Astroturf Awareness PSA: Particular users are having their comments receive unusual numbers of upvotes.

37  2017-08-11 by GlenCompton

I am not here to name any names, because I am not stupid enough to roll those dice. There are users who have become regular commentators in this sub that receive an unusual and disproportionate number of upvotes regularly. Just look for them, you will see it.

This is a pretty common astroturfing technique that is used to slide comments, and foster a false consensus.

There has been a shift in astroturfing tactics over the last few months. They no longer camp in subs like this one because the active user count is always a massive redflag that a campaign is in action when they often more than double the usual numbers. Instead they target particular users post for upvote brigades by using the users profile page, thus not requiring them to navigate to a sub to mass upvote particular users posts.

For pushing particular posts they will use "other discussions" to mass upvote particular articles without actually coming to the sub. If they can push a topic hard and fast enough it will break into ALL and the natural groupthink of reddit will kick in and do most of their work for them.

Now, I am not willing to say if the users who I am talking about are actually part of an astroturfing campaign or just egomaniacs who pay for voting services, but there are clear hints that this IS happening. The most telling is that contradicting comments do not receive the proportional ratio of downvotes one would expect vs the upvotes that seem to only flow to particular users, and not others who say similar things and in some cases posted them sooner. The only posts that are on the radar for the upvotes are VERY select. The downvoting would either require a massive influx of users being active in the sub and scanning comments, or potentially cost extra from one of the voting services I spoke of earlier.

Look for this pattern and be wary of these users. Godspeed!

25 comments

1  Tall_Trombone_Guy 2017-08-11

I always wonder which occur more in this sub: actual conspiracies or meta-posts about the subreddit?

1  GlenCompton 2017-08-11

nah most of it is just r/politics runoff.

1  TrumpRusConspiracy 2017-08-11

There's at least one or two meta posts every single day. It's getting pretty freaking tiring

1  sugarleaf 2017-08-11

First I've heard them, I'll make a few.

1  Oenotrophae 2017-08-11

welcome to the internet. this sub is no different.

1  Ninjakick666 2017-08-11

Awwwwww... yer making me miss /u/Bernie4ever

1  loserofpasswordzz 2017-08-11

Wangpeng?

1  Ninjakick666 2017-08-11

Nope... I don't miss him... I'm sure he's still here anyways.

1  yellowsnow2 2017-08-11

He was as bad at lying as he was at shilling, rest in pieces wang peng. http://i.imgur.com/pKvn34x.png

1  Ninjakick666 2017-08-11

I got that exact same message the night he died.

1  TheGreatOni19 2017-08-11

He died?! What!? How do you know???

1  jasron_sarlat 2017-08-11

Wtf... I didn't realize that.

1  loserofpasswordzz 2017-08-11

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4w22oYdgU2Y

1  WooTs_67 2017-08-11

Skygirl is wengpeng's new acct

1  Reign_Wilson 2017-08-11

Anyone who doesn't participate in the r/conspiracy circle jerk must be manipulating votes.

1  GlenCompton 2017-08-11

Huh, I wasn't specifying topics at all.

Some people are true believers in what they are saying, that doesn't make them part of some grand conspiracy. One could just as easily say this was about someone regardless who's biases they confirm if they fit this pattern.

This isn't a partisan post.

1  EagleOfAmerica 2017-08-11

"4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues."

http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/25-rules-disinformation/

1  EagleOfAmerica 2017-08-11

Before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, read the mega-thread about shills.

1  iNeedToExplain 2017-08-11

It's been years since up/down votes in a user's profile page actually counted.

1  TrowwayFiggenstein 2017-08-11

that would be dishonest.

1  iNeedToExplain 2017-08-11

Everything about vote totals is dishonest.

1  One_Giant_Nostril 2017-08-11

Upvotes and downvotes on a userpage are still counted but only on the first page.

1  jjbanana 2017-08-11

If somebody smells of shill, click through their post history. It's just too bad there are rules here about pointing out shillage.

Also, I like to glance through the New and controversial tabs for posts every now and then too, because I know astroturfing might cause some really good stories to be buried. I recommend this type of browsing since this is basically how internet used to work back in the day.

I'd say pretty obvious that users on r/conspiracy have higher resistance to astroturfing than those on other subs, simply because the people here have more confidence in their own ability to draw conclusions. It's just too bad that even this sub must be a target of political and information-conditioning games.

Always remember, we are the intellectual revolution that will keep people questioning/discussing things that tptb don't want questioned/discussed. And users here simply apply this ^ principle to the top posts and top comments here - no problem.

1  CarlTheRedditor 2017-08-11

If somebody smells of shill, click through their post history. It's just too bad there are rules here about pointing out shillage.

Don't worry, as long as you're calling someone Shareblue/ctr/Soros shill, mods don't care.

It's all about that narrative.

1  Ambiguously_Ironic 2017-08-11

Don't worry, as long as you're calling someone Shareblue/ctr/Soros shill, mods don't care.

This is blatantly false and silly. Check the mod logs, probably hundreds of users in the past year have been banned for exactly those three things.

1  CarlTheRedditor 2017-08-11

I'll check my own personal experience, thank you very much.

1  cholera_or_gonorrhea 2017-08-11

Oh hey, I've noticed this... the pattern I notice is that:

1) the upvotes are disproportionate to the upvotes of others in the same post.

2) The upvotes are disproportionate to what's often a new post with little karma and

3) the comment upvote number is about 28-30. Seems to be the magic range.

4) The sentiment is overly snarky/aggressive and goes against what's a reasonable consensus among the wider community here. For example, a comment like, "do people still actually believes there's a network of underground tunnels in DC? I thought this type of paranoid delusion got debunked here long ago."

1  sugarleaf 2017-08-11

I know one thing, it's that I am not a 'particular user' because all my comments are in the single digits. Sadly, I think I'm funnier that most shills - they have absolutely no sense of humor.