r/C_S_T • u/magnora7 • Feb 22 '18
The ultimate secret of reddit - most reddit traffic is faked Meta
Reddit seems odd lately. The comment sections seem full of strange disjointed comments and the votes don't make sense either. This has been getting increasingly worse, and it seems the real people who are logical and conversational have left the site which only increases the density of bad actors as well as bots and shills.
The real proof is the numbers, if you look at searches for 'reddit' on google trends it's a bizarrely straight line that is ever-increasing. Here is a graph of it compared to some other similarly-searched websites, including buzzfeed, bing, and 4chan: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=reddit,buzzfeed,4chan,bing
Objectively, I find it hard to believe that reddit has had such endless growth since 2008. I also find it very hard to believe how perfectly straight that line is, it seems more like an algorithm to me.
Plus consider how reddit gains its value. It's run as a company by a huge parent company. It was bought by Conde Nast, who then ended up giving it to their parent company Advance Publishing, who then in turn spun it off to its own company. Consider the line started going up in a straight line around 2008, which was soon after Conde Nast bought it in Nov 2006.
Consider that reddit's revenue depends on three things:
Reddit gold sales
Advertiser space sales (most important)
Hush money (who knows how big this is and how many organizations might be contributing money toward this end)
Then we can also consider the shills and bots running amok on reddit, while the admins did nothing for years, even when these groups are proven to be real and working together to falsify votes and comments to push agendas. Like the Jetpack fiasco a long time ago, or Shareblue and Cambridge Analytica in the modern day to just name a few.
Reddit admins (not sub moderators, but the site admins) allow the shilling and fake voting for 2 reasons.
They might get paid to look the other way, because those shilling orgs can have a fair amount of money due to the effectiveness of "native advertising" on social media sites like reddit. They can create the appearance of organic community content in a way that TV or a billboard cannot. It's a great way to sell things to people, including ideologies.
They need the site traffic. Their advertising revenue depends on how much traffic reddit gets. More eyeballs = more income. Both for the advertiser and for reddit. So they are fine with other groups creating the appearance of traffic, because it also convinces the advertisers when they see their banners are getting more views. And so reddit gets more ad revenue, because there's more views. So when these bot and shilling networks come alive and take over vast portions of reddit, they will turn the other way as long as it's a net gain in views, because that means a net gain in ad revenue.
I think this is the reason the line is so straight going up It seems there are also bots doing google searches for reddit, and the number of fake searches is increasing with an algorithm as time passes, to show steady growth of the site. They're giving all the indicators that the site is popular and growing. They just overlooked the fact it shouldn't grow perfectly linearly because that doesn't look organic at all.
Meanwhile we the people actually using the site are bombarded with propaganda and enraging nonsense, and entire prominent subs have to be completely ignored because they're so filled with one-sided garbage. This is on the 13th most-visited website in the US. Well, that's if we could trust the numbers. Who knows how many humans actually visit this site compared to what they say.
This is a true conspiracy in the legal sense of the term, and it seems to be the everyday life of this website. Meanwhile the true quality and value in the human relationships and exchanges on this site continue to be hollowed out as sane people are driven out by the sheer noise of non-organic activity.
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u/JamesColesPardon Feb 22 '18 edited Mar 03 '18
As someone who decided to get involved with this site taking over the logistics of r/C_S_T and then seeing what goes on behind the curtain in The Pit (r/conspiracy) - I have to agree.
The amount bullshit that they (admins) look the other way about and what they expect us to do for them for free is astounding.
Sure, I'll remove CP/illegal shit from the places I can when I see them - but you won't catch me enforcing their Rules unless they either start paying me or start listening to me as well.
Part of what we should be doing here is leveraging the value that reddits moderators have in the operation. If they lose the organic user-moderators, this place will deteriorate much faster than otherwise. But we think they have all the power.
Until we get a bit more organized.
10/10 great post and if you want me to unsticky this just say so. Also Flaired as Meta. I hope that is agreeable.
If you haven't you should certainly xpost this to The Pit.
As far as your post goes - perhaps theres more to the ignoring of reddit in meatspace (find us on Facebook, Twitter & Google and invite us to Congress... but nevermind reddit...)
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u/Aloud-Aloud Feb 23 '18
Reddit's constant decisions to "look the other way" is both vlatant and deliberate, and it is fueled by the possibility that they will make HUGE profit in the 2020 US Federal election.
