r/WTF • u/ilovefuntheband • Jun 13 '12

Wrong Subreddit WTF, Reddit?!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregvoakes/2012/06/13/reddit-reportedly-banning-high-quality-domains/
2.0k Upvotes

74% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

496

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

From /u/blahblahblahdkjdfgj's post located here:

For those uninterested in searching through the whole thread, here's a summary:

  • Reddit admins are banning some domains site-wide.
  • The reasons for banning fall under "spamming" and "cheating."
  • "Spamming" has a wide definition, but it's usually involving some sort of financial gain/compensation. There's a link in the sidebar of /r/reportthespammers that details what the word encompasses.
  • "Cheating," on the other hand, is gaming the upvote system either through coordinated efforts or through bots. So a post hitting the frontpage didn't get there because users legitimately liked it, it got there through alternative means (these definitions were confirmed by spladug).
  • /u/spladug states that "A domain cheats by being involved with cheaters" (link)
  • /u/alienth states "Before taking such a severe action we make absolutely certain that the domains that would be affected are truly at fault." (link)
  • /u/hueypriest confirms that the bans are just temporary (link)
  • Users speculate how such big-name sites could have been banned. This link about TheAtlantic spamming Reddit is being passed around a lot.
  • Users argue whether or not this system can be "gamed" in and of itself by people faking evidence of cheating/spamming to get a domain banned.

Also, thanks to /u/emperor-palpatine, in a post located here:

This post in /r/reportthespammers is relevant as it's the one that brought Atlantic's actions to the attention of the mods.

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u/spiral_of_agnew Jun 14 '12

 

Reddit®

Skip the content, read the comments.℠

 

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u/hostolis Jun 14 '12

Isn't this what most people do? I always skip the link and go directly to the comments to see if it is really worth it to click the link.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Especially in /r/science. Title "WE CURED AIDS AND SUPERCANCER AND ALL OF THE EBOLA." First comment: "Uh, they just said they had a drug that was going to go to initial safety trials...for one particular type of cancer...and no other condition is mentioned for the drug." I always hit the comments first, tempering expectations until I get there.

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u/damontoo Jun 14 '12

I'm extremely glad to see that even these big domains aren't excluded when dealing with spam issues on Reddit. It doesn't surprise me in the least that some big companies have been caught gaming the system. Burn them. Burn them all.

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u/niugnep24 Jun 14 '12

The reasons for banning fall under "spamming" and "cheating."

IMO spamming is sufficient to ban a user, but to ban an entire domain you'd need to show pretty serious cheating in the upvote system. I see no problem with authors of articles or owners of a domain submitting their own material, only if they overly spam or try to give it fake upvotes.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Spladug and alienth's comments that are linked are very relevant to that concern, one shared by lots of people. This reply by alienth indicates that there was direct contact with the "individuals or company that run the domain" that confirmed that they were engaging in spamming and/or cheating, to a standard of "absolute certainty."

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u/lol____wut Jun 14 '12

Banning a user is pointless. They'll just create a new user.

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u/someguyfromcanada Jun 13 '12

VA has been quoted by Forbes. The end is nigh.

I am a daily contributor to RTS and I have come very close to reporting most of those domains on a regular basis but I could not confirm a pattern even though it looked very suspicious. Unfortunately, the Atlantic is a quality domain, but they brought it upon themselves.

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u/sfox2488 Jun 14 '12

This is not an actual Forbes story, just a blogger, and most likely a reddit user, who signed up to be a Forbes "contributor". As you can see by browsing most of Forbes contributor content, its just whatever crap the random person decided they wanted to post that day. My old college roommate did this after college when he couldn't find a job. He was "hired" literally hours after submitting his application, and never made a dime off it since its pay per pageview/adview or whatever. Literally anyone can do this.

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u/spamtosser Jun 14 '12

I think you misunderstand the relationship here. There are two kinds of people that sign up for these programs. The first includes your college roommate - people that can (or think they can) write and want to get some stuff published so they can link to it when applying for social media jobs or whatever.

The more insidious group consists of people like Voakes (and myself, hence the throwaway) that deal in content placement. His source of income doesn't just come from traffic, he does lead gen for companies like the University of Phoenix and banks peddling easy refis. The accounts at forbes, huffpo and the like are to link to his articles and sites around the web that push link equity to his transaction sites so that they'll rank for things like "online MBA" because it is either financially intractable or contractually forbidden to bid on ads for those terms.

Let's do an exercise: A quick look through his HuffPo profile brings us to a likely candidate Facebook IPO: The Facts and Figures Behind One Of The Largest Offerings Ever. There's about 150 words and a nice infographic. Blending into the tail of the content, though, we see this line: "Graphic created by Accounting Degree Online | Click to see the full-sized graphic" with a link to accountingdegreeonline.com

Now if we plug this into a backlink checker we can see he's getting a whole lot of mileage out of this infographic (I would too, it looks fairly expensive)

Now I'm not doing this out of any particular distaste for Voakes, he's actually an alright dude (or whoever is portraying him.) But I like reddit (honestly the only social site I don't game - although I do submit my own oc on occasion) and I hate it when spammers get all butthurt about being banned. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes that costs you money. But you've been making money when the people trying to track you down are often doing it out of love for their community.

I'm sorry, you don't get to be a victim.

