I knew something was up. I've seen quality submissions with over 10,000 downvotes like this one. Simply impossible to accept that that many people would find stephen colbert worthy of a downvote.
When the story is fresh it is like zan apple, the more active it becomes it begins to get fuzzy like a peach. An especially popular pzzost might turn into a kizzwi or perhazps a very fuzzzy huzk oz cornzz. Nowz yozz mizz zbzez wzzondezzin zy rezziz zzz zzz, zzzz. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
this old and i know it is prolly been said 100 times, but this is a really silly procedure for anti spam reasons, i call complete BS on that, and i believe that the #'s are manipulated for other reasons. It is another reason why the entire karma/downvote/upvote system is completely flawed, and should not be used.
Although you have stated you won't say anything more about this in response to dafones, I wish you would.
Quite a few people use some kind of device to allow them to see total upvotes/downvotes, including myself. Occasionally, one sees a question like, "why the 12 downvotes??" when something shows 100 upvotes and 88 downvotes. If the numbers are being fuzzed like this, these kinds of questions are not remotely accurate and people could be getting seriously irked for no reason.
What is the spam-defense that results from fuzzing these numbers!?
spambots that upvote the spammer's submission get disabled without notice when they are discovered, not deleted. Fuzzing up/down-vote count makes it impossible for a spammer to tell whether his bots have been disabled or not, because you don't know if your votes came through.
Not being able to tell if your bots are evading detection or not means it's difficult to make your bot harder to detect.
Thank you. Can't believe the answer to what is really going on and why is buried this far down the page.
Anyway, would you say that this 7500+/5000- numbers likely represents all votes, and jedberg's numbers represent votes with suspected bots excluded? If so, that would imply a huge amount of bots or fake/spam accounts.
No. 7500/5000 numbers are fake - the only part of it that's grounded in reality is the 7500-5000 = 2500 net upvotes part. The total up/downvotes will almost always differ from the actual number of votes, but not by any measurable metric. It's randomized.
Whoa this is actually a good idea. Although I have a feeling that a spammer could now group their spambots by their algorithms, and take average to see which group of spambots work.
Someone actually logged in and browsing can be pretty sure that their vote is counting, they're doing it manually. A spammer using some sort of automated script to mass-vote doesn't really want to go through the time-intensive process of checking which accounts are still valid and which votes were counted manually. Or at least that's what I would guess.
but why bother showing the up/down votes at all if it's an untrue measure?
We don't show them at all for comments (that comes from 3rd party extensions). For links we only show it because people kept asking and it gives you the ratio.
Fair. What I meant was why show the vote totals if they are not accurate? Especially since it doesn't appear that the admins are trying to fool us into thinking they are?
That's generally how Reddit admins treat the community. They revel in behind-the-scenes tricks. It's kind of the opposite ethic from the one that Wikipedia has. It's security through trickery and obfuscation rather than security through transparency.
It's kind of the opposite ethic from the one that Wikipedia has. It's security through trickery and obfuscation rather than security through transparency.
Holding up Wikipedia as an example of a healthy community makes me lol.
It's anti-spam and anti-gaming through obfuscation. If you are transparent in the way you fight spam, then the spammers will know how to game the system. Reddit admins are the most open and transparent I've ever seen on the internet when dealing with the community, except in this one, very necessary regard.
Bullshit. We would love to open source our spam controls, but we can't because of all the asshat spammers. If there were any way we could not have spam controls, we would avoid them.
They are more or less proportional, popularity rankings are preserved.
Initially the numbers were accurate and unfuzzed, as scripted vote bots became more of an issue the numbers were messed with more (and other measures taken) to mess with the feedback to said scripts.
This might really negatively impact the Elan School awareness attempt. How many others are reading through this for that reason?
Edit: Wait, I think I missed the point. You guys preserve the ratio so it stays front page... as best you can estimate the needs of the users...right? Sorry if I'm behind. I'm trying to catch up.
It's interesting to me that so many people seem surprised by this. I always thought it was pretty obvious, the ~65-75% "like it ratio" is way too consistent to be realistic. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago when someone else posted a similar question.
So... I think a better way of determining what is popular or not is by a combination of how many comments, views and votes it gets, then you could probably just hide the numbers anyway and mark them in numerical order of popularity. I am not sure this system is really doing anyone justice and especially for comments, a lot of comments are being downvoted simply because people don't like or agree with the comment and not if it follows the reddiquette. I wish the comment voting was fixed for something better.
That throws a lot of things out of whack! What about the "like it" percentage? What about the fact that when you subtract the downvotes from the upvotes, you get the post karma? Is that rigged too?
