israel".

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I didn't copy. Its not a surprise that someone else has though of that... my comment was earlier than that post so go and whine at him.

can we all go somewhere else or something?

We have reddit clones not yet controlled by the censorship, yes at the moment it is bad but we make it good not the website by itself, we, the content make it better... lets move somewhere, im sick and tired, this is the front page of censorship now

There was a post similar to this before and someone linked to a website that was similar to Reddit, but what it used to be. Does anyone have that link?

It won't be getting better I can tell you that.

I like the Air Force base being one of the top visitors that is great.

Now?

It died when Aaron Swartz died. Rather with his arrest

Thanks a lot Obama!

/ r/psychonaut is still pretty good.

reddit got bigger

Trolls. Why do you think the saying was "never feed the trolls". Once the trolls were "feed"(attention paid to them) more seen they could also get feed by acting similar.

Think of school the popular kids were always the ones that received the most attention. So seeing people that are sewer dwellers act like scum they decide they need to act that way as well.

I believe most not all people online have duo personalities where they are scum online an face to face they are the pleasant folks ever.

There are other sites like abovetopsecret/glp to troll on.

But anyway why so serious, not like they get paid for it... Theres a limit to how much buttlicking one can do.

This site is owned by a corporation, they bought reddit, which isnt nothing new about. Kind of like digg when they were popular then they went down the shitter.

Everything on social media can fit under three categories: trends, memes and hashtags.

What's the best way to discredit an entire argument? Launch a meme/trend/hashtag in opposition to the argument and make it popular. It gives the incentive of being popular/drawing attention to the reposter. Once it becomes a trend, the subject becomes meaningless and forgotten (but really accepted as truth and no longer debated) in a few days or weeks.

Examples:

"Jet fuel doesn't melt steel"

Anti-anti-vaxxers

#BlackLivesMatter

Reddit is just a hyperbolic example. It's a condensation of the good, bad and the ugly of the Internet into a directory of forums. Degradation was bound to happen and we shouldn't act surprised. It happened to MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Digg, Tumblr and 4chan.

And cats!

Blame it on the userbase that is excessively neckbeards. They control the voting patterns and the internet is a very selfish place

The "neckbeards" actually created a good website, believe it or not. It was the guys in suits and the teams in the call-centers that ruined this place. The designed a system that would take advantage of the Eternal September syndrome and encouraged the retard masses to become their useful idiots.

Greed and fear.

Anyone have the original link to this comment?

that was so informative and eye opening, holy crap! thank you for such a detailed run-down and analysis! do u think this can be changed or reversed, or would it be better to just switch to alternatives for reddit?

Problem with meshnets are incentive to participate. Earning crypto tokens by joining the meshnet will hopefully fix that problem

As someone playing catchup, this is a fantastic post. Thank you.

I think you mean more like msnbc, not fox, because the bias is definitely collectivist liberal bullshit.

One of the recent changes has been the addition of the "no shill accusations" rule. Pretty much just on subs where mods are shills. Here's a screen shot I grabbed from g mo my ths.

It's a whole shill sub network! http://imgur.com/2t3ck78

Its time we vote with our feet. Drop this place like yahoo chat, leave it as a barren bot haven.

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bravo!!

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2nhv01/how_reddit_was_destroyed_ver20/

please credit your sources.

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

• [/r/DarkFuturology] /u/shark_shank lays out how Reddit was taken away from the common user by the corporate owners

^{If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote. (Info / Contact)}