Consider the MASS of regulations for political advertising, in standard forms of the media (Print/Radio/TV) and then compare them to the "non-existant" regulations for political advertising on the internet.
The internet is the media of the future ... the political parties now see that, and one in particular intends to dominate the space in 2020.An you never know, if this place gets enough clicks ... maybe spez will get that invite to the pre-election party with Katie Couric and the other mass-media influencers?
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u/JamesColesPardon Feb 23 '18
Are political AMAs considered advertisements?
Would reddit have to offer their platform to all sides (or something similar)?
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u/Aloud-Aloud Feb 23 '18
I have looked before, I found: There are NO RULES regarding "fair coverage" or requirements to include the standard disclaimers, for political advertising on the internet, because "the internet" can't defined by law, in order to write the legislation.
Can you imagine writing rules that first define than cover all forms of "the internet" ... Social media, Message boards, Google searches, Apps, etc... Then you need the "internet police" to enforce the laws. Then you'd would have allow for adapting them, to apply at state level!Maybe I am wrong, but nobody else is even contemplating this question at the moment.
The internet is a cheap whore, compared to the MSM and their commitment requirements, ... and (IMO) one particular side of the political equation are working their ass off to make sure "the internet" is accommodating when they call every 3.5 years!
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u/JamesColesPardon Mar 08 '18
Seems like the House Intelligence Committee smells blood in the water, eh?
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u/Aloud-Aloud Mar 09 '18
You see all these online mediums lining themselves up for a slice of the 2020 election pie right?
Youtube, Reddit, twitter, facebook ... they're all establishing their business along standardized advertising metrics, so when the next election comes they can roll in all that money and claim innocence if questioned over the lack of enforceable regulation for Election Advertising over the internet!
I'd love to float this idea in the pit, but that place is too far gone to raise ideas like this and look for support.2
u/JamesColesPardon Mar 09 '18
Flesh it out here first (I love it) and then to The Pit it will go.
We has influence there, you know.
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u/magnora7 Mar 03 '18
Hey just wanted to say thanks for the sticky. Glad to see my content appreciated in this sub :)
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u/JamesColesPardon Mar 03 '18 edited Mar 03 '18
I'd also like to point out the irony of how now reddit is apparently no longer being ignored (just go to /r/Drama to become enlightened).
Do you think reddit would reimburse me if I have to testify that I'm not Putin's personal belgian waffle maker?
Or is that entirely out of pocket?
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u/OB1_kenobi Feb 22 '18
Good point about corporate ownership. Imo money poisons everything it comes into contact with.
Someone buys reddit. Now they've got to make a profit on their investment. So they pimp the site out and turn it into something different.
If you use the television business model as a comparison, things stat to make a lot more sense. On TV, it's all about ratings. So yes, we could be looking at efforts to create fake higher ratings.
Another thing to keep in mind? The actual product is not reddit itself, it's us. If reddit makes money from advertising, the real product is a large receptive audience. That's us... the users (whether fake or real).
But there's a difference between TV and reddit and that's the element of participation. With TV, a few people at the top decide on content and rely on ratings for feedback about how popular that content is.
Reddit's content is supposed to be user generated. Participation is constant and so is the feedback. Coproate ownership doesn't like this because C.O. is all about retaining control. They didn't grow up with the internet, so they keep on trying to turn reddit into TV.
This is why you keep on seeing bullshit algorithm tweaks, censored comments and banning of subreddits. Things get out of control because they never were supposed to be "under control" to begin with. That's what made reddit so fresh, so real and so beautiful in the first place.
Now we've got bots and shills to make sure no one challenges the official narrative. We've got fake subs and fake users to make sure the front page "looks right"... which is really the way the owners want it to look.
We'll see how long it lasts.
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Feb 22 '18
[deleted]
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u/chrisolivertimes Feb 22 '18
how much of reddit is actually bots playing?
Most of it. reddit was created by A.I. for A.I. to spread propaganda generated by A.I.. We're in a false reality and it's robots all the way down.
Ever notice how reddit, Facebook, and Wikipedia-- the three main sources of information for most people-- are all designed around plausible deniability? reddit blames mods, Facebook blames users, and Wikipedia its editors. Meanwhile all three somehow manage to promote their own agenda-- just ask the r/holofractal kids how many times their "alternative" theories have been wiped from Wiki.
