

Reddit downgrades technology community after censorship - schrofer
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27100773

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danford
In this day and age communities like this need safeguards to protect the
participants from being manipulated. This is no longer a conspiracy theory,
this is real. If you don't believe the US government has a hand in
manipulating public opinion, then you have to at least believe China and
Russia are doing it. While there is not _much_ proof, I think there are
probably large corporations attempting to manipulate public opinion through
the use of social media. So r/technology banned the word 'tesla'? Believe it
or not the community is probably one of the most influential tech related
communities on the internet. How hard would it be to buy a moderators account
without anyone knowing? Would paying a hundred grand (or a few hundred) to
control one of the most influential tech forums on the internet be worth it?
(would it even cost more than a couple thousand dollars?) Could Microsoft or
Ford or Daisy make money by manipulating public opinion? You bet they could.
Do corporations and government face real threats from large communities
getting wind of alternative concepts and ideas through the internet? You bet
they do.

There is real incentive to control large public internet forums, and when you
sit down and think about how you might manipulate a site like reddit the
answers are almost obvious. You wouldn't even need a moderator account if you
had a small team of people with the right technology and incentive. Are the
people running r/technology just normal people sitting at home managing one of
the biggest forums on the internet while working eight hour days at the salt
mine or have they found a way to turn moderating a subreddit with millions of
subscribers into a paid gig?

So the question is, how do we protect our selves from this type of thing, or
at least keep the manipulation out in the open so we can see exactly what's
happening?

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cryoshon
This is the face of the New Internet, whose seeds were sewn in 2010 and have
recently started to sprout. The New Internet is a public opinion platform
dedicated to dictating/shaping the technotariat's perceptions using
distraction, shilling, disinformation, censorship, and divide-and-conquer via
social media. As the public at large becomes more integrated with social media
and less with traditional media, propaganda will ramp up on the Internet
accordingly. Internet based propaganda is particularly dangerous because it
can create the appearance of social consensus, which silences people who might
dissent.

Reddit's full infiltration by corporate and government (and not just the US
government, mind you) groups has been in the spotlight lately, and I wouldn't
be surprised if the more informed users start to migrate to greener pastures
without propaganda flux. It's no secret that the NSA files specifically detail
propaganda operations against social media targets, and for now, the best bet
for escaping them is smaller, more focused communities.