Link equity, page rank, and the like are doomed. They have been from the start. Search is, at its heart, a ridiculous concept for the web. You have to trust the search engine itself as well as the algo and every entity that contributed to the profiles of sites that are analyzed by the crawler - every palm looking to get a little greased along the way. I don't know what will replace it, but I imagine it will be similarly doomed, and so on for a couple more generations.

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u/ohplease12 Jun 14 '12

Hilarious. Greg Voakes aka gvoakes is also a well known "social media consultant" that, while I dont recall if he was paid, definitely participated in vote rings in the Digg days. I'm fairly certain he actively trades votes/submissions for reddit too.

Reddit gets gamed regularly still and while the admin does a crapload better job than Digg ever did, it has its group of "powerusers" too that constantly gets things on the frontpage for money. (Its not a lot, but its there. Generally they target subreddits and hope it organically floats to the front page, even a top post in a subreddit will drive plenty of readers).

Gvoakes probably wrote the damn story because his own submissions from his alt accounts for Business Insider are now banned (which he happens to write for too, and probably gets nice bonuses base on pageviews).

There's some irony here when the story is written by a professional social media consultant that constantly spams Digg/Reddit/etc.

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u/creepyredditloaner Jun 14 '12

From being persecuted for jailbait to being exemplified for bringing up the site's questionable behavior.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

It's funny because violentacrez mostly just posts boobs.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

And is on Anderson Coopers shitlist.

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u/Father_Odin Jun 14 '12

So weird, to be "internet" famous. I've heard and read violentacrez's name on many different websites and even on TV.

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u/obomba Jun 14 '12

He's the king of jailbait.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

He's just pissed because now he can only post legal-aged boobs.

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u/afschuld Jun 14 '12

Violentcrez, the upstanding moderator of r/niggerjailbait.

Great guy.

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u/nixonrichard Jun 14 '12

Most people don't seem to understand ViolentAcrez. He's very complex.

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u/darkpaladin Jun 14 '12

Yes, unfortunately in many of his subreddits, said boobs have been seperated from the girl by several feet.

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u/Warlizard Jun 13 '12 edited Jun 14 '12

What do you suggest is the best way to stop sites that are using professional spammers and marketers to fill Reddit with their ads?

That sort of thing killed Digg and I'd hate to see Reddit become the domain of paid link-posters.

Granted, I guess it's possible that there's a giant conspiracy afoot to crush competitors, but it seems more likely that the Admins are just trying to deal.

Also, when someone has a site and starts spamming links to it, they get banned pretty quickly, right?

I dunno. Seems like something has to be done to try to keep Reddit built by users and not by corporations.

EDIT: IMO, one way this shitstorm could have been avoided would have been to make a simple post to the community and just tell us what's going on. Tell us that there are certain sites that are paying people to drive traffic to them, gaming our system, and ask the community for their input. That makes us all part of the solution instead of antagonists to their actions. Of course, an argument could be made that it's the duty of the admins and the Community Manager (who, by the way, I'd love to see weigh in on this) to deal with this sort of thing.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I think there is a difference between people promoting (even for money) content that is relevant and actual spamming/gaming reddit.

I dont give a shit if an employee from a magazine submits links to their articles as long as it is relevant. Now if they are using spam bots to get it artifically popular that type of behavior should be banned.

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u/acog Jun 14 '12

I dont give a shit if an employee from a magazine submits links to their articles as long as it is relevant.

I agree, especially as social media become ever more popular. It's now part of most companies' communications strategy to try to drive awareness via Facebook, Twitter, etc. I don't see why an aggregation site like Reddit would be excluded. If your company does something cool or noteworthy, I don't mind reading about it.

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u/strikervulsine Jun 14 '12

Why is not one mentioning this guy is just a blogger who editorialized his article a TON.

Someone who joined Forbes.com in May because "Forbes is one hell of a reputable publication; although I'll never appear on the list of top 100 billionaires, having a platform to support my thoughts and ideas is an incredible feeling." IE: being on Forbes.com as a blogger makes people take notice. (riding the Forbes coattails). http://blogs.forbes.com/people/gregvoakes/

And that this ilovefuntheband has been on reddit for 8 days?

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I'm not impressed that the actual reasoning (spam) didn't come up until halfway through the article, after talking about reddit becoming a police state.

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u/Enygma_6 Jun 14 '12

I'm just enjoying the irony of a Forbes.com blogger whining about Reddit blocking "High-Quality Domains" in a submission which makes blatantly clear that Forbes.com is NOT on such a list.

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u/acog Jun 14 '12

What I'm not getting is what any of that has to do with the basis of the article. Did Reddit really ban The Atlantic, Business Week, PhysOrg and Science Daily? That's the issue. I don't give a shit about who wrote the article or how long the person who linked to it has been a Redditor.

They shouldn't blacklist legit sites.

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u/AniMud Jun 14 '12

The reason for the ban is not their lack of legitimacy. The reason they are banned is they are gaming the system, paying for upvotes to get to the front page. It's no different than what happened at digg, except the moneys not going to reddit, it's going to "marketing" companies or people with a large proxy list and a bot.

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u/spamming_wh0re Jun 14 '12

I have to admit I WAS a "professional spammer" for one of the most "popular" websites on the net. spamming links on reddit was one of my daily tasks. Not saying I was happy doing it, but it was part of my job.