How will fuzzing these numbers actually stop spam? I think it's actually pretty dishonest. When I think 8000 people upvoted my story, I wouldn't be too happy if it was actually 2000.
It also makes it easier to sell an advert to a non-user who glances at that and sees 12K active users on a single story instead of 2K. Just admit that is part of the reason that the fuzzing doesn't go the other direction, or just admit that's why you publish fake numbers instead of none at all.
Just admit that is part of the reason that the fuzzing doesn't go the other direction, or just admit that's why you publish fake numbers instead of none at all.
That has absolutely nothing at all to do with it. In fact, we hadn't even though about that side effect until just now. Why? Because advertisers don't care. They don't even look at the points. They only look at traffic numbers. They don't care if a story has 10 million voters or 3, as long as those people are viewing the page.
If I was spamming, I wouldn't bother checking if individual votes were counted, I'd just throw brute force at the problem until it works.
Clearly you are not a spammer. :) They reload the page every time they vote to try and figure out if their vote counted. That's how this whole thing started.
Spambots upvote and downvote submissions. You know which these are, so you add upvotes when they downvote and vice-versa, for a net effect of 0 by the bots.
You can't just remove that upvote if the bot removes its downvote and vice-versa, because then they'd know the bot had been detected.
Thus, the easiest way for a bot to get its owner's submission upvoted would be to downvote it, let reddit upvote it, then remove the downvote.
To counteract this effect, reddit likely adds a downvote when a bot removes its own.
So if a bot goes nuts adding and removing votes, the total vote tally skyrockets, perhaps as in this case.
By my likely flawed logic, there may have been an exploding bot voting this story every which way. Any comment?
You can fudge the data on your own submissions just by using 3 or more accounts. Try this:
Register three accounts
Register a throwaway subreddit and make it private, with access only to your accounts
Use account number 1 to post something in the private subreddit
Observe your submission now has +1/-0 votes, for a net of +1
Use account number 2 to upvote it
Observe your submission now has +2/-0 votes, for a net of +2
Use account number 3 to upvote it
Observe your submission now has +3/-1 votes, for a net of +2
In other words, 2 votes from the same IP count. Beyond that the anti-spam system just cancels out your vote by adding an opposite vote.
Edit: this means spammers can get away with two votes per proxy, and people who share internet with more than one other redditor (See: university dorms) probably aren't getting their votes counted, at least on the front page.
So what you're saying is, all the numbers we see are fictional and Reddit can fudge any post it wants to the front page in any order?
Of course we can. We have database access.
But we don't. Besides being a stupid idea and the fact that we don't have time for that, there is no reason. If we want something on the front page, we just blog about it.
Is the net effective count true? I mean you might change the number of upvotes and downvotes, but does the number on the side accurately represents it popularity?
In other words, does a article with 2000 points more popular than that with 700 points?
Don't answer whatever you cannot for spam protection reasons.
EDIT: I just saw you have answered it down in the thread. :)
Not quite all the numbers. They fudge the number of upvotes and downvotes, but the total of the fudged numbers are equal to the total of the real numbers. e.g: Actual = 10+, 2- and displayed = 16+, 8-. So both sets give the same total (8+).
(This is a guess based on what iI've gleaned, so I might be horribly wrong.)
Think of it this way, Reddit figures out user 'Bot23' is a spambot.
Bot23 proceeds to upvote a post about the TSA.
The superhero RedditMan then downvotes that same post, canceling out the bot's upvote, but leaving no way for the spammer to tell if it was RedditMan downvoting him, or some other user.
Thus, the vote's net sum turn out accurate, minus the spambot votes.
The side effect is that there are lots of extra canceled votes floating around.
(Insert joke about DiggMan only knowing how to upvote sponsor links)
That would make sense, but why do the upvote and downvote numbers change rapidly every time you refresh even on really old content, and often going down as much as up?
Clear feedback about which bots/votes get banned and which get through would make adapting the bot to new countermeasures a lot easier. This way reddit doesn't drown (even more) in spam.
I suggest that the numbers should accurately reflect a story after it stops being "active".
It makes sense for the numbers to be fuzzed while there's a lot of activity on it, but if no one's voting (if there's no potential for spammers to be looking closely at it at that time), there's much less of a need for the obfuscation.
That is, after 10 days, it should look relatively accurate.
But there's no problem with letting people post and reply in threads; the factor that spammers would like to pay attention to would be the true minute-by-minute changes in upvotes/downvotes. What I'm saying is that if there are none of those changes, there's little need to conceal the upvote/downvote counts. Of course, if 10 or 15 people or more start to vote on it again days afterward, then the displayed numbers would have to be skewed again.
why even fuzz it? If it's going to be that inaccurate, just hide it after a certain point. No sense in lying to everyone just to beat spambots. It's doing a disservice to the vast majority (honest redditors) to just show fucked up numbers like that.
