The r/conspiracy Conspiracy! This subreddit is being censored, submissions end up half-virtual. Post your filtered threads.

5  2010-12-22 by Masagin

There is a scheme in effect on reddit where it is possible to make your post become available only to a minor fraction of the subscribers. This is a very covert form of censorship, enacted either by the moderators of this subreddit or someone higher, with special privileges. See for yourself: my post made an hour ago received 3 total votes, while this post created only 30 minutes ago received 6 total votes! Quite a few of my submissions were censored thus: this nice piece and this silly text, it is reasonable to suggest half of what's censored is selected automatically and randomly so that later it can be blamed on software malfunction. Share your stories. I think I will take this elsewhere as well.

40 comments

5  [deleted] 2010-12-22

reddit has always been censored and is full of spooks. Every now and then you can catch them fucking up but they have gotten much better than they used to be.

3  [deleted] 2010-12-22

When you say spooks and censorship do you agree with the OP that moderators or someone higher within reddit is manipulating submissions. A definition of censorship by spooks could include an organised attempt to downvote and discredit with comments valid information and submissions.

4  solstice680 2010-12-22

Whether this is actually happening or not, it does seem like some good stuff gets buried at -1 or below before it ever has the chance to grace my reddit homepage. Whether this is some form of censoring or just the greater theory of internet stupidity in operation, I don't know.

3  Masagin 2010-12-22

Basically this can be found out for sure, we just have to wait some time for a special guest...

4  bulltwitbo 2010-12-22

Voting is definitely being manipulated on Reddit

3  cojoco 2010-12-22

I've noticed that some of my submissions don't end up in the New queue on worldnews, and a message to the moderators will usually fix it.

However, what you say is very hard to prove, and the voting is very lumpy, for many reasons.

I don't believe what you're saying unless you actually have some more direct proof that what you say is true.

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

I have behind me the fact that a similar scheme was used before on certain boards in Russia, and was exposed; therefore, the concept is not novel. Reddit is a high-ranked social media service and any software bug that would have been causing erroneous behavior would have been fixed a long time ago. It's more likely this is used to conceal covert moderation. Finding out whether such a scheme is in place would require browsing reddit from a series of independent IP addresses, and probably without the use of tor, as tor proxies are likely not subject to such manipulation.

3  cojoco 2010-12-22

It's more likely this is used to conceal covert moderation.

what is being used to conceal covert moderation?

Do you have any evidence that a scheme like this is being used on Reddit?

It's believable, but I've never seen anything convincing.

1  Masagin 2010-12-22

The mechanism of artificially expanding or contracting the amount of exposure of posts is being used to conceal moderation.

There's evidence that such a scheme is being used because there's evidence of huge discrepancies between the amount of exposure of posts that has no other plausible explanation.

2  [deleted] 2010-12-22

The official reason for some submissions not making is into view is false positives from the spam filter. On the face of it that seems reasonable.

Once again I would clarify and say that I would not be so narrowminded as to suggest you are wrong in your suspicions I do feel however that there is no real meat to your arguments.

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

Great diplomatic skills there! Neat!

Spam filter would explain a lot... I suspect there might be really sinister parts in it's heuristics, though. Maybe it analyzes the URL the link points to, maybe it notifies some overseer who then decides...

It's clear the game is heavily rigged. Take the Organized Jewry link mentioned above. Now I have always regarded Anti-Zionism with suspicion and skepticism, thinking that it distracts us from the more important banking conspiracy, but this link really was an eyeopener. There is no way such a submission could have ended up with 10 up votes and 11 down votes, thus we could speculate that the points and the approval rate do not indicate a post's real worth.

2  [deleted] 2010-12-22

I do not really follow your logic. You are saying that because post A received 3 vote whereas post B received 6 vostes, then post A's submission has been censored. I dont follow that logic. vote does not mean view. People or bots choose to vote and the algorithm does the rest I think. Perhaps I am missing something here.

edit.. i am upvoting this submission anyhow.

3  Masagin 2010-12-22

No, not exactly like that. Count in the age of the posts, and that's a 500% difference (2 voters per 60 minutes vs 5 voters per 30 minutes). Some posts - mostly superfluous - do enjoy almost 40 times more attention than others. I'm stating that submissions are displayed to the readers selectively, with controlled exposure to a greater or smaller share of the audience.

3  Masagin 2010-12-22

Then, also, careful redditors might have noticed how votes sometimes change their value over time, with maybe a 9up 3down score slowly degrading to 7up 5down, all without any external reason for such a reevaluation: nothing is added or not added to the comments that could make any reader change his rating of the post.

Now, this is easy to code: while everyone can check that their own vote is counted correctly, the total pool of the votes can be manipulated by making your votes virtual and replacing them with bogus ones.

2  sugardeath 2010-12-22

Uhh.. people may have rethought their votes as they come across the submission a second time.

2  [deleted] 2010-12-22

You should know that reddit are open about the fact that votes change slightly from time to time. They claim this is to thwart attempts at gaming the system.

