
Reddit Is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills [video] - teslacar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjLsFnQejP8?reddit
======
M_Grey
Just run under the assumption that all information is subject to intentional
and unintentional bias, and requires careful analysis. It's a safe assumption
most of the time, and you need to form that habit of thinking anyway.

To be honest, those shills on Reddit tend to be pretty obvious, but then they
have to be given their target audience. More importantly they only really
exist on some parts of Reddit, and it's only really easy for them to get lost
in the scrum on the big boards like politics and news. You get the occasional
obvious bit of PR floating through ELI5 or AskScience, but it's quickly
spotted and killed.

When PR can be accomplished by random flaks, it's useful. When they require
expertise on part with their targets to achieve their goals, it necessarily
restricts their target pool, and increases their overhead.

~~~
ramy_d

      More importantly they only really exist on some parts of Reddit
    

One thing I noticed in my time on reddit is that subreddits aren't insular
silos. Values, opinions and views-du-jour often bleed over into other
subreddits in ways that are hard to predict. Reddit is a really unique culture
in that it is constantly, subtly, and rapidly, fluctuating. Just because a
fraction of subreddits are being exploited through shilling doesn't mean that
redditors in your favourite subreddit don't go there and that they themselves
are (consciously or otherwise) not being affected. Even if they don't read the
articles, then they saw those highly voted headlines. There's no escape! This
involves all subreddits!

~~~
joshjje
I think you are wrong about reddit being "a really unique culture", at least
in this context.

To me it seems very obvious that fundamentally it is exactly like how
societies, communities, and communication has always operated, be it local
gossip, newspapers, global communication, or hell even the differing
thoughts/parts in our own minds.

Im not saying it hasnt changed things, of course the internet has changed most
everything, just that the part we are talking about isnt something new. It has
evolved certainly, but fundamentally the same.

~~~
ramy_d
I agree with you to some extent, that inherently there are no new dynamics
here. However Reddit still manages to capture that small community feel while
still bringing in millions of people a day, I think that's what's unique about
it and also why it is so successful.

------
DoodleBuggy
This is obvious and has been for years. Reddit is full of astroturfers,
spammers, marketers, disinformation, trolls, and other generally undesirable
behavior.

I generally look at reddit like one fractional step above facebook, it's
basically internet pollution curated by the most effective spammers.

~~~
rospaya
Then you're on the wrong subreddits. The ones I like the most are small or
medium, have in depth conversations, analysis and interesting content. Or just
gifs of cats, which is also something that I need from time to time.

You tailor your own reddit experience.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
"Or just gifs"...

This was posted a week ago in nice little subreddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Cinemagraphs/comments/5zirfy/my_fir...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cinemagraphs/comments/5zirfy/my_first_cinemagraph_a_never_ending_can_of/)

Quote obvious product placement, right?

Now, this is today's top cinemagraph:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Cinemagraphs/comments/60wpk6/woman_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cinemagraphs/comments/60wpk6/woman_smoking/)

Less obvious, right? Or am I too skeptical?

------
gist
By the way the person (upvote seller) who was called in the first part of the
video ironically didn't do his part to make sure that the caller wasn't
scamming him.

He didn't ask any questions and he didn't put the caller on the spot. Doing
that (if well done) would have allowed him to potentially uncover the true
purpose of the call even if it wasn't admitted. He allowed the caller to
control the conversation (with his backstory) and as a result went along with
everything and just answered questions. Also hard to believe that the average
caller to this service asks questions like that and sounds like that. [1] Part
of what I do involves ferreting out the truth when contacted by phone and by
email so maybe this was just obvious to me after hearing the interaction.

[1] Because they are real customers. Anyone who takes calls for a living and
isn't asleep can usually tell the patterns of what a real customer sounds
like.

------
robertelder
I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk, and I really want him to be successful, but
sometimes I feel that the overzealous tendency of his fans (and likely PR
people) to automatically give praise for anything he does or says (here on HN
or on reddit) is actually counter-productive.

What if Elon starts doing something dumb some day and then when well-informed
people try to provide meaningful criticism, they just get criticised and
downvoted? I think that could actually undermine support from some of the
people that Elon wants it from the most.

~~~
Clubber
I think Elon Musk has a bit of the reality distortion field around him like
Jobs did. If you take a step back and look what he tries to achieve vs. what
just about every other business (tech or not) does, it's a stark comparison.

Musk no longer represents himself and his companies, but he represents a
future where we can do things we thought were just dreams (cheap space travel,
electric cars that perform better than internal combustion types, ubiquitous
solar power, etc). That's a lot of future from just one guy.

~~~
noonespecial
>...he represents a future where we can do things we thought were just dreams

He does more than just represent. He makes smart people believe that hard
things are possible and that it's going to be worth it to try.

