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New Study Finds That Most Redditors Don't Actually Read the Articles They Vote On (vice.com)
Michael Byrne, writing for Motherboard: According to a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems by researchers at Notre Dame University, some 73 percent of posts on Reddit are voted on by users that haven't actually clicked through to view the content being rated. This is according to a newly released dataset consisting of all Reddit activity of 309 site users for a one year period. In the process, the researchers identified signs of "cognitive fatigue" in Reddit users most likely to vote on content. Online aggregation is then somewhat a function of mental exhaustion.
Did these reddit users consent to being back tracked?
If they didn't, then it's a pretty scummy thing to have done to them.
If they did know their activity was being monitored, how can we be sure that this didn't alter their behavior, thus altering the outcome and findings of the study?
99% of /.ers don't read the articles posted before commenting.
I mean, that's how it works here too, right?
read it a 1000 times.
top comment to confirm.
why not rely on hivemind to prefilter content?
I'm going to fully support the results of this study, although I have yet to actually click on it.
Now is the time to write your Redditor and let them know exactly what you think. When your letter is received, you can rest assured that it will be voted upon, regardless of whether it was read.
When I use a discussion site like Reddit, or Hacker News, or Slashdot, or Stack Overflow, I want to see all comments by default.
I don't care about what score they've been given by a bunch of arbitrary moderators or other users.
I want to make up my own mind by seeing the comments for myself. I'll judge them on my own.
Sites like those, and this one, would be a lot better without the pointless moderating/voting systems they have.
Those systems just encourage foolish people to babble the accepted group-think in order to collect pointless "karma" points. That's not real discussion. That's just a pathetic form of online communal brown-nosing.
What's worse is when those flawed moderation/voting systems hide the best content, which often features original thoughts and ideas that the mindless masses find too controversial or painful to think about.
To hell with the voting and moderation we see on online discussion sites. They just hurt the discussion more than they help it.
slashdot 3.0?
I upvoted this article.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Upvoted Not Because Girl, But Because It Is Very Cool; However, I Do Concede That I Initially Clicked Because Girl.
Summation 2
Not reading TFA?
Call me shocked.
The author must be a newbie.
Reddit upvotes are heavily botted, and I imagine the publishers of these articles are the prime suspects. Clicks mean cash.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I just vote up headlines that confirm my worldview and downvote the ones that don't.
..just saying.
To determine whether or not this is a problem, we have to determine what percentage of articles are actually worth reading over the headlines. If the articles are typically just fleshing out the headline, without anything meaningful added, this is efficient, rational behavior.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Most people on /. don't read the articles before commenting either. This is not a new phenomenon.
And marketing bots don't even care.
I don't even bother to read the comments from the Pedobear Trolls who follow me around Slashdot.
...that slashdot is not alone in that phenomena.
Most Slashdot users don't read the article before they comment...this AC included.
This episode of The Orville reminds me of this -- it seems that people just make split decisions because they can't be bothered with hearing and weighing the evidence presented to them. Probably because people aren't being asked to think into the areas of possible ambiguity, we just raise them to pick from a selection of choices. The millennial generation might as well be called the multiple choice generation. So glad I'm from the "Choose your own adventure" generation. ;)
Posters don't click on the article because they are *NOT* commenting on the article, but rather commenting on other poster's comments. So what.
It's only one step from slashdot, were people don't read the article but still post "expert" replies.
I did my third post on reddit sometimes the last month, warning about a bad scheme on Amazon Prime trials, and all I got was banter about not reading the fuking manual and whatnot... I think (most) redditors are septemberists of the internet who have absolutely no idea on argumentation and will instantly vote no on anything that even attempts to bash anything they appreciate (in this case, Amazon Prime). Bu oh well maybe I'm a septemberist myself on reddit so I digress.
One thing I'm sure off - not going to reddit whenever I feel like trying to get relevant info out on anything. I'll just make a facebook share and I'm sure none of my friends will unlike it #egorub
I have never voted on a post on reddit. I very rarely vote on comments. I always read the entire post before I comment.
There were many posts from "fringe thinkers" about the high percentages of down votes coming from China bot farms. Combine this with paid political posters. When governments cannot directly control free speech they use misinformation methods.
It's a widespread phenomenon, not just limited to one site. People don't have time to read articles (or even summaries), which is why headlines generally start and drive discussions. Our brains just can't handle that much information, but we have that silly emotional need to get our opinions out there regardless.
Many don't even read the title of the post, they just sort of get a feel for what the article is about and then kneejerk from there. I'm looking at a front page post on reddit right now where the top rated comment is just that, he even uses a quote from the article but he clearly didn't comprehend the article at all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You know you can post anonymously when you're signed in, right?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I frequently vote down topics I haven't read due to title gore. If the title of the post spans multiple lines then I can already tell I have no interest in it and never will. So down it goes. Same thing applies to off-topic posts.
I think the most interesting part of this study would be how their findings correlate to other attributes of the voters.