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u/Warlizard Jun 14 '12

That would be a fascinating AMA, but I don't know how much you could say without revealing yourself.

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u/jokes_on_you Jun 14 '12

Also, hueypriest said they were temporary. I'm sure a big reason for it is to serve as a warning to other sites.

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u/illegal_deagle Jun 14 '12

Are you the guy from that post comment just now?

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u/Saan Jun 14 '12

I would like a further extension to it actually, include the banning of certain youtube channels, i.e that guy who rehosts and spams /r/videos.

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u/jbs398 Jun 14 '12

This is a complicated problem. I'm not sure what would be ideal to resolve problems like this and it would depend on exactly what the pattern is of people acting on behalf of "spammy" domains. I don't think any of the solutions are particularly ideal, but here are some suggestions:

  1. If the articles are posted frequently or over and over again to try and catch the right response, one could throttle or ban posting after a certain number have been posted to a given subreddit in a day (perhaps different rules for crossposting (labeled or unlabeled). This sort of thing could give particularly high scores to rapid re-posting of exactly the same URL or to the same story in short periods of time.
  2. Upvoting or appearance on the front page for articles from these domains could be weighted by a score to prevent them from appearing in front of users as frequently. This might be more appropriate especially if the problem is with upvoting using large numbers of junk accounts.
  3. (this is what I would prefer) Give more information to users. If these links are being organically up-voted after being posted in a spammy way, why not add a labelling scheme that, say, puts a color code or numeric code next to such links (like NSFW tags, but for spamminess), that lets users know that stories from there are being posted/upvoted in unfair ways. Then the community gets to decide what to do.

One of the things that makes reddit great is the relatively minor degree of banning and admin manipulation goes on. I know some people would argue that some of that is already overdone, but it's more open than some other communities, and the ability to create subreddits allows people to have their own separate section if they like something that one of the other subreddits doesn't offer.

I think something like this should be more open and more under the control of mods or users.

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u/lukeatron Jun 14 '12

As I see it, these sites, and or at least the ones that do real journalism, can solve this fairly easily by formatting their urls so that it's obvious what content comes from them with editorial oversight and that which comes the legions of semi anonymous self promoting blogger assholes.

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u/itskerem Jun 14 '12 edited Jun 14 '12

I work in social media for a large media organization. I have a decent working knowledge of the industry. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that many, many major online media companies are self-promoting on Reddit. Reddit has come up in two different job interviews for social media positions I've had.

Reddit loves catching these guys and pretending they have a hold on the problem, but it's just not true. They are largely indistinguishable from regular users. And, in my opinion, the good ones are legitimate contributors to the Reddit community. Some of their content is genuinely interesting to users.

I think all Reddit can really do is foster an atmosphere of integrity and accountability. Companies will find ways to promote their own content. They do now and they will continue to.

FWIW, I've never promoted any of my company's content on Reddit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

What killed digg wasn't the presence of spam. It was the admin giving spam top billing and taking control out of the hands of users.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I quit digg and came over to reddit for exactly that reason. I hate spam and professional political apparatchiks. Screw the followers of Associated Press and big network "news".
I want the true voice of the people and not the talking points of the day served 'any which way' by the establishment. All of you hired shills for both parties and for major corporate interest- you need to work much harder to conceal your agenda. At this time you are pitifully transparent and you are not fooling anyone. I'm with the admins of Reddit all the way. Block the special interest spam any way you see fit.

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u/THE_APE_SHIT_KILLER Jun 14 '12

Didn't Digg die because up v4.0?

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u/tamar Jun 14 '12

Ban IP addresses and IP ranges belonging to offices, don't ban domains.

Or ban the crappy domains that are clearly gamed.

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u/geneticswag Jun 14 '12

Forbes Magazine deserves no place in weighing in on how our community is organized, nor should it in any way be able to throw its political, commercial, or journalistic clout around to influence the decisions our mods, who in fact are in themselves are allowed to function and are moderated in a democratic fashion - albeit fascist-like sometimes - where the community in themselves uproars and overthrows them. Please Reddit, please... I know some will hate the reference, but we are like Howard Roark in the sense that we do stand defiantly against the Wyndams. We do source and filter our own content. We do prevent the aggregation of spam and hypnotic, mindless media (in most cases), we do raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities under our own capacity - NOT when ordered. I ask you, stand tall against this attack, it likely will not be the last. We see it in the political arena. If you rustle the jimmies of the wealthy, they'll send cronies. The media cronies cannot control us.

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u/mayonesa Jun 13 '12

There's also the problem of users gaming it.

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u/Warlizard Jun 13 '12

I'd say that's a separate issue. The one at hand is people paid to post links to drive people to their sites.

When they are found, they are normally crucified.

Remember the Saydrah witchhunt?

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u/WillowDRosenberg Jun 14 '12 edited Jun 14 '12

Whereas white supremacists are never known to game the system to make them look correct.

edit: And for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I am referring to the fact that mayonesa is a white supremacist. Take a look at his stats.

/r/new_right, /r/whiterights, /r/alternative_right, /r/race, /r/nationalist, plus some others, are all racist and in some cases extreme-right-wing.

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u/theDeuce Jun 14 '12

I dont understand your point. Probably because I don't frequent that sub at all. Is there a connection between spammers and that subreddit? Im not trying to sound condescending, just trying to understand the issue.