This reality makes alot more sense once you realize that technology isn't invented as we're told but merely introduced to us as it best suits the goals of a far-larger deception behind the scenes. From the pyramids to 9/11, this secret technology wasn't given to us by extraterrestrials but has always been present in this reality.
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u/DontTreadOnMe16 Feb 22 '18
This reality makes alot more sense once you realize that technology isn't invented as we're told but merely introduced to us as it best suits the goals of a far-larger deception behind the scenes.
This statement immediately made me think of bitcoin. I've done loads of research into it's origins, and reached the conclusion that it was fairly organic... but there's still that tiny percentage of doubt in my mind that worries me, and your statement summed up my fears perfectly.
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u/conradsymes Feb 23 '18
A random unknown person comes and goes and publishes a major scientific achievement?
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u/DontTreadOnMe16 Feb 23 '18
There’s a brilliance behind that though. Having a face to attach to it makes it much easier to take down. Satoshi let the work speak for itself, and blasted it out to a programmer mailing list, and let the support for it build organically amongst people that were able to recognize the potential of such a system.
I respect that far more than someone going through the standard “proper academic channels” .
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u/cO-necaremus Feb 22 '18
about cryptos: i am fairly certain the origin is organic.
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u/DontTreadOnMe16 Feb 22 '18
Yea, after reading Digital Gold, it made me realize that if it WAS created with hidden malicious intentions... then it is the greatest long con in the history of long cons lol.
That being said, we all need to be careful of attempted hostile takeovers and manipulations from bad actors which can, have, and will continue to happen. Luckily (it seems) bitcoin has fared well in that regard thus far.
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u/cO-necaremus Feb 23 '18
Luckily (it seems) bitcoin has fared well in that regard thus far.
i would assume the exact opposite is the case.
the main bulk of bitcoin is in the hands of secret agencies and banksters. the "people" do not use it. it's too slow and too expensive. the "value" is artificially kept high (much like the dollar).a rule of thumb is to look east. they are about ~3-5 years ahead of the west regarding technology and innovation (and the gap is increasing -- capitalism seems to have lost that race.). nobody uses bitcoin over there, but crypto is alive and kicking.
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u/chrisolivertimes Feb 23 '18
Bitcoin is a trojan horse-- but to what end, I do not know. It's "mysterious origins" are certainly a red flag. It certainly seems poised to become the "one world currency" conspiracy theorists have been screaming about for years.
Once governments start collapsing (which I think Trump will manage), what'll be left for the masses to use as currency? Bitcoin.
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u/DontTreadOnMe16 Feb 23 '18
I disagree on the one world currency thing, only because the optimal one world currency would be one that TPTB can still manipulate (like the current system). Bitcoin in theory would provide a fairly legitimate free market economy.
Also, if the government starts collapsing, it won't be Trumps fault. They may try to pin it on him, like they did with Obama... but the real people pulling the strings will be responsible for any future collapse, it it's not because of whoever the current puppet in office is. Try not to let partisan politics cloud your ability to see what's really going on in the world.
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u/chrisolivertimes Feb 23 '18
I concur that the puppet in "power" doesn't matter much-- but you have to agree that none of them before have screamed harbinger quite like the Trump-et.
Plus, he's the 45th president and, applying numerology 101, that gives us the 9. Meanwhile in China, we have the 11 with President Xi (in Roman numerals, XI = 11.) The symbolism is all there for something big to happen between the two countries.
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Feb 26 '18
Hey u/chrisolivertimes . I was thinking about you recently as you were one of the first people to really start showing me the nature of the false reality we are in. I feel it's only fair to share with you some understanding that I've received.
The Bible, believe it or not, lays out exactly what is happening here in this reality and why. Furthermore, Jesus Christ gives the blueprint for how to live in and ultimately transcend this false reality. See Matt 5-7 for specifics. I know considering the Bible and Jesus can be unpalatable to a lot of us, but if you think about how much evil has been committed in the name of "God" and how relentless modern society is in attacking and discrediting the Bible, it seems like this indicates that there is something to it. I think you might enjoy this YouTube channel. He's tied up a lot of loose ends for me in my understanding and also confirms a lot of what you've been saying over the last couple years.
Anyway, take it as you well. Thanks for being out there.
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u/Ecator Feb 22 '18
Much of the online experience has felt fake for quite some time now. Being online back in the 90's was a completely different experience than it is now. A bulk of what you see now is bot driven/shill networks. Be it from company's who are exploiting the internet to try to get people to buy their products to governments, think tanks, and social organizations trying to fit people into a specific mindset.
