

Quickmeme banned from Reddit for alleged vote manipulation - OTRAustin
http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-bans-quickmeme-vote-manipulation/

======
minimaxir
It's worth noting that another Redditor and mod from /r/AdviceAnimals,
/u/ManWithoutModem, independently discovered different evidence that the
Quickmeme posts were being manipulated. [1]

No one believed him and he was demodded. He's not happy about it.

[http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickme...](http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickmeme_is_banned_redditwide_more_inside/caoiq3t)

~~~
ultimoo
What is the 'np.reddit.com' subdomain used for? I had never seen it before,
and it looks similar to the www subdomain.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
‘NP’ stands for ‘No Participation’.

“Linking to np.reddit.com instead of reddit.com will cause the subreddit to
display the No Particpation stylesheet. It’s a read-only mode where users
linked through the NP domain cannot vote or comment. This works only if the
subreddit has installed the NP CSS. If not, linking to the subreddit with the
NP domain will cause to display without the subreddit’s custom CSS, and voting
and commenting will still be possible. This way we can still watch drama as it
develops, but if the subreddit wishes to preserve its own culture by
discouraging popcorn pissers, they have that option.”

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/annou...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/announcement_a_new_rule_to_discourage_invasion/)

------
citricsquid
Now r/adviceanimals users are clamouring for a quickmeme alternative, because
the present meme sites (eg: livememe.com) suck. Opportunity for anyone that
wants to clone quickmeme.com in the next ~6 hours.

~~~
ChiperSoft
Can't they just upload the quickmeme generated images to imgur?

~~~
wmil
No, quickmeme doesn't actually generate the final images. Instead it layers a
transparent PNG on top of the image.

~~~
prezjordan
That's not true. They DO layer a transparent PNG on the image, but that
transparent PNG has no content whatsoever. It's there just to prevent people
from hitting right click and "Save Target As."

~~~
GhotiFish
w... WOW. REALLY?

I refuse to believe quickmeme became popular because reddit _liked_ it. That
is very very anti-user.

Edit: theeeey sure do!

[http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad](http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad)

right click, view image, go here:
[http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif](http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif)

delete that element and do it again, go here:
[http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg](http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg)

~~~
Domenic_S
Never heard of spaceball.gif?

------
hayksaakian
Ironic that this is posted by a HN user with no comments, and only submissions
from the daily dot.

------
noir_lord
Excellent, a few months ago clicking on a quickmeme (by accident normally when
not logged in) link on android resulted in multiple redirects and an attempt
to download an apk which was lovely.

After that I used RES to filter quickmeme on all my desktops.

------
personlurking
I'm not so concerned with Quickmeme et. al, (because I don't follow default
subreddits) but rather I'm concerned with voting rings against personal
accounts. I had an account for a substantial time where I posted good, useful
comments frequently (for which I was upvoted frequently). Once, maybe twice in
response to other commenters I disagreed with them, like 0.1% of my time on
the site. Afterwards I found myself downvoted to hell no matter what I did,
how long I waited between writing comments (ie, 6 months). Everything (quality
comments) would go rather quickly to a 0 or a -1/-2. I had to make a new
account, there's no way around it.

~~~
Phlarp
I think this is one of the biggest concerns for Reddit going forward. Fighting
bots can be approached systematically and with relatively decent results.
Fighting coordinated groups with an agenda and voting brigades is a much
harder beast.

The SRS "fempire" is probably the scariest case study in all of this.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
On the contrary, SRS is one of the most innovative uses of a subreddit since
Reddit's inception. Think back to the days of forums, LiveJournals, mailing
lists, IRC, etc. Whenever an issue of discrimination arose, it was _always_
derailed one way or another. Between vocal opponents, concern trolls, and
"explain to me how this offends you"-types, it was impossible for someone who
experienced discrimination to find a safe space to legitimize their
experience.

With SRS, instead of allowing any kind of discourse related to the validity of
a claim, every participating member is required to just accept the claim as
valid. There is no driving force to change Reddit, and there is no activism
involved. It's simply a safe space for people who are offended to express
themselves in an environment that won't be questioned, especially when Reddit
is known for having a hive mentality.

~~~
Phlarp
No offense, the warm and fuzzies are great; but this is the anti-thesis of
intelligent and productive discourse.

I wouldn't mind at all if they just wanted to create a safe place for these
things to be voiced, but they threaten the integrity of the entire community
with the current choice of actions.

------
wnevets
the owners of grumpy cat hired a "meme manager" to promote and sell their
meme. I now hate all internet memes.

