
Dissecting Trump’s Most Rabid Online Following - peshkira
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps-most-rabid-online-following/
======
jtr1
The title of this piece doesn't adequately reflect the fascinating methodology
it contains. The 538 team uses latent sentiment analysis to create a kind of
algebra for subreddits, i.e. r/running + r/weightlifting = r/fitness. Politics
aside, it's (IMHO) well worth the 15 minutes it takes to read. I'd love to see
HN readers more experienced with the methodology take it to task and see what
shakes out.

~~~
ideonexus
Agreed, I submitted the same link with the title "Semantic Analysis of Donald
Trump Sub-Reddits," but even that leaves out the fascinating idea of
"subbreddit algebra" that the article goes into. Articles like these are why I
love 538. It's like popular science for statistical analysis.

~~~
iainmerrick
Me too, too!

Not only is this a really cool and novel (as far as I know) use of machine
learning techniques, there's a lengthy footnote that goes into some detail
about the method. _And_ the presentation is great, very slick modern HTML.

So it seems like an excellent fit for HN, apart from the title which will
unfortunately put a lot of people off.

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wyldfire
The code is on GH [1] and the data is on BigQuery [2].

[1]
[https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/subreddi...](https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/subreddit-
algebra)

[2] [https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh-
bigquery:reddit_c...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh-
bigquery:reddit_comments.2015_05)

~~~
mshenfield
Big Query table used is actually _all_starting_201501_

[https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh-
bigquery:reddit_c...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh-
bigquery:reddit_comments.all_starting_201501)

------
peregrine
This story is extremely fascinating and relevant to the HackerNews Community
but it's already been Shadow Banned. Neat.

~~~
mkstowegnv
sorry but how can someone/some group shadow ban a story and who do you suppose
would be behind shadow banning this one?

~~~
peregrine
The mod's can choose to "bump" a story off the front page as a form of
moderation. [http://sangaline.com/post/the-stories-that-hacker-news-
remov...](http://sangaline.com/post/the-stories-that-hacker-news-removes-from-
the-front-page/)

They do it constantly to stories deemed "not worthy".

------
wopwopwop
I haven't read the linked articled (yet), but I wanted to urge everyone to
check out r/the_donald. It is the strangest online community that I've seen.

Truth doesn't really matter unless it supports us, everyone who says good
things about us is right and everyone who doesn't is a corrupt MSM cuck
libtard. To get banned you don't even have to be critical of Trump. If you're
even ambiguous you'll get banned. In a sense this is self-selection in that
the only people that haven't been banned are lunatic-level supporters.

Basically, it's Donald Trump times 380,000. You have to experience it.

~~~
Arizhel
It sounds just like the /r/Hillary_Clinton subreddit I briefly checked out
during the election. I said something a little bit critical of Hillary and was
immediately banned.

This is just how Americans are these days. You have to pick a camp, and you
need to agree 100% with everything in that camp or else you'll be shunned. And
there's only two main camps too; if you try to pick an alternative camps, or
even a camp that's really a sub-camp of one of the two main camps, you'll be
shunned and derided.

~~~
Panoramix
r/Hillary is a run of the mill biased sub-reddit. T_D is biased and lunatic in
a way that will have sociologists publishing papers for years to come.