A little bit of reality distortion can be a good thing, especially when
reality is tending to suck.

~~~
AReallyGoodName
If there's a lot of financial analysts and engineers saying "this isn't
feasible" and they are being ignored then that's a bad reality distortion
field.

Hyperloop One in particular comes to mind here. Some people say its feasible.
Some say it isn't. Both have valid points.

I like his work. I just don't want to see Musk fail due to lack of focus on
one particular part of the dream and a lack of people on his team willing to
say no.

~~~
busted
Unless he invested and I don't know about, Musk has nothing to do with any
Hyperloop companies besides presenting the incomplete idea of a hyperloop and
that it's worth pursuing.

------
jimhefferon
One good example of this is that every morning there is on the front page of
/r/all exactly one article about the nba. Never two, never zero.

~~~
hsod
The r/all algorithm was tweaked last year during the election to prevent
subreddits from flooding the front page. What you observe may simply be the
result of that, rather than vote manipulation.

~~~
jrnichols
I'm more likely to blame vote manipulation, especially when it's a brand new
anti-Trump sub (of which there seems to be a new one every few days) rising on
r/all. The number of specifically anti-Trump subs is getting out of hand and I
can't believe that they're all organic up votes at this point.

------
Shivetya
Why does this surprise anyone? I have a relative who is part of a PAC which
"mobilizes" constantly to keep certain stories up high, nuke others, and even
more. they aren't limited to reddit, she has a list of sites to get the word
out on.

the problem with fixing such issues is that many site owners want the traffic
and some support the subject matter being pushed whether politics, education,
products, or more.

you don't even need paid groups to slant sites, the fanatics of some games,
authors, or even technologies, have enough sycophants to insure their message
is the only one heard

------
diogenescynic
It's very clear around certain topics--GMOs, pesticides, gun-control, and a
few others. There are accounts that follow those keywords and only comment on
related articles and only during 9-5 business hours.

~~~
AlexCoventry
Could you list a few?

~~~
diogenescynic
Firemylasers, jf_queeny, sleekery, and Decapentaplegia are the most frequent
I've noticed.

~~~
randomdata
> jf_queeny

Considering that J. F. Queeny[1] founded Monsanto, that seems like a strange
choice for a covert shill account. While I don't read much about other issues
you may be referring to, being a farmer[2], I end up coming across the GMO and
pesticide topic fairly often and I've noticed it tends to attract a lot of
misinformation about agriculture. I expect, in many cases, these accounts
follow these interest groups because they are easy targets to make fun of.
Bullies perhaps, but unsurprisingly the internet has them just like the real
world.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Francis_Queeny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Francis_Queeny)
[2] It's Sunday afternoon. You'll have to trust I'm not working overtime. :)

------
TheAceOfHearts
Not surprising. I've grown increasingly tired of reddit over the last few
months, but I haven't found an adequate alternative. Any suggestions? What
sites do you commonly visit?

Maybe this is my own bias showing, but whenever I read a Microsoft article on
reddit, my shilling senses start tingling. I've seen a few confirmed examples,
although luckily they usually end up getting banned.

~~~
stagbeetle
Have you tried Voat?

I couldn't stand it, but it works for some.

~~~
dahdum
I'm glad Voat exists, but it's not somewhere I frequent. The more Reddit and
Twitter crack down on speech the faster Voat and Gab will grow.

~~~
yellow_viper
Voats model is good but filled with angry men (and the people on fatpeoplehate
seem to be mainly women from what I've read). We need a max exodus from Reddit
to even the odds

------
paulcole
Really doing a disservice to those of us who do this for no pay, day in and
day out, simply for the love of shitposting.

------
digi_owl
Wish i could relocate the comment on a Boingboing story where one of their
admins mentioned having tracked comments on a certain topic to a online PR
company.

His attention was drawn to the comments because they were heavily reported
when made, and would be largely of the same structure but with a new user name
each time. So he pulled up the IP they came from and all of them was made from
the company owned address.

~~~
cknight
When the shills in question are lazy, it can be pretty straightforward to
detect, yeah. This sort of thing was very high on my list of "problems that
will need mitigating if this has any chance of working" with my Suitocracy
project.

The more research one does on astroturfing and the like, the more depressing
it gets. Dedicated desktop VMs running different browsers and OS's, directed
through different proxies to get different IPs, etc. Where social media is
involved, detailed online personas are set up for each one, with reasonable
histories for using later down the track.

I think the best we can realistically do is to raise the cost of successful
astroturfing/shilling to the point where it might not be economical to do, at
least on a meaningful scale. As others have said, community involvement and
skepticism play a huge role in that.

~~~
digi_owl
Yeah i think things have gotten more "professional" these days. I think it was
happening back when blogging was the new buzzword, and MSM had taken to
referring to sites in their news reports (complete with a screengrab of the
article in a corner).

I was only really checking out the site because of Doctorow's stuff, and was
even turned away from that as he had the annoying habit of posting random
horror articles alongside his tech stuff (and the rest of the writers seemed
like the typical SXSW bunch).

------
loudandskittish
While this is bad, in my experience, I feel that paranoia about shills does
far more damage to online communities than any paid shill could.

