Ask HN: Are Reddit comments being manipulated?

[netwanderer]

I have recently noticed a pattern on some specific subreddits, in particular r/Canada and r/Toronto, that suggest its comment upvote and downvote features are possibly being manipulated.

It has happened to me more than one occasion now that my comment to a topic would initially receive some upvotes at the beginning, then it continues to receive steady upvotes over a timespan of 5 to 6 hours which suggest these were all coming from real users. Then all of a sudden my comment would receive a series of downvotes come flooding in, all occurred within a timespan of just minutes, effectively rendering its voting count to negative. These comments were almost always related to topics about current government policies.

The first couple of times this happened, I didn't pay much attention and just assumed people were ignorant to what I said. Then one day I happened to click on one of the users who replied mocking my comment. I found out this user only posted all their replies exclusively in r/Canada and nowhere else. The history and content of this person's comments clearly suggests he/she is a government employee. Everything suddenly makes sense to me that there's a real possibility that the upvote/downvote mechanism on these particular subreddits are being manipulated.

One thing to point out is that I've never experienced this anywhere outside of r/Canada and r/Toronto, and it occurred almost exclusively in comments related to government. The pattern doesn't quite make sense to me, how could a comment receive steady upvotes within a timespan of a few hours and then suddenly got flooded with downvotes within minutes? It's almost as if the comment got flagged, then someone reviewed and decided that the comment needs to be struck down, and activated the downvote bots to do its job.

What do you think HN? I'm posting this here to avoid any influences by the invisible forces behind reddit.

[prolikewh0a]

I stopped using Reddit because their API is too open. It allows bots to comment/post/upvote/downvote and I realized I could no longer tell what was organic anymore. This could extend to large networks of bots that are there solely to change opinions. Things seemed too weird, certain brand new political subreddits appeared out of nowhere with 26,000+ votes making it to the front page with ease. I even noticed some trends/patterns in local city subreddits as well from shady subreddit owners. After being on there for 6+ years, it all just seemed a tool to change and influence opinions inorganically unless all you visit are highly curated hobby subreddits.

[netwanderer → prolikewh0a]

Thank you for your feedback. I'm considering leaving it too. Reddit has become too popular and too prone to manipulation at this point. I found people often hold back what they want to say, in order to appear as politically correct for karma points. The moment someone has the courage or authenticity to speak up their mind they'll get downvoted to oblivion. Lucky I'll always have HN and Slashdot to visit instead.

[prolikewh0a → netwanderer]

I find Reddit to be on the level of 4chan now. Not in the rude/vulgar/disgusting way, but in how low quality its content and users are. It's totally unbearable unless like I said you are in select niche curated hobby subreddits. The highly public subreddits are disasters of political correctness and 60's-like red scare propaganda blaming Russia on everything. Today I peeked at the hurricane forums and saw people blaming Hurricane Florence on Russian-made propaganda. WTF? People don't communicate in a natural way on Reddit anymore. It's certainly changed enormously since I got there 6-8 years ago.

Hacker News is infinitely higher quality than Reddit at this point, and I'm glad I came here. It changed a lot about how I see others on the internet and how I debate, all in a beneficial and positive way.

[Festro]

Absolutely this happens and for a variety of reasons. It's technical term is brigading. It doesn't have to be government-backed, just a group or sub-group banding together in a 'brigade' to downvote comments.

Two things to caveat this though -

1) Reddit is a public forum with relatively low barriers to entry. As such you should take anything that happens on it with a pinch of salt. The popularity of a comment indicated by its score is not a true indication of its popularity, simply popularity of people who have seen it and bothered to click an up or down vote, plus it's more than open to abuse.

2) You have a single data point of evidence, plus a gut feeling through some observations. You're not doing anything wrong by questioning this, quite the opposite, but keep track of your own objectivity. Don't let the observed pattern turn into a conspiracy theory before you've determined how you've tried to falsify your own assertions and gather more evidence.

NB - I think you meant "pattern" not "patent"?

[netwanderer → Festro]

Thank you for introducing me to "brigading", I wasn't aware of such term.

I'm not the type of person who believes in coincidence, especially when such events require many variables to occur at the same time. These events have happened on more than two to three occasions now so I strongly believe there're credible evidences there. I'll keep observing and monitoring it, but it's likely I won't be staying on Reddit much longer, it just seems too easy to abuse and manipulate this platform.

[erpaa]

That is quite common. I knew a guy who had army of 10 sock puppets. I think he had automatized the process because those votes came with minutes. He had a mental problem of some sort, because when the discussion come to heated, those sock puppets started to analyze mental health of participants with large variety of issues, from psychosis to pedophilia. Worst part was that he was also a moderator of that subreddit with 100000 subscribers.

[_lffv]

Seems likely but I don't subscribe to r/Canada or r/Toronto so I dunno. Also I'm not a scientist or anything I'm just a Reddit user who says it seems likely so don't quote me here.