
Reddit Thinks I'm a Spammer - Nurdok
http://blog.amir.rachum.com/post/30185348950/reddit-thinks-im-a-spammer
======
raldi
The goal of reddit has always been to provide something good to read when
you're bored. The policies are optimized for this use case.

The goal of reddit is emphatically not to provide a promotion vehicle for a
given content producer.

In other words, if the reddit listings are dull, that's a major problem. If a
particular site isn't making it through to a particular listing, well, if
there's time someone might look into it. But it's just not a top priority.

And frankly, if you only participate in the site to promote your own content,
I'm not so sure I'd call the spam filter wrong in this case.

------
benologist
Reddit is absolutely right to put no weight on the "acceptance" of submitted
stories, it's _easy_ to get stories "accepted" on sites like Reddit and HN -
there are a ton of blog posts on the best times, the best keywords and how to
correctly exploit the herd mentality. And that's not even taking into
consideration fake accounts that can support a spammer for a long time.

You look pretty spammy here too by the way, exactly the same symptoms that
makes reddit "think" you are spamming - only submitting and commenting on your
own site.

Someone should automate violentacrez' guide and make a lookup service for
social news sites. Reddit just recently busted major news sites spamming them,
they will have missed a shitload of them and of course HN / digg / stumbleupon
/ etc certainly aren't immune either.

~~~
slurgfest
So the same person submitting his own site is NOT a spammer if he makes a
number of throwaway comments?

I'm all for spam control, but that heuristic is _interesting_... it just says
that you only want professional spammers who know also to make throwaway
comments at a certain rate. The only unacceptable thing is an amateur spammer
who links his own stuff without also posting other people's cat pictures and
so on.

~~~
clavalle
Of course someone who makes a bunch of throwaway comments on their own posts
is a spammer. That doesn't make someone who does nothing but self promote in a
more naive way less of a spammer.

Anyone who is seen as self-promoting is viewed with suspicion. /Especially/ if
that is /all/ they do on Reddit or HN.

I personally think it is ok to post one's own blog, even if it has ads, if the
content is interesting. But if that is all you do for a community...I don't
know. Seems like bad form to me.

------
sswezey
He is complaining about being labelled a spammer on Reddit, writes a blog post
with as much substance as a marshmallow and then posts it on HN?

This article should be flagged for spam here, this isn't a venting site for
your Reddit frustrations.

------
lutusp
Interesting, unfortunate, but not as nefarious as outright censorship, which
is what happened to me:

<http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html>

In short, a Reddit moderator took offense at my expressed position on the
status of psychology as a science, and bluntly told me that I couldn't post my
view on that specific topic, and if I did, I would be banned. He made it clear
that I could post any viewpoint I wanted _except that specific viewpoint_.

Once I realized it was censorship, that I had done nothing wrong except to
offend a specific moderator who felt justified in silencing me, I stopped
posting to Reddit.

------
powertower
I was a prolific reader of /r/programming, and even submitted good links that
were quickly upvoted. Then the spam filer got me, and kept getting me, so I
left.

Except there was no spam,... just a mod that decided to remove some submits
that he thought were off-topic (they were not), and me making more than 1 or 2
submits every week.

Before posting to reddit, make sure that 1) you've upvoted/downvoted
something, and 2) made some comments on other threads.

------
usea
The filter seems to try and measure self-interested intent, which correlates
well with spam. However, they're not the same thing. In the content of
fighting spam, if a user is providing things people are genuinely interested
in, then their intent is irrelevant.