So does the whole "66% like it" thing happen because you chose to make the fuzzing algorithm hover around 66%? Are the ratios far more random in reality?
So, Reddit is doing what everyone else does and inflating their public facing numbers to appear to be more active and therefore more attractive to advertisers? Because that's the case if a story is showing publicly that 12,315 people voted on it while only 2,806 did.
I've got no real problem with this, but facts are facts and that has to be part of the choice of the admins for this feature. I can understand if you want to trick bots that are made to "get the ball rolling" on spammed submissions.
So, Reddit is doing what everyone else does and inflating their public facing numbers to appear to be more active and therefore more attractive to advertisers?
That has absolutely nothing at all to do with it. In fact, we hadn't even though about that side effect until just now. Why? Because advertisers don't care. They don't even look at the points. They only look at traffic numbers. They don't care if a story has 10 million voters or 3, as long as those people are viewing the page.
While we are at anti-spam stuff, why are most of my text submissions blocked by the spam filter (they don't appear in r/news)? I'm not even putting links in them. I'm quite angry with this, because I don't understand that a 1 year account with 4000/20000 karma can be considered as a spammer account. So now it's quite rare I submit anything, because I don't want to write a wall of text for nothing.
You guys have some fucked in the head ideas on how to deal with spam.
How would you deal with spam? Keeping in mind that spam is basically an arms race. Keeping in mind that more than 1/2 the links submitted to reddit are spam. Keeping in mind that we used to put every link in the new queue, until it got so polluted that no one would vote in there anymore.
Keeping in mind that spam is basically an arms race. Keeping in mind that more than 1/2 the links submitted to reddit are spam. Keeping in mind that we used to put every link in the new queue, until it got so polluted that no one would vote in there anymore.
Your argument goes against the idea that 4-5 or even 7-10 random redditors can use spam as a rationale for allowing wholesale censorship on reddit.
You do not address the fact that you explicitly condone wholesale censorship of people's opinions, you just ask how to deal with spam
Let me answer you question on how to deal with spam in one word: Slashdot
Go and see what they do about spam.
No, wait, seriously, I am not joking. Go, and see, what Slashdot, do, about spam.
Back so soon? I hope that was informative. You already killfile new users from commenting (create new account, post one comment, try and post another, leave reddit forever) and from creating subreddits.
Keeping in mind that spam is basically an arms race
Then let more people use their arms. Heh, see what I did there? Stop selling free god-complex medication to morons who will vaguely deal with spam on parts of the website in return for being able to quash opposing opinion. Democratize spam flagging, add a weighting, and do what craigslist, wikipedia, and slashdot do. YOU ALREADY HAVE THE CODE THAT SHOWS IF SOMEONE IS GOOD AT VOTING UP GOOD SUBMISSIONS, ADD A ! TO INVERT THE BEHAVIOR AND MAKE IT WORK FOR TAGGING SPAM!
Four years later, I am saying the same thing to you.
Keeping in mind that more than 1/2 the links submitted to reddit are spam.
If it was 60%, or 60%, or 80% or 90% or 99.999% my argument only gets stronger. Democratize, and add a fucking trophy for people who identify spam. Remove. Moderators. Or add transparency that is inline, AND collated. So I can see a comment that was reddit-condoned-censored, and I can click a username, and see what they've been censoring.
Mods seem to use multiple accounts to hide from the people they censor. You know that, what do you think about it?
Keeping in mind that we used to put every link in the new queue,
TL;DR: CAN I HAZ THE SOLUTIONZ CODES?
Why not make a Top, New, Questionable, and let people spam, unspam things that you happy-go-jolly spam assassin flags as spam? You can then make the questionable something that most people won't look at, or to put another way, you'll aid the people who are curious about earning the spam trophies.
SEE?
until it got so polluted that no one would vote in there anymore.
Wait until this place gets so polluted with the extremist ideas of the 20 people that moderate the top 80% of reddits, that you have no idea who they are, that were positioned there randomly, without qualification, that nobody will comment on here anymore.
Put a huge sign up saying you may be censored OR do what I say above.
It isn't rocket science, it is even simpler than packing explosively combustible materials into a nozzle.
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u/jedberg Nov 24 '10
As of this moment, that story has the following actual totals:
2666 up 140 down
The numbers you see are fuzzed for anti-spam reasons. The more active a post is, the more out of whack that fuzzing becomes.