[http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-
management/](http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/)

~~~
mpyne
You're really surprised that a concept that has gained worldwide popularity
might actually warrant "brand curation"? I hope you hated memes before grumpy
cat then.

~~~
wnevets
I did but grumpy cat was marketed to make money virtually at its inception. I
remember them selling merchandise at NYCC last year, that's two weeks after
they posted it on reddit.

The commercialism and exploitation of this cat shortly after it's birth has
really rubbed me the wrong way.

------
benologist
I think Reddit (and HN) should make votes and ip addresses transparent for
external analysis. The spammers hide behind these.

They could also be more brutal with punishments, route every single link to
the offending site through a page that says they were spamming so it's an
inconvenience for people and a wall for search engines.

~~~
aw3c2
No, IP addresses are a private matter. The identities behind pseudonyms should
never be exposed unless the affected person decides to do so.

~~~
geuis
Expose them as a hash with a hidden salt. Maintains user privacy while
exposing a static data point that can be used for analysis.

~~~
GhotiFish
ah, that might work, if users can't be tied to upvotes, just that one upvote
can be tied to others. Still, if someone finds a way to associate a username
to a hash, then there could be real life consequences for that.

I like the idea, but it's playing with fire.

~~~
benologist
It doesn't have to be a reversible hash, just assign a guid for each ip
address.

There are probably subreddits where that information could be potentially
harmful (eg upvotes in jailbait way back when) but that can be solved by not
enabling it across the board, and it's not an issue here. Digg made their
upvotes public from the start, and so do delicious, facebook, stumbleupon etc.

------
halayli
Isn't that what Reddit did to bootstrap its site?

~~~
mahmud
Reddit astroturfed their own site with fake users. These guys are 1)
astroturfing other people's sites, 2) practicing unethetical tactics by down-
voting links to competing websites with automated bots.

~~~
halayli
The point is that they are equally dishonest.

~~~
raganwald
Astroturfing your own site is a longstanding tradition in media. A long time
ago in a career far, far away I wrote classified advertising software for
desktop publishers, typically small outfits like trade magazines or penny-
savers.

When launching a new feature like classifieds, it does you no good to put out
a blank page. So absolutely every customer that didn't already have classified
ads would astroturf with fake ads.

The ethics of their profession was to discard any mail-in replies unread. For
example, one customer used my software for personals. They had a strict rule
that any reply to one of the "fake" mailboxes was to be shredded immediately
upon receipt, unopened. They didn't even want them laying around lest someone
write down a name or return address.

One there are enough "real" ads, the fake ones are phased out. I can't really
say whether it is right or wrong, but I can say it seems to be a standard
practice predating the world wide web.

~~~
GhotiFish
that's interesting, but they sure do seem the same. I'm thinking the only
difference here is cultural. Like how we don't view reporting a price as $4.99
instead of $5 as unethical.

~~~
raganwald
Here's a phrase I feel comfortable using: It's a _deceptive practice_.

------
gboudrias
What kind of idiot made the owner of quickmeme.com a moderator of the
subreddit that contained presumably most of its posts?

~~~
NoodleIncident
Red dit bans the posting of personal info. They didn't know.

~~~
gboudrias
Hm, understandable, but then how did they learn it after the fact?

------
trotsky
_And as such, content submitted within these subreddits are regularly featured
on Reddit 's front page each day and capable of being clicked on by more than
1 billion people._

What an odd thing to say. That same hypothetical line of thinking could lead
you to say that I'm capable of receiving a trillion dollars tomorrow, simply
because I have a fedwire destination address and that much money could
hypothetically be transferred to it. Neither has even a slight chance of
actually happening.

------
_pmf_
But there will be nothing left! It will now be all fabricated Facebook posts
and 4chan content that is intellectually low-brow enough for the Reddit
hivemind to understand!

------
tommorris
And nothing of value was lost.

------
danso
> _Gaming Reddit for traffic has become a regular frustration for the
> community, which boasts more than 22.9 million monthly visitors in the U.S.
> alone. This is particularly true within Reddit 's default subreddits. All
> new Reddit users are automatically signed up as subscribers of the site's
> default subreddits, which include r/AdviceAnimals, r/Atheism, and
> r/Politics._

Hmmm...maybe this problem could be alleviated by not auto-subscribing new
users to a meme-based forum? Of all the great subreddits, AdviceAnimals
(albeit, which is pretty funny sometimes), seems like a silly one to acquaint
new users to.

Have any of the bustups of voting rings been done algorithmically? That is,
does reddit have a way to pick out cluster of reddit accounts that seem to
behave like scripted bots? It seems all of the major domain bans (such as the
Atlantic) were done through manual user suspicion and inquiry.