3  Masagin 2010-12-22

I also think we can assume a blatant use of fake votes in play right here in this post, as the statistics implies that since this post was 9/3, 5 people upvoted it and 4 people downvoted it, so we went from 75% approval to 55% approval, again, without any factors that would possibly result in such a change.

2  [deleted] 2010-12-22

You should consider that not everyone votes on submissions they read, in fact I recall reading stats a while back that point to the fact that the majority do not vote.

I am not saying that censorship is not happening or cannot happen but I do not see any evidence from the information you are presenting. It would seem entirely logical that reddit could be censored on behalf of powerful interests and if you subscribe to many of the ideas and opinions to be found in r/conspiracy then the possiblity of censorship would not be an unrealistic concept.

Surely the link regarding net neutrality might be popular due to it being high on reddits radar at the moment. I havent read the article you quote as superfluous ,but it would seem to me that debate as to the future of the internet is very relevant. Conspiracies considering the power of the internet for the dissemination of information and for networking; anyone who is of the mind that there is manipulation or grand conspiracies would have to view the internet as a pivotal battleground.

Maybe you are a little guilty of making value judgments on the value of submissions, weighing your own as more valid and so naturally see stats that detract from that view as somehow due to foul play.

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

The problem is not that some people do not vote, but that they vote (and comment) on some posts and not the others, as if they cannot even see them...

The value judgement I've passed was merely a try to point out that the curators of this place might be not only suppressing, but also promoting. It's hard to explain a 2500% total vote gap.

1  thereisnosuchthing 2010-12-22

Honestly, I can't see any reason to think that powerful interests would not attempt to censor or manipulate this medium, just as they do every other powerful medium of exchange/media/news. Look at television, newspapers, radio, and the other major "social" websites on the internet.

So all of those have some degree of censorship/manipulation by 'higher ups' who may or may not be working for powerful business interests, so why wouldn't we reasonably expect the same to happen here?

2  [deleted] 2010-12-22

I cannot really disagree with anything you have written there. I guess I am just not convinced by the evidence provided.

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

I would once again like to direct you to my first post, entitled "A thorough collection of serious quotes on the banking conspiracy on Wikiquote... Seems the banker Internet Control Department overlooked that page. Since 2006!". Something rather peculiar happened there which inclines me to stand firm reddit is manipulated.

1  [deleted] 2010-12-22

I have looked at that and I honestly cannot see what you mean by peculiar , can you elaborate?

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

Well, I sort of caught that shill downvoter redhanded, which proves there is manipulation happening here and thus that it is not entirely far-fetched to suspect a large-scale operation going on.

As if by coincidence, that post also became a filtered post and would remain so if not for my mentioning it here twice.

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

What is a filtered thread? I sometimes post controversial stuff that gets no attention. http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/embyu/one_million_jews_help_mossad/

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

For the purposes of this post, a thread that receives much less votes and comments than normally is considered a filtered thread, the thread you linked to is a good example of one. This is likely done by making the thread not appear on some of the readers' screens.

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

Thanks. I have quite a few like that. That's odd. Now I can't past my other link. It pasted to my Google window, but not here.

Nope, won't paste now.

1  Masagin 2010-12-22

Oh come on. Be sensible.

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

No, I am serious. A post I made 25 days ago. Organized Jewry as national dispersant. It won't paste to this window. I don't know what is wrong. I am not an IT person.

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

What the WTF AHAHA OH WOW

here is your post

I'm just... speechless.

scratching head

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

Not sure what you mean by that.

2  Masagin 2010-12-22

I was expressing my amazement, that's all.

That submission was breaking news...

I wish more people would share their dear long-lost filtered posts.

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

Thanks. Maybe we could have a r/gardenplot. A place for buried/filtered posts.

1  Occidentalist 2010-12-22

Here is the thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/ec8rk/organized_jewry_as_a_national_dispersant/

2  tttt0tttt 2010-12-22

Worth reading the article -- I don't know how I missed it.

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

Thanks, just seconds before this I got another virus threat detection alert.

1  Occidentalist 2010-12-22

I don't think it was from the link I posted.

1  bumblingmumbling 2010-12-22

No, I don't think so either. I have been dealing with this lately.

0  RatTatJack 2010-12-22

http://i.min.us/ib07LO.jpg

Click the link, the post under DHW shows up when I am in that mode, however when I log off the post disappears.

It requests David Icke to explain why he has refused to provide any more data, re the allegation that former British PM Ted Heath is a "child murderer," that he first made in 1998!

1  Masagin 2010-12-22

Thanks for your comment. It seems the whole place is rigged, then.

3  Masagin 2010-12-22

No, not exactly like that. Count in the age of the posts, and that's a 500% difference (2 voters per 60 minutes vs 5 voters per 30 minutes). Some posts - mostly superfluous - do enjoy almost 40 times more attention than others. I'm stating that submissions are displayed to the readers selectively, with controlled exposure to a greater or smaller share of the audience.

1  Masagin 2010-12-22

The mechanism of artificially expanding or contracting the amount of exposure of posts is being used to conceal moderation.

There's evidence that such a scheme is being used because there's evidence of huge discrepancies between the amount of exposure of posts that has no other plausible explanation.