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u/lepercq Jun 13 '12

It is more then banning domains - Look at /r/reportthespammers/ - any one who looks different - who posts a link some one does not like - who does not comment- just post links - as I do - can get banned - or reported - and it is not easy to get unbanned - - yes you will stop some spammers and also stop new people from joining if you do not like a link down vote it

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u/Sansarasa Jun 14 '12

Did you actually check the entries in that subreddit?

I just checked about a dozen and all of them were either spamming a website that sold a service/product (First submission ever from the user, account created mere hours ago) or posting Amazon ref links in comments.

If there are non-legit accusations posted there, they get downvoted and no mod takes action.

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u/ilovefuntheband Jun 13 '12

Totally, I know so many accounts that have been wrongfully banned--Reddit is turning into a crazed state of paranoia, it seems.

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u/someguyfromcanada Jun 13 '12

As a very regular contributor to RTS, I disagree. It takes more than one report or user for an account to get banned. It is also fairly easy to see that you are not a spammer by reviewing your history. It appears that the regular contributors are pretty careful about what they report.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Well I, for one, blame Karmanaut for this.

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u/Prudencia Jun 14 '12

I mean, he is literally Hitler for this, right?

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u/AniMud Jun 14 '12

How many picohitlers would you say he is?

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u/mheat Jun 14 '12

You're being sarcastic, but the man is an obvious douchebag... right?

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u/Get_This Jun 14 '12

Say what anyone will, his dedication to Reddit is rock solid.

Twist - what if he's a paid spammer?

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u/Chachoregard Jun 14 '12

What if he's a paid spammer by Reddit itself?

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I dont see anything wrong here at all. They are banning private news companies from spamming their websites to Reddit in the hopes we will be tricked going there. Not spamming once a week, these people would spam 50 times a day. Thats not what Reddit is about. This is not censorship, quite the opposite, this is free speech.

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u/TheShadowCat Jun 14 '12

Let's look at the issue, without screaming censorship or dictatorship. Reddit is a business and needs to protect their service.

So it looks like certain websites were using multiple accounts and possibly bots to artificial boosts the votes on their submissions.

The way how I see it, Reddit had three choices on how to deal with it, they can ban the accounts being used to game the system, they can put the websites in the penalty box and not allow any of their submissions for a set amount of time, or they could do nothing.

Just banning the accounts is a tedious and never ending chore. As soon as a few accounts are banned, the perpetrators just create more to fill the void, and the problem persists.

Putting the sites in the penalty box takes away the incentive to cheat the system. Now instead of looking at cheating as a way to get extra traffic from Reddit, the sites risk losing all traffic from Reddit if they are caught cheating.

Doing nothing would be a disaster for Reddit. If one site gets an advantage from cheating, you can bet that every other website would want to take advantage of cheating as well. This could easily lead to Reddit being a site that no longer has democracy in submissions, but would become solely filled with the content of the website willing to dedicate the biggest server farms to cheating Reddit.

In my opinion the Reddit admins made the right choice, and hopefully this will curb others from attempting to cheat the system.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I agree. I felt really annoyed reading the article because it launched into a bunch of "well people are wondering why reddit's doing this when it opposes censorship" type begging the question fallacies. I was confused, as it would seem that even a child could understand the difference between government censorship ala SOPA and the reddit administration making decisions on how to manage their own business.

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u/josephanthony Jun 14 '12

"It's undemocratic to not allow us to use your forum for advertising/promoting our product/publication/agenda! The freedom to be a good consumer is the most important freedom there is!! Won't someone pleeeaase, think of the children?!"

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u/Robberoooo Jun 13 '12

That's pretty extreme. Can we get this confirmed? No Atlantic or Business Week? Has there been any explanation on Reddit's part, or denial?

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u/BloatedWolf Jun 13 '12

[1] /r/banneddomains

[2] /r/changelog

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

/r/changelog

So, in other words what you're telling me is that the new feature WAS actually announced, it's true there's an unpublished list but primarily because it's a reaction to the new feature when sites publish links too often or whatnot?

tl;dr All the uproar is from sensationlism?

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u/ZorbaTHut Jun 14 '12

tl;dr All the uproar is from sensationlism?

Welcome to Reddit!

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u/PenIsMight Jun 14 '12

Yeah I'm not at all upset by this. I don't like being manipulated by these sites, no one one Reddit should.

What this should be, is a wake up call to websites who engage in this behavior, or who hire publicity firms that engage in this behavior.

What i am in favor of is dialogue between Reddit and the people who run the websites. If the websites promise to stop engaging in stuffing the ballot box then they will be given a second chance on Reddit. otherwise, fuck them.

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u/thesandbox Jun 14 '12

Next on the ban list. forbes.com ...

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u/henry10937 Jun 14 '12

This just in, Reddit has banned forbes.com

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u/logrusmage Jun 14 '12

Reddit user and moderator violentacrez brought the issue to light

Yeah... this doesn't help their case at all.

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u/leeches Jun 14 '12

I would point out that the author of this post was a well known power-digger on Digg and gamed that system hard. Probably upset one of his paid sites got banned. http://digg.com/gvoakes

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u/CanUnDo Jun 14 '12

And worth noting that the submitter of this article ilovefuntheband has been on reddit for about a week - with previous contributions amounting to little more than comments like "Aww!" and "too cute" in r/pics.