...or maybe I'm being paid to say that. (I wish I was).

------
strathmeyer
I'm pretty sure interviewing Gallowboob and taking what he says at face value
is a pretty good example of being manipulated by a professional shill.

------
noobermin
So, I just posted a comment pointing out people like upvote club sell upvotes
for HN, but it looks like at least they don't have the option to sell HN
upvotes anymore. What happened, did the mods finally beat them? Or did they
ask nicely that they stop that?

~~~
theDoug
The market for false likes/views/followers/etc becomes an increasingly
difficult place to sustain (especially financially) as detection of typically
fraudulent use grows constantly easier with machine learning.

------
rallycarre
I thought there was a story about nike interns(or some other big company)
using interns to leave good reviews and comments on reddit.

Anyways this is nothing new and something that obviously goes on without
saying.

------
stuaxo
Worth watching, I skipped past this a few times, as we all know it goes on,
but it's good seeing him phone up a reputation agency and see what they say.

------
equivocates
next week: hacker news is being manipulated by professional shills every day.

~~~
frik
Sadly it's true. Some companies game the HN ranking algo, and employ shills to
divert the discussion of their product. At least two companies (that are
infamous for such shady tactics anyway) do it actively regularly on HN.

The first thing to prevent it, would be to change the HN ranking algo so that
stories with more comments than votes are not automatically punished and
forced many pages backwards from the frontpage. Add a report button to report
users. Implement an admin interface to monitor certain users and ban them.

~~~
dang
You've made these accusations many times but never supply a drop of evidence.
We've repeatedly responded [1,2,3] and asked you to stop, yet still you
persist. I appreciate your concern for the quality of HN, but at some point
this becomes abuse in its own right.

It's unfortunately common for users to feel absolutely certain that other
commenters are astroturfing when they merely happen to disagree about company
X or issue Y. The underlying assumption is: 'no one I disagree with could
possibly be commenting in good faith—they must be disingenuous'. This is a
cognitive bias. Nearly always, when we investigate these accusations we find
nothing—nothing except that the accuser really dislikes $BIGCO.

Real astroturfing and shilling do exist, I've personally poured countless
hours into combating them on HN, and I can tell you from long experience with
the data that they don't look anything like what you're positing.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253)

2\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11988639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11988639)

3\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322393)

~~~
truetraveller
First, I want to thank the guys behind HN and Dang for being very open about
any HN vested interests. I have no doubt HN tries hard to be honest. No
complaints here.

That being said, I am very suprised you mentioned "drop of evidence". It is
very upsetting you said that. There is hard evidence.

The fact is: There are may dishonest people in this world. They may justify
their honesty, but that's not the point. See the PLETHORA of dishonest reviews
(with proof) on Amazon, Yelp, Ebay, etc. And HN is the perfect place to game
comments/upvotes/topics, and you bet it is. Firstly, it's simple to game HN.
Actually, too easy. And the returns are really good. The audience are high-
income earners, and intelligent people. The topics can be very niche (which
means highly targeted). In fact the mentality that "HN can't be gamed" is
better for the gamers, since other HN users will really believe most comments
are genuine.

HERE'S THE DEAL:

I will do a project "for free" for the public good. This will hopefully
establish proof. If I am allowed by HN legally, I will show my study of how I
can easily, massively game HN. And you will not but able to detect it. I will
not make money of this, but I will provide detailed statistics about traffic
and CTA clicks. I will provide a dollar value of the fruits of my gaming, if
it was to be real. I would be just one person doing this in my spare time.
When the fruits are so sweet, PR companies will employ full-time paid
individuals and maybe even teams.

P.s. Dang, I know you try hard to remove "shill" comments /upvotes /topics.
Yes, you catch the amateurs. But the whole point of shilling is to blend in be
undetectable. You don't and simply cannot catch those. And on a seperate,
there was a study that "doctors who believe they cannot be gamed/bribed, are
actually the most gamed/bribed".

~~~
dang
I said there was no evidence in a specific user's claims, not that there was
no evidence anywhere. See my third paragraph.

There are two problems. One is that astroturfing and shilling exist. The other
is that some users are too eager to see an astroturfer under every bed and a
shill in every pot.

Both problems are destructive and we need to deal with both and not pretend
that one subsumes the other. On HN the approach is simple: (1) if you think
you see abuse, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate;
and (2) don't accuse other users of astroturfing and shilling unless you have
evidence, and keep reminding yourself that an opposing view (e.g. them
liking/hating $BIGCO while you hate/like it) is not evidence.

~~~
truetraveller
Yes, accusing a specific company certainly requires proof. So I apologize if I
was defending that.

You say "astroturfing and shilling exist". It is likely a "very high"
percentage. "Very high" does not need to be 60%, but it is relative. Even
10%-20% is very high, which I think the ratio might actually be. It is just
too attractive--the bang-for-buck ration is just too sweet.

Please note, I don't say this with pleasure. I'm an honest shop and it is
painful seeing competitors astroturfing.