~~~
twentysix
The top ten subreddits(excluding NSFW ones), based on the number of
subscribers, are chosen to be the default ones.

New accounts do not increase the default subscription count, until they
subscribe or unsubscribe to any other subreddit.

You can find some good comments on the matter here
[http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_belie...](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_believe_that_ratheism_should_be_removed_from/c9ttixl)

~~~
prezjordan
Also excluding any subreddits which specifically ask not to be included. I
cannot remember specific cases of this, though.

~~~
cli
A while ago, r/askscience was briefly listed as a default subreddit, until the
moderators (and probably users) asked for the subreddit to be delisted.

------
peter_l_downs
Who gives a shit?

------
rocky1138
This can only be seen as a good thing as Quickmeme tends to be an extremely
heavy site with stuff that could be easily handled by simple image linking or,
at worst, imgur.

~~~
minimaxir
Quickmeme, for the most part, was only regulated to /r/AdviceAnimals, which
says a lot about the quality of /r/AdviceAnimals.

------
dghughes
It won't be enforced I see many sites supposedly banned still posting everyday
websites such as physorg and the Atlantic.

~~~
mehrzad
Weren't those bans lifted?

~~~
dhughes
I don't know, communication isn't so great, I have no idea which sites are
officially banned, which have bans lifted. There may be a spot on the reddit
blog or somewhere else that I'm not aware of but really it shouldn't be my
responsibility as a user to enforce it that's the job of admins and mods,
that's why they exist.

It doesn't seem to matter though because I have seen banned websites post even
when they are supposed to be banned, reddit doesn't seem to block the url it
just mentions the website is spamming reddit and that seems to be all we're
told.

There is an unofficial (?) subreddit that monitors of banned websites, look to
the right at the sidebar for the link to the list
[http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/](http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/)

~~~
danso
The bans of The Atlantic and other large publishers has been lifted...it was
said early on that the bans were just temporary:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physor...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physorg_is_not_allowed_on_reddit_this_domain_has/c50651w)

And speaking of temporary bans...I thought dailydot used to be blacklisted
from HN? I'm glad to see that it wasn't a permaban.

~~~
benologist
It looks like dailydot has started running spam accounts - the OP and this
one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin)

------
Tuxlar
Something something pots and kettles and allegations and blackness.

------
Uperte
I have always thought imgur, quickmeme and other meme site (forgot its name)
are owned by Reddit owners or executives. It is impossible to get upvotes if
you embedded image on your site/blog.

~~~
citricsquid
imgur.com is owned by Alan Schaaf, he's not associated with reddit. The reason
images don't get traction if they're embedded on a website or blog is because
they're not compatible with the reddit clients people use (mobile) and RES
(reddit enhancement suite). Most people that use r/adviceanimals want instant
gratification, if your image doesn't load in under a second nobody cares and
will move on, it's why imgur is so popular: it's fast and consistent.

~~~
wnevets
I believe conde nast owns reddit & imgur.

~~~
citricsquid
Conde Nast purchased reddit in 2006, then in 2011 (maybe 2012) it became
"independent" again with the parent company of Conde Nast, Advance
Publications, retaining an ownership stake of the newly formed reddit, inc.
[1][2]

Imgur is a totally separate entity, the company was founded by Alan Schaaf
using reddit as a place to "launch" it[3], they've never announced outside
funding and there has never been any talk of reddit (or Advance Publications,
or Conde Nast) having any ownership stake.[4]

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddit_is_a_corporate_investment_and_we_are_the/c7gwhzp)

[2]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits...](http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits_pledge_drive_pitch/cahlxny)
(screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png))

[3]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur)

~~~
v1tyaz
Schaaf first posted about Imgur on Digg, and when it didn't gain traction
there he posted it on Reddit. It was disingenuous of him to call it a "Gift to
Reddit" in that post.

~~~
drivebyacct2
In what way is imgur not a gift "to" reddit? It might not have been
"exclusively for reddit", but I'm willing to be a huge sum of money that most
top subreddits, including the first 4 pages of the frontpage are dominated by
imgur links.

imgur was the first image host (before minus) that didn't suck, wasn't anti-
user, freely allowed hotlinking and had a minimal page when they didn't
hotlink.

It's almost never down and the links don't magically fail or expire after they
get lots of traffic like many other hosts.