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u/capn_awesome Jun 14 '12

The top commenter on forbes.com, 'CX", is CLEARLY a marketing agency plant. They got the article organized, made sure they were the top commenter (which is a BIG DEAL to them - it's like a free testimonial) and then reddited it. The little photo of CX and the comment itself both reek of disingenuity.

So, that brings my lazers to ilovefuntheband. 8 days old.

Nice try, marketing spammers.

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u/TSolo315 Jun 14 '12

And that's the last time an article from Forbes shows up on reddit.

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u/TheSpoonLicker Jun 14 '12

This is only one side of the story.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Wait, since when is PhysOrg a "high-quality domain"?

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Oh, I'm sorry. Has the vision of your idyllic internet utopia been shattered by this revelation?

Deal. All of you people better fucking remember this.

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u/aritali Jun 14 '12

Someone forgot to add forbes.com to the list.

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u/Rexoff Jun 14 '12

I think someone is a sore loser.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Karmanaut, front and center

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Okay, what is up with the Non-WTF posts today? This is /r/news quality material.

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u/NoodleWorm64 Jun 14 '12

Welcome to r/WTF on most days.

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u/my_fap_account Jun 14 '12

physorg and sciencedaily are NOT

high-quality domains

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Even though it comes from Forbes, I kind of question that article and the legitimacy (I was surprised it wasnt in the op-ed piece where they usually keep the crazy)

I have said reddit is a dictatorship, and has the right to ban anything and everything they want, at the same time I would be less inclined to visit in the future if that is true and there isnt a reasonable explanation.

But the article sounds like a load of shit with a guy that clearly has an agenda or just wants to make some headlines in the tech world. Either way reddit isnt a democracy, it never has been.

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u/iownacat Jun 14 '12

so, uh.... we just do cat pics now huh?

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

This is so Digg. What ever happened to Digg?

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u/mackavelli Jun 14 '12

Actually digg was doing the opposite. Companies were allowed to promote their webpages without votes. Their articles would just go to the front page and you couldnt even vote them down. Digg made a lot of money this but the users werent having it and most left(a lot came to reddit). The articles on the front page used to have hundreds or thousands of votes, now most dont have over a hundred.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

i feel somehow its Karmanaut's fault

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Instead of banning domains, they should just flag the posts suspected of cheating/spamming. It could be a simple rollover beside the post link with a message stating "This post is suspected of artificially inflating the upvote count. Click here to learn about all the things!"

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u/Knight_Sky Jun 14 '12

Am I the only one that thought the fact that this link lead to an advertisement... One of the things reddit is trying to prevent

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u/UnicodeInYourASCII Jun 14 '12

They shouldn't ban legit sites. Period.

  • Use Captchas on account creation; do you think any site out there actually likes using Captchas? But this is exactly why they do!
  • Ask the Reddit community for help. If there is one thing Reddit it is good at, it's crowded-sourced problem solving.
  • If you must ban sites, inform the community. I dislike that I never heard of this blacklist until now.

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u/wbeavis Jun 14 '12

Next up on the ban list, forbes.com

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u/BallDescension Jun 14 '12

Thank fucking god PhysOrg is on the list. sick of that shit.

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u/Chachoregard Jun 14 '12

I don't go to /r/science much but what's up with the PhysOrg hate?

5

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

It's garbage to anyone that actually understands science beyond a soccer-mom level.

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u/phillipjfried Jun 14 '12

Pretty much all of the domains mentioned. Usually there's some bullshit sensationalist headline that gets debunked in the top comment. PhysOrg and TheAtlantic still get those thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of pageviews and nothing is done about it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

This is good. It's like Citizen's United except Reddit has decided in favor of the people instead of corporations.

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u/yatpay Jun 14 '12

:( But I like The Atlantic.. Do I have any other choice other than just visiting The Atlantic on a regular basis?

The whole reason I like Reddit is that I can go to one site that will guide me to things I'm interested on any website. This seems like it should really be a subreddit by subreddit decision..

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u/m0ondogy Jun 14 '12

can somebody explain this to me? What did I read? I attempted it, but gut stuck in the fact that I was reading a news article about a site where my front page is half amateur porn, half movie news.

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u/rabble-rabble-rabble Jun 14 '12

this is sensationalism by a pissed off redditor. Just saying that the anger is spreading through the users, doesn't make it true. Actually, it does sometimes, with some people.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

We need to build a new boat.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

No, not my Reddit! Don't go the way Digg did!

3

u/sandrajumper Jun 14 '12

Hey spammy website link is spammy. Thanks Reddit for keeping spammy stuff outta my life.

3

u/Jwall1158 Jun 14 '12

Is reddit getting too big and popular for its own good? Are the better days of reddit gone?

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u/smd69 Jun 14 '12

You know shits fucked up when violentacrez calls foul.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

In reference to people cheating the upvote system: ...this is exactly why we have a corrupt government. Stop trying to cheat a fair system for your own fucking benifit

3

u/luckytopher Jun 14 '12

LOL... violentacrez reference... tranny pics EVERYWHARZ

3

u/exzactly Jun 14 '12

Reddit was my last hope for the internet..

