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Reddit Cofounder Says Site Was Built By a Horde of Fake Accounts

Posted by samzenpus on from the setting-the-tone dept.

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."

10 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Simulation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Considering they're owned by Conde Nast, a company that benefits almost solely from market research in the form of magazine advertisements you are correct sir.

    The funniest part is all the Redditors giving away all that market research for free like a bunch of tools.

  2. Re:Who says they stopped? by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ever see a single dollar bill in a tip jar? Priming isn't new.

    Yep. At least according to local legend, when the built the first Costco they had the employees park close in and move their cars several times a day - to create the illusion of a busy parking lot.

  3. Matchmaking sites do the same thing by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can buy a turnkey matchmaking site, complete with a few thousand profiles to get things going. These profiles will even send messages to your "real" users. You can toggle a switch to choose if your users have to pay to see the message, pay to reply, or whatever. There's nothing wrong with what reddit did, even if it went against their own terms of service. What's the phrase..."by any means necessary".

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. Same with their up/down voting by LulzAndOrder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Still today, if you pay attention, you can tell that the tone of the site is maintained by editorial up/down voting. I know, because my tone they hate and it consistently gets one downvote. Not a lot, just the two needed to make it negative. Then if people reply to me, that discussion is not manipulated, but that comment that started my thread sticks with the negative one. It happens over and over. Regular folks can swoop in and pour more ups or downs, but more often than not, there is a "first psas" (ha ha First!) that zooms through right away and keeps the 'jerk tone pristine. Used to be that way on Slashdot too, you can tell by how quickly the needle moves to where it "wants" to be. I don't know any more, I don't pay attention or post.

    1. Re:Same with their up/down voting by ffflala · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know, because my tone they hate and it consistently gets one downvote. Not a lot, just the two needed to make it negative . . . . more often than not, there is a "first psas" (ha ha First!) that zooms through right away and keeps the 'jerk tone pristine.

      I'm curious: how would you characterize your "tone"? Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it sounds like you're describing your own tone as that of a jerk.

      If that's the case, it just sounds like effective & efficient modding.

    2. Re:Same with their up/down voting by LulzAndOrder · · Score: 1, Interesting
      you did read it wrong :) but plenty of people do think i'm a jerk, and plenty of people don't.

      I wrote 'jerk with an apostrophe as a shortening of circlejerk, meaning the site likes its own circlejerk tone, and tries to maintain it.

      They downvote me because of the following: I read sites like these for learning and for humor. Most of the time, i just lurk, or really, just read along enjoying the jokes, learning here or there, and ignoring the noise. If I agree with what's being said, why comment, right? However, when somebody says something that is both wrong/uneducated, and I can tell it's emotional, bigoted, and antithetical and intolerant of things I believe in, then I get motivated to set the record straight in a way that "does not suffer fools" (yeah i realize that's not very grammatical, im lzy). As an example, I think the various Occupy movements are retarded, which is ok, it's ok to be retarded, but coupled with their venom or selfrighteousness...

      I get plenty of positive karma for many things I write (i'm pretty smart and pretty well educated); karmawise I'm way net positive; and I participate in friendly back and forths with people I disagree with. However, if I "put an uneducated slob in his place", that collects a -1, and very quickly. If it were reader passion that was driving it, you'd expect more downvotes over time as more people see it, and you'd expect more downvotes on the rest of the thread. But for a certain kind of post that I make to repeatedly and quickly zoom to it's final number, and for a it to consistently be the "hinge" of a subthread means it's not governed by Poisson arrival times, and it's not passion. (clever eh, neither passion nor Poisson) My humor often gets upvoted, my informative posts often get upvoted (still talking about reddit here) but my tart rejoinders get a very precise treatment.

      And btw, I rarely write stuff like this, because when i figure out a good indicator that something "is a lie", why teach the liar how to improve? Some of you are thinking "oh, like reddit cares what it says in this thread"... believe me, they are poring over it.

    3. Re:Same with their up/down voting by ffflala · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Well I can think of a few simpler explanations for your experience than your claim, but I believe that you'd just find them insulting and it would shut down this exchange. So in the hope of being constructive, I will suggest an slight tweak to your approach. Try this for a week or so, and if you still run into the immediate -1 mods. If you do? Well there goes my theory, maybe you're onto something. But if you find that the downvotes disappear (as I suspect they will), well I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

      (W)hen somebody says something that is both wrong/uneducated, and I can tell it's emotional, bigoted, and antithetical and intolerant of things I believe in, then I get motivated to set the record straight in a way that "does not suffer fools"

      It's this shit right here that sounds to me like prime downvote bait. Here's the suggestion: next time you see something both wrong/uneducated, something that is emotional, bigoted, antithetical, and intolerant of the things you believe in, try a minor variation on your approach to setting the record straight. No need to "suffer fools" as you put it, but just stick to disputing the something they posted. Do not --no matter how strongly a negative reaction it provokes in you-- belittle, embarrass, or try insult the *person*, even by implication (such as "only idiots would think that.") Whatever you own conclusions about the person might be, don't post them. Just disagree --as vehemently as you prefer-- and explain why you disagree.

      Attack the argument, not the person -- even if they're attacking others and/or you. It can be a subtle distinction, but this is the difference between civilized-but-lively debate and ego-wanking.

  5. Fake it 'til you make it by c0lo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hear that sex life is like this as well. Can anyone confirm please?

    --
    Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  6. Much like starting anything else by mea_culpa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A computer operating system requires a bootstrapper to load it into memory before it can run.
    An engine on an automobile or aircraft requires rotation by an external source before it can power itself.
    A business requires capital before it can generate its own.
    A social media site requires 'social media' before it can launch.

  7. Re:Who says they stopped? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    r/depression was really helpful to me. At least, I'm still alive because of them.