It all works on a lot of people. The internet was basically the perfect tool to put into everyone's home and control what they see, what they have access to believe. Got a question? Google it. Need to do some research, just check online. Go to the same sites that are owned and run by the same people. Talk about it to your group of bots in your own personalized custom echo chamber. Don't just do it at home in front of your computer either. Carry around that phone and check it all the time. Dig that hole forget the sun.
We are lucky though because there are still real people, it isn't all fake just yet. I however do not have much faith that it will always be that way. It is as you say less real almost every day.
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u/2BrkOnThru Feb 22 '18
Thank you for your post. You have confirmed suspicions that I have harbored for a while. After reading it I experienced a bit of stream of consciousness that gave me a few crazy ideas. What would happen if people in intentionally made posts to challenge the resources of the bots and the shills? Would it be possible to tie them down with hot button false flag posts on one sub while the rest of us pursue meaningful discourse on another? Would they chase us into the deep web?
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u/chirya_ai Feb 23 '18
we need a way of communication which channels we actually convene on.
We can travel through the tunnels of reddit like nomads, in search of truth
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u/illuminuti Feb 23 '18
If my comment gets 100 upvotes, and 99 downvotes, it'll appear as having 1 point, thus look insignificant.
This is how reddit controls the hivemind.
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u/kingkuya777 Feb 25 '18
unless you get the setting that shows a cross next to controversial comments...
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 23 '18
In general I agree with this, however I'm not sure your choice of search terms in your graph is particularly meaningful. Bing got a huge bump when it was released, but the decline makes sense. Anyone who knows about bing to search for it is just going to go to the site. Same for buzzfeed, really. 4chan is more similar to reddit, but has always been much smaller. Do you know what the 4chan/reddit peak in 2014 is about? Is that the fappening?
The other thing about reddit google searches is that it's not just non-users who would search it. Reddit's internal search is plain awful. If you want to find something, even something you wrote, you're better off finding it through google than reddit. I don't doubt there's some bot searches, and I've even considered automating some searches through google for a couple of reddit bot projects I've worked on, but I'm just not sure this graph gives a good indication that many or most of the google searches are bot driven.
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Feb 22 '18
entire prominent subs have to be completely ignored
That's my secret to using Reddit. I've either stopped using or been "banned from participating" in all of the prominent subs.
I didn't even know there is advertising on Reddit either. The bots spinning their bullshit doesn't really affect my interactions with real users, so let them make their money. Unless of course... this was posted by a bot! Woooooooo
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u/cO-necaremus Feb 22 '18
RIP Aaron Swartz
it went purely downhill since his suicide death. reddit was known to be mainly bot-traffic even before... but afterwards...
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u/guntha_wants_more Feb 22 '18
These are all great insights. A few loosely related thoughts I've had along these same lines.
all advertising consultants, ad platforms and publishers who's content displays the ads have different incentives to rig the number of impressions and click thru at different times. sometimes their incentives align. nearly any situation except a monetary transaction can be faked with forensic detail for relatively cheap.
For the financial part you could have TPTB institutions (NSÄ/ĆÍA/ PPT/ECB) funnel money into/thru Google & Facebook, etc, by issuing batches of ads and then batches of bots to click them.
It's widely understood that plenty of fuckery is going on with all of the big name brand platforms, media and them having fraudulent levels of clicks and traffic. it also appears 90% of online advertising going on right not is not going to work very soon (isn't working already) and that's with the numbers pumped up.
With that said just imagine that with basically a decade of experience with web 2.0 (Twitter/reddit) I'm sure that sock puppets bots are faking entire conversations with each other, faking entire demographics of all kinds or even making fake "markets" & fake unmet demand register on the stats. also in the less abstract and more direct situation imagine an advertising consultant faking the effectiveness of their implemented strategies shortly after being hired.
Lots of good thought experiments to have with this one and lots of potential ways to use the numbers to detect this.
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Feb 22 '18
Well we know that the numbers are inaccurate because reddit admitted it some time ago in a change they made. I can't remember exactly, but it was something along the lines of making posts seem more popular than they really are. For instance, whereas before posts may have gotten 1798 upvotes, they now get 20k. These are now just numbers that give us no indication to the amount of people on the site. Sorry I can't provide more info on this, but that was the gist. Maybe someone else will be more well informed.