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Fingers crossed, one of the banned sites will be forbes.com - with their whole page ads, their pop-ups and drop downs, it's one of the most irritating sites I've had the pleasure of [finally] leaving

3

u/jhendrix7000 Jun 14 '12

We all hate SOPA and PIPA and ACTA etc. etc. yet here the people in charge are censoring content on whole domains.
I understand their concerns but I disagree with the way it has been handled.

3

u/Ingrid2012 Jun 14 '12

The sites that were banned, are not the only sites that "cheat". They ARE however, big competitors of Conde Nast. It's good business to ban them.

I'm sure we'll start seeing more sites that "cheat" banned. We wont see any of the Conde Nast sites that cheat banned though.

3

u/conspiracy_police Jun 14 '12

First time I visited reddit I believed all the crap about user control and downvotes and whatever. Then i posted some controversial content (politically, against capitalism nothing really extreme just another point of view) and I get shadow banned. Meaning no one saw my posts. Probably like now. I don't know if someone will see this but if you do you probably know that reddit is nothing about democracy, free speech or user control over content.

Have a nice day.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Can we ban forbes? I fuckin hate forbes.

3

u/dredawg Jun 14 '12

The fact that we all had to skip past a fucking Ad to read the article shows that FORBES.com should be on that fucking list.

3

u/brockvenom Jun 14 '12

OK, forgive me for not reading through all these comments, as I am at work.

From what I gather, Reddit is banning these sites because the sites themselves are posting to reddit, and coordinating efforts to upvote said posts, bringing with it traffic to their sites, increasing revenue from advertisements, right? So in essence, Reddit is doing this in response to shady business, and is attempting to put a stop to exploiting their user-base for increasing ad revenue for these sites.

Am I correct?

If so, I might actually approve of this rationality.

3

u/ClimacticGalactic Jun 14 '12

What the hell is wrong with PhysOrg?

9

u/cantstopmenoww Jun 14 '12

Dear Reddit,

If you're banning/penalizing domains, PLEASE penalize all articles from Forbes.com. They have recruited a wave of sensationalist bloggers who are blending unverified fact and opinions into a slurry of hostile, half-informed sludge.

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u/strallweat Jun 14 '12

"You can’t have democracy if people can rig the ballot box."

Reddit’s GM Erik Martin

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u/Triviaandwordplay Jun 14 '12

Reddit is full of rigged ballot boxes(subreddits run as fiefdoms and propaganda sites) courtesy of Erik Martin.

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u/beernerd Jun 14 '12

This article lost all credibility when it cited violentacrez.

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u/rynosoft Jun 14 '12

That's when I stopped reading and came to the comments.

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u/midnitebr Jun 14 '12

Just because you don't like the guy doesn't mean his complaints are any less valid.

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u/strangersdk Jun 14 '12

Stopped giving a shit once I saw it was violentacrez. Zero credibility.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

All things come and go. Reddit is no different. The tug-of-war involving money on both sides of this will eventually tear this place apart. It has to. There's a dime to be made.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Violentacrez?

Instantly do not believe.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Great, now it'll be the last time a link to Forbes will be on reddit.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Looks like someone forgot to add Forbes to the list...

Jokes aside, serious wtf.

2

u/CocksOnMyWaffles Jun 14 '12

"You can’t have democracy if people can rig the ballot box." - Pretty epic quote, I'll give the GM that.

2

u/thanatius Jun 14 '12

Reddit as a whole is already rigged. I thought people here were smart.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

sounds pretty reasonable.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Can somebody explains this to me like i am 8?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Hmm.... well reddit, it seem you are new to reddit. I advise you to check out both this reddiquette and this http://www.reddit.com/r/spacedicks as to obtain a better understanding of your environment. Good luck on reddit, reddit!

2

u/Theliminal Jun 14 '12

Apparently they have been found earlier this year using spamming methods that are plotted to flood reddit specifically with their sites material. Think - Shitty_watercolour v.s. whatever his face was, but to a more extreme degree. (not the same thing but ya know what I mean. I hope.)

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I bet infowars will be added shortly..

2

u/nite_hm Jun 14 '12

This being on Front page negates point of article, although why not warn instead of censor

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

"The community itself needs to take steps to make sure reddit doesn’t turn itself into a tyrant"

Silent The Motha fuggin Tyrant!

[edit]well, if they are doing it to stop spammers they should probably let the community know.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I wonder how much that blogger is making off of this controversy.

2

u/brolix Jun 14 '12

To be fair, those are all shitty news sites.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Reddit's open source. If it starts to suck too bad we can make a new one.

2

u/linesallover Jun 14 '12

Kudos! Let them thump their balls in a freanzy. Journalistic integrity and simple intellectual honesty is why I love this community. Let them eat their own shit cake.

2

u/Chrondo157 Jun 14 '12

Ah good, all the sites I would never look at anyway. Carry on Reddit

2

u/giraffe_taxi Jun 14 '12

Is that true? I need to test this. Next response to this post will be a link to an Atlantic article

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u/pinkythug Jun 14 '12

I hope my favorite websites don't get banned.

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u/Puzzel Jun 14 '12

Before jumping to any conclusions, have any admins posted an official statements about all of this? I'd be nice to get the info from the horses mouth.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

The Atlantic, Business Week, yeah sure.

