Researchers Show How Easy It Is To Manipulate Online Opinions

jcatcw writes "A recent study shows that a single random up-vote, randomly chosen, created a herding behavior in ratings that resulted in a 25% increase in the ratings but the negative manipulation had no effect. An intuitive explanation for this asymmetry is that we tend to go along with the positive opinions of others, but we tend to be skeptical of the negative opinions of others, and so we go in and correct what we think is an injustice. The third major result was that these effects varied by topic. So in business and society, culture, politics, we found substantial susceptibility to positive herding, whereas in general news, economics, IT, we found no such herding effects in the positive or negative direction."

Comments

OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with that.

Re:OK

[alphatel]

+1

Re:OK

[QRDeNameland]

+1, begin Stampede.

Listening PS?

[Austrian Anarchy]

There you go Popular Science, a cure for what ails you.

Slashdot members knows this

[themushroom]

Because it's easier to see a +2 comment go to +5 due to people seeing the comment than a 0 comment from an anonymous coward get any altitude at all.

Re:Slashdot members knows this

[girlintraining]

Because it's easier to see a +2 comment go to +5 due to people seeing the comment than a 0 comment from an anonymous coward get any altitude at all.

That's only part of the equation. If you want to karma whore, you do three things; First, post early. Second, attach comments to highly rated ones (or ones you think will be). Third, don't be like me; Always go with the party line. Especially once your karma is 'excellent' because no matter how many upmods you get, it only takes one or two angry moderators to click your page, go into your history, and blow all their points on you to burn your karma out... and several people have multiple accounts here. I've run across them and had my karma croppy-flop from excellent to neutral in just a few minutes because I told an Apple fanboy their god was dead.

Re:Slashdot members knows this

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry girlintraining,

I have read many of your comments. Sometimes they are great and insightful constructed logically such that even if you disagree you can understand it is genuinely constructive, earning you heaps of karma,

Sometimes you say some pretty heavily debated shit. No doubt burning your karma to the ground.

Basically, the reason you flip-flop on karma, is because you flip-flop in the quality of your comments. Not because you told an apple fanboy that apple didn't invent the tablet.

Re:Slashdot members knows this

[mcgrew]

Funny, I was modbombed just last week and my karma's still excellent. Oh, and we're offtopic here... oh, wait, the subjct is manipulating online opinions. I guess we're not offtopic after all.

But that's how we'll be modded just because I used the word "offtopic." Slashdot may be "news for nerds" but a few with limited reasoning abilities still get mod points. Put the word "insightful" somewhere in your post and expect a +5.

Don't people suck?

Re:Slashdot members knows this

[TheRaven64]

Ah, and here we see the most effective way of getting karma. Post, including the phrase 'I'll probably be modded down for this' or some variant...

Re:Slashdot members knows this

[girlintraining]

Sometimes you say some pretty heavily debated shit. No doubt burning your karma to the ground.

You don't learn how to make comments that are "great and insightful constructed logically" by avoiding heavily debated positions. I reply to anyone, even anonymous cowards, if I think they have a point. Many a time I have played devil's advocate, arguing with someone whose position I agree with, because I felt their argument was sub-par. Arriving at the right conclusion for the wrong reasons to me is no different than reaching the wrong conclusion -- you should have a solid argument regardless of what side you're on.

I count amongst my friends conservatives and liberals alike, and frequently debate both of them to the point both think I'm on the other team. But it's more important to me that people think critically about their own values and positions and have good reasons for holding to them, than that they agree with me. For example, there's a lot of things Apple does right -- they have spent a LOT of time, money, and effort, on making a simple and intuitive UI for many of their products. This is a solid point in Apple's favor. But they also have used slave labor to produce those products, the work atmosphere even here in the United States has been described as toxic, and they have a very aggressive legal department to protect their overpriced products. Those are all things in the negative. Does that mean that the product might be so good that we can ignore all these things? Quite possibly, if you value that enough. In which case, that's fine -- if that is what you place a premium on, that's a totally valid position. But if you think that all comes at too high of a cost, that's a valid position too. I can see it going both ways -- but saying that Apple has none of those negative qualities, while embracing the good qualities, is a cognitive error, and I will come down on you like a bag of bricks for it.

I find it more important for people to be able to critically reason out why they hold the positions they do, than which position they hold. This means that yeah, I get into heavily debated areas and get modbombed for it... but I'm okay with that too. They may be punitively -1'ing me, but I hope that, despite their anger, I at least made them think about something they hadn't considered... even if they won't admit it.

Why I moderate the way I do

[techno-vampire]

When I have mod points, I look for posts that haven't been moderated at all. I figure that once a post's been modded up, there are lots of people who will mod it up further, if appropriate (or just from the herd instinct) so I save my points for posts that haven't been noticed before.

Re:Why I moderate the way I do

[liquidsin]

that's how the metamod works.

obvious

[MondoGordo]

People are more easily swayed by opinions in subjective areas, culture, politics, business than in objective ones, news, IT, science. How obvious can a study be?

Re:obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the dawn of time. If it isn't objective, it isn't science.

Re:obvious

[pla]

Since when is science objective? Fat cat climate scientists riding high on the tax payer grants don't do a damn thing objective!

You have confused "idiots who can't grasp the math and instead accept Limbaugh's drivel as gospel" with "scientists". Easy mistake, apparently, since the majority of Americans make the same one.

Brain dump summary

[steelfood]

Is it just me, or has there recently been a rash of poorly-edited summaries that have been nothing more than a brain dump of the submitter? Like dupes, it used to happen occasionally, but now it's at least once or twice a day.

That aside, a story about the psychology of online feedback on Slashdot. What could possibly go wrong...

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[CryptDemon]

Well you've commented, so now you're worthless to us all.

Microsoft and SCO are Good!

[Tablizer]

just testing the theory...

Re:I'll disprove this theory

[mcgrew]

I predict this post will be forgotten quickly and accomplish nothing

This guy has balls of crystal, I tell you!

Re:-1

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Witty retort with a thinly veiled strawman.