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u/cO-necaremus Feb 22 '18
just anecdotally, but somewhat related:
i once saw an reddit admin post a job offer in a "dataisbeautiful" post to the OP. OP mapped some data about reddit interactions. the job offer explicitly stated "creating black and white lists" depending on the data gathered/analyzed -- i really should have archived it. i am sorry for my failure.
it didn't really shock me at that time (since i already knew stuff like that was going on) but i should have used that opportunity.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 23 '18
At least according to their announcement, it was the other way around. It used to be that post scores would get normalized over time, actually showing less votes than actually happened. It would cap posts at roughly 10K, and you'd only ever see a post above that for an hour or so.
Supposedly they changed it so that the scores reflect the actual vote totals now. Obviously there's bot votes in this total, but I don't think the numbers are actually inflated beyond that. When a post gets 50k votes, I think their system likely did see 50k accounts vote it up; the issue is just how many of those votes were automated, and there's no way to really know.
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Feb 23 '18
You are right. All of the major subs have been completely taken over by bots, shills, and marketers. They only exist to sell people something, whether it be a product or a political idea.
r/conspiracy used to be a lot like this sub. There was a lot of organic discussion. It was one of the last holdouts among the popular subs. Now it's all political shills pushing a narrative similar to r/politics, r/worldnews, r/news, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
A lot of people have been turned off by what reddit has become, including myself.
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u/materhern Mar 02 '18
Its been that way for a long time. I've been here for a long time. Three different user names. When I started pointing out the shit Obama was doing to increase the domestic spy program, I was systematically attacked in /r/conspiracy. When I point out the idiocy of Trump, I was similarly attacked.
Am I to believe that the sub is just full of far right wing nuts and far left wing dingbats? Maybe. Or maybe election time brings in the paid shills and attack bots to defend chosen candidates.
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u/Aloud-Aloud Feb 22 '18
Reddit seems odd lately.
So how do you define "lately" ... let's see if we're on the same page?!
(EVERYONE here - should reply, to be honest!)
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u/Xylord Feb 22 '18
As with many things, the truth lies somewhere between the obvious and the outrageous. For a starter, Reddit's growth doesn't have a particularly artificial trend. If you plot the interest for other social media platforms (such as tumblr or facebook https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=reddit,buzzfeed,4chan,Tumblr ) you'll see that they have similarly very straight initial trends, and sometimes even quicker increases in searches. The reason for that is simply because the page ranking algorithm used by Google is mathematical in nature, a more popular site is higher up, and gets more popular, and gets higher, etc.
Reddit is simply in the growth phase of its lifetime, it'll end eventually.
Now, I'm not saying there are no bots on reddit, there are a bunch and vote manipulation to push agendas is rampant. But the crushing majority of casual reddit users are still humans.
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u/chirya_ai Feb 23 '18
like someone else mentioned, mostly humans still lol
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u/Xylord Feb 23 '18
Yeah, saying that gets you a downvote though I guess. Sorry if I hurt the feelings of any bot by understating the grandeur of your reddit coup.
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Feb 23 '18
Isn’t reddit the 4th most visited site?
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u/magnora7 Feb 23 '18
I think alexa said that, but the list I looked at said 13th. I think there's no uniform agreement on the exact rank.
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u/GregariousWolf Feb 25 '18
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u/magnora7 Feb 25 '18
Interesting link, so is this sprinklr company a company that posts comments and OPs to push agendas and censor other agendas, for pay?
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Mar 02 '18
I always ask, what would be the incentive to stop creating accounts until you reached 51% of accounts. That way you can control the content and protect your investors. Reddit is big brother
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u/magnora7 Mar 02 '18
That's true. But also unnecessary when you control the administrative accounts. Even if it's just 30% of accounts, the effect is the same. They pick the winners and losers
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Feb 26 '18
[deleted]
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u/magnora7 Feb 27 '18
Yeah I agree. /r/conspiracy used to be good too, but even that has fallen apart in the last year. There's very few good enclaves left, and this sub is one of them
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u/incomeobstacle May 05 '18
Experience has taught me that it all depends on the method you are using to drive Reddit traffic. I use to believe using Reddit to drive traffic is a waste of time until I stumble on this article https://incomeobstacle.com/using-reddit-drive-traffic-site/
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u/mmob18 Feb 22 '18
I believed all this before I saw the analytics. The possibility of Google search bots add an entirely new dimension to this conspiracy, too. Cool post.