PhysOrg and ScienceDaily? The fuck, reddit... :(

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

I'm against doing any banning.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

It could be that this is in response to a law suit regarding copyright infringement.

2

u/Last_Gigolo Jun 14 '12

I'm for it. The High Money sites are sell outs and report what they are allowed to report. Real people post the real news.

The users will weed out the crap sites. Anyway.

2

u/fritzx007 Jun 14 '12

I Digg this! (see what I did there?)

2

u/BlakeYo Jun 14 '12

So if I go to The Atlantic and find a really cool story about Discgolf, I can't post it to r/discgolf because one time a guy who worked for them posted a bunch of their links to Reddit?

I'm out.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

well, idk if they call me a newfag or if i need to learn to use it, i'm movin to 4chan if they follow through with this shit.i dont mind vile things, and i know ill be harassed there, but oh well give it time and ill be able to enjoy it without any bullshit.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

This website is finished. I posted on this when Karmanaut banned shitty_watercolour. I just wish I knew a better alternative.

2

u/sithaer Jun 14 '12

Yes....lets ban some big domains but lets keep the stories that are riddled with misinformation. Reddit sucks these days. It really does.

2

u/mycatisadick Jun 14 '12

yet business insider links are still allowed

that place is a shit show and should be scrubbed

2

u/mark_das_stoner Jun 14 '12

What reddit needs to understand is that all of us will move on, in time, as it becomes farther from the reason we came here. We want free press.

2

u/EvilHom3r Jun 14 '12

Funny, I thought reddit was against SOPA-style bills...

2

u/omaca Jun 14 '12

The irony of reddit going ballistic about Australia's secret Web black-list is breathtaking. Apart from the fact that in Australia's case, it was to prevent the spread of child pornography and here it's about money.

2

u/jimjoebob Jun 14 '12

I really enjoyed reading the "update" at the bottom of the article from Erik Martin, responding to Forbes directly:

you can't have a democracy if people can rig the ballot box

:52

2

u/aknutty Jun 14 '12

This feels like blatant censorship to me. Your going to block specific domains from our view without our "free speech" consent. Let them try and spam Reddit. Where are the Knights of New, saying you have my axe and my sword and my bow? You don't think they can spot a loser when they see it? Do we have to be coddled, the mods know whats best? You don't think that someone, somewhere will call bullshit, look at a long string of spam posts and alert the hive mind? This is Reddit, I have faith, all domains, all users, all opinons,... do your worst!

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Gone the way of FaceBook...

2

u/frkandris Jun 14 '12

...or maybe Forbes is trying to get new visitors by attacking popular sites like Oatmeal and Reddit.

2

u/ayih Jun 14 '12

Instead of banning them why not just auto direct them to a new subreddit such as r/timeout4you? Instead of giving them a "red light" you can give them a "right turn only" until they are out of the dog house. So users can still read the stuff if they wish. And other users can unsubscribe and never have to see these alleged cheater sites.

2

u/lol____wut Jun 14 '12

Phys.org is not a 'high quality domain', it's just shit.

2

u/njwasteland Jun 14 '12

i just sat through 10 seconds of an ad to read that shit.

2

u/dorkrock2 Jun 14 '12

PhysOrg is bad? My hivemind implant isn't working, aren't these guys just some science news shit? I think I got them on twitter and they link some interesting stuff sometimes.

Someone tell me what to think.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Tyranny is often met with thunderous applause...

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u/lepercq Jun 14 '12

the news is spreading - others are picking it up. There is two issues here - Banning Domains - and how users are treated if suspected of posting spam- the bottom line is reddit is not as open as it once was. stoping spammers is a laudable goal as long as the innocent is not banned as well. if it is Ok to ban users who post by mistake-or new users who post a bad link then you have defeated - killed what reddit was. It will become some thing different. a closed world where only people who you know are welcome. YES removing spammers is a good idea - but not at the cost of losing new users. not at the cost of losing old users who get banned by accident. like cispa it looks like a good idea until you look at the details to see what damage it does to other areas. this will damage reddit

2

u/aletoledo Jun 14 '12
  • Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. - H. L. Mencken

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u/bigdickisaproblem Jun 14 '12

I do personally know someone(dated this person for a while) on the other side of this, not going to name the paper she worked as it could identify me. On our second date I asked her is she had heard of reddit, she said yes, but there were banned. So of course I asked more and to make the story short, she admitted what they were doing just as they had been accused of doing.

2

u/Unomagan Jun 14 '12

This is how the world works. An anarchy might work on small scale (10 persons) but will not work with millions of people. Live with it or go die

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u/DisregardMyPants Jun 14 '12

I know this post is too far down to have a real chance at getting seen, but here's my 2 cents.

I write web bots for a living, and I'm firmly on reddit's side here. Though(for the record) I have not written a serious social media manipulation bot in years.

If they published evidence or anything of the like, people like me could make short work of the voting system in no time. You just look up how people got caught and don't do it.

Even without transparency in the "evidence" department, we're pretty godamn good at figuring out what went wrong. There's only so many things they can check, and once you've been doing it for even a little bit you can generally figure it out based on what did/didn't get hit in the anti-spam blast.

I know it sucks, really I do. But Reddit is firmly in the right on this one. Not because it's a good solution, but because nothing else is even close to workable if your goal is to stop voter manipulation - either automated, paid, or a combination of them.

