Reddit algorithm changed for /r/all to prevent any one community from dominating | Hacker News Reader

all to prevent any one community from dominating

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15 pointswhamlastxmas17 comments

Please don't let Reddit drama start bleeding into HN. I come here specifically to avoid that site.

I think this is relevant even outside the context of reddit drama. Any sort of censorship (or call it whatever you want) done on a huge scale like this is relevant tech community news.

r/The_Donald wants to have it's freedom of speech to dominate reddit, but anyone who posts dissenting opinions in their subgroup gets a lifetime ban. I don't mind being banned, but fair is fair. Good riddance. Their top response today, typically histrionic:

JOURNALISTS: We know you're reading this. This is a HUGE story. Reddit is changing the fundamental structure of the site from community-selected content to admin-selected content in order to silence a political movement.

Do not let this happen quietly.

There's a pretty big difference between the_donald banning people disagreeing and admins censoring /r/all. Reddit's biggest problem is abusive moderators censoring users of a community, or running a subreddit in a way contrary to how the vast majority of users want to use it.

That isn't really the case with the_donald. That subreddit has behaved in this way from the very start, and their bans over anything anti-Trump is sort of part of the joke/culture of the subreddit as a community. The vast majority of people in that sub want anti-Trump people banned. It's not a place for real discussion and the bans are pretty much just done for laughs. It's an example of a subreddit working well because of the moderators, when it's usually a subreddit working decently despite moderators stifling discussion and pushing their own agendas.

Additionally, bans on reddit are a joke. An account takes 5 seconds to make and even if admins want to IP ban you, it doesn't accomplish much. Censoring the most viewed listing of content on the entire site has a real, meaningful impact.

I agree with you in regards to r/news moderators acting badly recently, but does reddit or it's users need or want 25 r/The_Donald links on the front page? I don't think so. Reddit has a right to exert some editorial control.

Considering how overwhelmingly they are upvoted, yes, it does seem like they do want that.

Reddit has the legal right to do whatever the fuck they want, but they are censoring a platform built for discussion, and people are going to leave because of it.

It doesn't look like genuine upvotes. r/The_Donald reminds me 4chan but with a paid agenda to elect Clinton.

Trump got more GOP primary votes than and GOP candidate in history. It should surprise nobody that the sub(dom)reddit is incredibly popular. http://img.ccrd.clearchannel.com/media/mlib/15172/2016/06/de...

If Reddit were representative of voters then Sanders would be the Democratic nominee.

Are you trying to tell that r/The_Donald reflects genuine views of Trumps supporters and moreover it reflects the views of the majority of Reddit?

r/The_Donald is the textbook example of the Internet trolling -- as in you literally can write a book on how to become a troll using its submissions as the educational material. Though usually trolls are not hired guns and have less malicious motivation (the usual motivation being to induce an emotional response for your own amusement).

If you don't think the vast majority of people there are real and genuine supporters then you don't understand this political movement. To you it looks like a bunch of trolls, but that's expected, you fundamentally disagree and/or do not understand their POV. As is so common, you cite no examples. Sure there are trolls, there are entire sub's devoted to trolling r/the_donald.

For example, they don't like Saudi Arabia. Do you? Should we allow one of the most oppressive and rich governments on the planet influence our news and politics?

I don't mean "troll" as an insult here. I mean it as the description of the activity that is not about opinions it is about facts.

Usually there could be a gray area where it is not clear whether some online activity can be classified as trolling -- r/The_Donald is not one these cases -- the signal is very clear. You could use any common definition e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

Though some of the submissions might be genuine (given the demographic) due to Poe's law (extreme views and their parody are hard to distinguish) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Reddit is absolutely representative of voters who use reddit. However, the youth voter turnout is notoriously low, and reddit users are a pretty small minority of the voting base.

I would say /r/the_donald reflects the sentiments of the majority of reddit. I doubt most people agree with everything Trump says, but they agree with what he stands for - getting rid of the career politicians that are doing such a shitty job and only get elected due to an unfair election system (gerrymandering, first past the post, super PACs, two party system, etc).

>Reddit's biggest problem is abusive moderators censoring users of a community

This is not even close to reddit's biggest problem, unless you know something I don't.

What would you argue the biggest problem is?

Wow, I'm impressed. Not only is "admin-selected content" a complete lie, reddit could delete /r/all entirely and it wouldn't change the fundamental structure of the site.

I don't think this is accurate. A huge portion of reddit users use /r/all, and therefore the content presented there is what a huge portion of the users see. If the admins are artificially influencing what it seen there, it's fair to called it admin-selected, or at the very least, admin-influenced. Removing /r/all would definitely cause a very big change in the traffic patterns. Non-default subreddit traffic would go down tremendously.

In the technical sense that the admins wrote the equations, it has always been "admin-influenced", and the new version is influenced no more than the old version.

The the more straightforward interpretation of "admin-influenced" is that the admins have any control over particular stories or subreddits, and that interpretation is false.

The old algorithm has no editorial control. A theoretical algorithm that allows one story per trending subreddit also has no editorial control. The current algorithm that's in between those two extremes also has no editorial control. Calling it "admin-selected" is wrongheaded and trying to invoke false outrage.

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