Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Cofounder Says Site Was Built By a Horde of Fake Accounts
derekmead writes "How, exactly, did Reddit get so big? Well, according to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it 'til they made it.' In a video for Udacity, Huffman describes how the first Redditors populated the site's content with tons of fake accounts. These days, with the site's users are wary of people using expendable accounts to try to seed their own content. But early on, Huffman said that using fake accounts driven by the founders was key to building the tone they wanted to the site. Early on the Reddit crew could shape the discourse of the site in the direction they wanted, and as the real user base grew, those standards held allowing the fake accounts to fade away."
Been to r/circlejerk, lately? :)
Either way, who cares. If it hadn't taken off, they'd just end up as a bunch of weirdos talking to their multiple personalities. But it did, and the same tactic is used all the time - ever see a single dollar bill in a tip jar? Priming isn't new.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
The Reddit groupthink is pretty overpowering. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still a horde of fake accounts designed to upvote politically favored things and downvote badthink articles right into the memory hole.
Maybe you're just an asshole and, indeed, nobody cares about what you have to say.
Digg was destroyed by its owner. Slashdot and Reddit survive by... well doing nothing. How long did Slashdot go with it's appalling mess of code? And the moment they tried to clean things up including the interface... nothing but complaints! Sometimes if it ain't broke don't fix it (except secretly behind the scenes). Hell, I live in France where fax is still more respected than email.
The only reason Slashdot is dying is dilution. Nobody wants to watch TV, we don't have time, and the previous poor quality of submissions and editing was border-line acceptable as it served as a trigger-point for a lively comments thread but the pollution of slashvertisement by timothy etc makes reading bitching threads tiresome.
Getting momentum is tough. I don't think Slashdot or Reddit are going anywhere for now. However as the spectacular demise of Digg shows, things can change pretty quickly.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
People do it all the time, but from the perspective of Blizzard's bottom-line it isn't a huge deal. That person still pays for each of the accounts, so the only real difference is that unlike with 5 people (each with one account), all 5 accounts could disappear at once if the person quits. That is a downside, but not enough that it merits bothering much with, imo.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Duplicate ACCOUNTS? Unlikely; you have to PAY for accounts. But each real cash-paying player may have up to 50 different ALTernate characters. You just can't have all of them online at once.
I don't mind stuff getting voted down, any reader worth their salt reads at -1 (or highlights text on HN) anyway. But hellbanning for fuck all? Slowbanning for even less, for basically "not cheering instantly" --- wow haha. I'm a potty mouth, and I can see how my first accounts were expelled, but seriously, from then on I tried to behave better, but just for disagreeing or pointing out hypocrisy --- BAM, slowban, then log out and you realize your posts don't even show up for anyone. It's so petty and stupid it's hilarious. "Spammers and trolls" my ass -- that's a spineless echo chamber if I've ever seen one. And they even call themselves hacker news of all things.
Oh well, fuck these clowns. It kinda made me realize how good slashdot is all over again (you can say what you want about it, but at least it's not squeamish and deceptive); I'm just "ranting" about it here because well, I can't do it there :P
I was trying to be polite, but I suppose I'll have to be blunt. Your description leaves a much more plausible explanation than your claim that a group of editors tracks every new post for some proper "tone" that you occasionally are just too rebellious to match.
It seems much, *much* more likely to me that instead, you occasionally come off like a self-righteous, unbearably narcissistic ass who grossly overestimates his own cleverness and the value of his opinion, and whose comments, once modded to -1, simply aren't worth wasting any time nor effort moderating further. In other words, people --occasionally-- simply aren't that interested in bothering with what you have to say on those occasions when you feel justified in acting out.
In other words, the Golden Era of Reddit where there was supposedly more intelectual discussions, content and the lack to rage comics and cat pictures was all fake? Now that Reddit has actual users it's just a shit as 4chan?
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Yeah. These days the site is basically run by users who managed to get in early enough and become well-know enough that they got moderator positions on the default subreddits - and they run a horde of fake accounts so the users don't have to. Seriously, one of the most prolific moderators (Karmanaut) was actually caught posting replies to his own comments with a sockpuppet to make it look like people agreed with him because he later accidentally sent someone a message from the wrong account.
I'd say it's more the case of explaining why redditors remember the earliest years containing coherent and knowledgable discussion. You had a focussed audience with a vested interest in getting quality discussion going. When the great unwashed outnumber these quality submissions you get a link aggregator that thinks it's a forum, where every second post is in the form of a badly phrased meme.
I never get used to these constant resurrections