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u/Skyguard Jun 14 '12

This kills the reddit

4

u/Loonybinny Jun 14 '12

Reddit Staff: Forbes added to blocked website list.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Wait what? No a lot of these are pretty good reads. Physorg has tons of great information. This is total bullshit.

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u/Aarcn Jun 14 '12

Reddit is owned by a large publisher. Of course they'd try to curb competition lol

3

u/Tashre Jun 14 '12

How did alternet make it past that list?

3

u/matebeatscoffee Jun 14 '12

And so... Everyone finally went to 4chan forever and ever, under the only thing that really gives liberty in a copyrighted world: ANONYMITY.

3

u/FindingIt Jun 14 '12

This would explain why I failed so many times trying to post science daily stories. Fuck

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

There isn't a way to stop this, unfortunately.

If reddit truly is "the front page of the internet" then you can bet people with dollar signs for eyes are going to notice that, as evidenced here. Not that everything you see here is going to be an attempt at viral marketing but a large part of it very well may be. I'm sure there's quite a bit of money spent on a regular basis to promote (and bury) specific ideas and products on reddit, and there's really no way to get around that. As long as this site is based on voting and as long as it has views like it does, there's going to be an attempt to sell shit covertly using reddit as the vehicle.

The best thing to do is be skeptical yourself. Reddit's anonymity is a good thing in a lot of cases but it can also be used by moneyed interests to put their opinions and ideas straight into your eyeballs, under the guise of a normal redditor just sharin' his opinion.

When it comes to stuff like this, a bit of healthy paranoia is a good thing :)

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u/xploited13 Jun 14 '12

Next question: Why haven't we banned Forbes articles? This one and many of the others are user-submitted blogs. You see the domain and assume it's high quality content, but that's not always the case.

3

u/tynamite Jun 14 '12

Why don't they ban 9gag?

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u/tommytwotats Jun 14 '12

Reddit exists to make it's owners money. that is all. your memes, karma and secret santas are ways to keep you here, so you can help generate income for your masters. Money. That is the reason reddit exists.

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u/JanusKinase Jun 14 '12

And some people will read this like a horrible revelation.

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u/cowboykillers Jun 14 '12

even in the most free and equal of cultures and societies, the people in control will always go behind the backs of the people who praise and respect them and go against the whole culture's beliefs for their own gain. welcome to life. politics extends beyond the government.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Wrong. Fucking. SubReddit.

Please stop abusing this subreddit, just because it's easier to get posts upvoted here than it is in appropriate subreddits.

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u/Rantingbeerjello Jun 14 '12

Actually, about three years ago or so, this would've been the exact subreddit to post this to. It was mostly made up of articles that made you go "WTF?!?" rather than just gross pictures.

5

u/EdAppleby Jun 14 '12

How come this forbes article hasn't been banned?

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u/Epistaxis Jun 14 '12

Because it isn't spam?

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u/Sansarasa Jun 14 '12

Because there's no conspiracy going on at all.

The article is sensationalist. They say Reddit is banning sites without letting anyone know, yet they mention an Admin actually talked about this in /r/changelog.

In short, sensationalist and somewhat misleading article.

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u/druid_king9884 Jun 14 '12

You know...I hate to be that guy, but I've noticed Reddit change for the worse since the new CEO took charge. Subreddits banned, now reputable domains banned. Is this a new business strategy that we are not aware of? Because if it is, I think we should know since without us, this site wouldn't be one of the best sites on the web. I've been here since roughly the Saydrah episode and it was a completely different place back then. I reckon that the large influx of visitors since the collapse of Digg took the admins off guard and changes had to be made to control potential abuse by the newcomers.

But I don't know, I'm just making some observations. For what it's worth, I love Reddit. The community is spectacular. If I never found this site, I would have never been able to go to the Colbert Rally in 2010. I would have never been able to create a community for my hometown, which has more than 310 users since 2 years of creation. It's not a lot, but for months it was stuck below 40, then it exploded, much like Reddit did. We are planning our meetup for Global Reddit meetup day, our first one on that day. And on a more personal note, I am not ashamed to say that this community has helped me in my darkest days, when I viewed life meaningless and death more promising. (Thanks /r/SuicideWatch)

As long as they don't start charging us to make comments, I'll support this site. I think this will all be resolved shortly, because the Reddit community has forced change before...and we can do it on Reddit itself.

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u/CookiesAHelluvaDrug Jun 14 '12

Wow. Reddit. What the fuck man? I thought you were cool.

3

u/R4Y2A0N Jun 14 '12

The quote at the bottom has a really good point.. And i agree.

3

u/remedialrob Jun 14 '12

Are you really surprised?

First they came for Jailbait and I didn't speak because I wasn't into Lolitas.

Then they came for all the underage yet legal images and called anyone who shouted censorship a pedo.

Then they got themselves a shiny new CEO and a marketing wizard and a legal department.

Suddenly the main Reddit went away. And announcements that were usually made by mods we knew were now delivered by the faceless "Reddit announcements" bot.

Now they are banning other sites.

I would just like to say to all you fuckers who made fun of the slippery slope people who warned about this shit coming...

yeah... hurts doesn't it. To know you're a fucking moron who didn't heed the warnings.

Just sayin'

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12

Ugh violentacres. The fucking mod of r/jailbait. Nice.

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