For example, I suspect that they'd discover that the people who upvote/downvote/moderate the most are probably middle-aged male virgins, likely working in some low-paid retail job, with low testosterone levels, likely a case of moderate-to-severe micropenis syndrome, and left wing political views. These are the kind of people who, due to their total failure in reality, feel the need to act "powerful" online by attacking other users through voting and moderating mechanisms. They try to make up for their lack of masculinity by being online tyrants who censor others.
Conversely, we'd likely find that the most successful people offline end up doing the least upvoting/downvoting/moderating online. Truly successful people don't feel the need to censor others. They don't feel the need to create accounts and collect pointless "karma" points in some irrelevant database. Because they're successful they don't need to seek out online ways of feeling a faux sense of authority. They try to share their success by building up a community where information is freely exchanged, without censorship and moderation and tyrannical thought control exerted by moderators.
TL;DR
Besides, I know EVERYTHING.
As someone observed after the "He will not divide us" episode where 4chaners found the flag in a rather clever cunning way - "4chan is smart people pretending to be dumb. Reddit is dumb people pretending to be smart".
https://www.inquisitr.com/4060...
So how did 4chan find and steal the He Will Not Divide Us flag?
It turns out, Shia made one mistake in setting up the camera on the soon-to-be-stolen flag. It was such a simple thing that normal people would never have noticed, but the 4chan trolls sprung into action when they realized the camera was aimed in part at the sky.
According to various users on 4chan, members of the board used jet contrails, flight paths, and astronomy to determine the general location of the He Will Not Divide Us flag installation. After narrowing down the location to somewhere in Tennesee, 4chan sleuths drove around the area honking their horns to see if the sound would show up on the live stream.
And as it turns out, they were successful almost immediately, as 4chan found the flag site less than a couple days after it went live. The trolls replaced the stolen flag with the hat and T-shirt mentioned earlier.
Besides the obvious issues with theft and harassment, 4chan's actions in this incident are merely a part of what has become known to many who study the impact of social media in society as the "Great Meme War."
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Plot twist: gonewild redditor are skewing the result.
Same with voting for president?
I would like to see a site where you have to pass a short test to see if you read the article before you are allowed to post on the article. I think the quality of the discussion would go up.
I just love how the righties try to spin away their own reflection
fyi, the current source for right-wing trolls, now that the russian connection has been exposed, are 4chan neckbeards who have all of the traits that you list, with the single exception to their political leanings
A lot of people use RES to view the OP rather than clicking all the way through and then back, losing their place on the current feed. This has to skew data incorrectly.
They could have "editors" who don't bother to read and correct submissions before publishing them.
/. was supposed to work was that readers vote on submissions (via the firehose), and the most highly voted submissions get promoted to the front page. I'm not sure what the editors are for if they're not reading and correcting submissions. At least Reddit voters have the excuse that they read TFA elsewhere so are voting on it despite not having clicked the link on Reddit.
I thought the way
This article now officially confirms that the only difference between /. and reddit is that reddit doesn't have moderators posting mostly useless articles.
I gave up on pointing out the article doesn't say what they think it does. They really don't care.
So much hate...
What requires a study to reveal that a normal adult with the normal amount of wisdom already knows...
Who shit in your cheerios and called them chocolate chunks?
...without having to do study for it
Click-bait headlines, obvious spam, incomprehensible headlines, headlines that violate sub formatting rules, headlines that are already on the front page, headlines with spoilers...
Those are the majority of my post downvotes on reddit.
And if shadowbans weren't enough now Reddit wants to implement shadow upvotes.
I often don't click through a link, but instead prefer to copy it, paste it, and if needed modify it. It seems anyone doing some basic "link hygiene" like this might not get counted?
You've misspelt "Can't".
Ahh, democracy; we ask so much and you turn it to shit. People assume they don't have a vested interest in the outcome. For instance, what's in a name?
The UK initially refused McBoatFace, then used the moniker on a remote submersible.
Sweden has McTrainFace.
Australia has McFerryFace, although that may be renamed.
That's hard to imagine. There are days where it seems like every second story summary is a ghastly abuse of synopsis and common sense.
News for Nerds shouldn't be lightly refried click-bait, but it often is (often larded with fresh wrigglers, free of charge).
Anyways, I have no opinions about the non-commenters. They might as well not exist, as viewed from this side of the fence. I mainly read the comments to see who can process context and who can't. If I have something to say on the subject, I often take that road. Otherwise, I tend to hack on the people who can't/won't process context, who just sit there and contribute the same old speedily-rehydrated boiler-plate dial tone.
Many times after I sing Wake Up Little Susie I add the exchange to my butterfly collection of discourse malfunction (similar to wardrobe malfunction, but 100 times more pervasive).
Nothing in the modern age is more universally on topic than discourse malfunction.
I always read the article before upvoting or (rarely) downvoting. I never comment or vote on comments if I haven't read the article. I will read just the comment section from time to time and then read the article. Just from doing that it's possible to tell the vast majority of comments are people stating their own opinion of the article based on the title or simply reacting to comments. It's really sad.
I Agree with Technicality!
I didn't read your comment or the article, but it's about cool tech as stuff anyway, right?
Especially not if the articles are from shill millennial uninformed garbage Motherboard / Vice they don't. Last time I read a motherboard article. I contracted cancer, and now I'm dying.