Desunt Cetera

I’ve been thinking about a post like this for a while, but what finally pushed me over the edge is this: There Is A Reddit Bot War Going On Right Now. Here’s Proof. The link goes to a reddit comment about a bot war over Ron Paul happening on reddit. Apparently, some people have set up bots to up-vote anything with Ron Paul in the title. Others have retaliated by setting up bots that down vote on the same criteria. I’m sorry, but what the fuck?!?

Over the last few weeks, a lot of articles have been submitted to reddit with titles like “Stop posting Ron Paul stories! We don’t care!” or “The top 10 articles are on Ron Paul! Lay off it!”. Aside from the obvious stupidity of posting something that says you-all (damn the English lack of a 2nd person plural!) don’t care about topic X when topic X is consistently at the top of the hot page, it seems to me that anyone who would post such an article has fundamentally misunderstood what the hell is going on with Reddit, Digg and all the other social news sites.

The sites are not there to provide you with all and only stories you will find interesting. By their very definitions, the “hot” page and the “top stories” page are going to be filled with the trash that appeals to greatest number of people using the site. In other words, it will be full of what ever appeals to the least common denominator. The more you dislike the contents of the front page, the farther from the “average” user you are. As an example, I’ve posted several of my posts to this blog on reddit. Here are some of the stats:

Up Down Title
1 0 The Game Of Go
3 1 The Turing Test and Philosophical Zombies
6 1 Micro/Macro Evolution and the Paradox of the Heap

Obviously, it would’ve been great for them to reach the hot page so I could bask in the glory. But these results are pretty much exactly what I expected. I understand that the subject matter of this blog, and by extension my interests, are not all that universally appealing. If one of these posts was an “I can has cheezburger” picture, I’m sure it would’ve done a whole hell of a lot better than any dry exposition of an obscure philosophical position. That’s just how this works. No one feels strongly about these subjects either way, so they went nowhere.

In the early prehistory of reddit, I loved it. It was populated by tech minded people and had many interesting articles on programming and science. But as it became more popular, the composition of the audience changed, and the content of the articles submitted and up-voted changed with it. Several months ago, the top stories page were clogged with links to stupid pictures and funny news stories. Now they are clogged with articles dueling about how great/horrid Ron Paul is. Frankly, I think this sucks. But I’m not in the least surprised and have no intention of posting a story to reddit to bemoan this fact, or turn this post into bitching about it.

Here’s a tip for you: If you want a list of only articles you will find amusing and interesting, go to reader.google.com and sign up for a bunch of RSS feeds from blogs you like. It’s that simple. The social news sites will never be anything other than collections of stupid crap that appeals to the most people, and expecting it to be otherwise is fundamentally naive. For them to be anything but that would require

1. A stipulation that this site is only for articles about X
2. A dedicated user base that will down vote into oblivion anything that ISN’T about X
3. Editors that deliberately delete articles not about X

But notice, now, that to do this we must abandon several of the features that make reddit and digg popular. By limiting yourself to a particular subject, your user base will be limited, and hence the number of sources for potential articles will be smaller. By depending on users to downvote out stories that don’t meet the criteria, you are expecting the users to AGREE on how to apply the criteria. By having editors sort through the submissions, you introduce a delay before articles are visible (unless you wish to do ex-post-facto deletions), and also depend on your editors to apply the criteria correctly. Looming in the background in this scenario, if you choose to fore-go editors, is the potential for a cadre of rogue users to start submitting and up-voting off-topic stories that essentially turn the site into reddit/digg.

Now, I can understand the up-vote brigade. If you feel passionately about something, you want to spread the word (this is the biggest problem I have with evangelical religions). But what the hell are the down-vote brigades doing? The only possible explanation that I can come up with is that they are essentially trying to exert tyrannical control over the hot page of reddit. I understand being sick of seeing things with X in the title, but when you start deliberately burying anything on the subject, you start skirting dangerously close to appointing yourself to the position of public censor.

Yes, I am arguing that the the up-vote brigade and the down-vote brigade are not symmetrical positions and that one is definitely more morally questionable than the other. In fact, this very position is embedded in the notion of free speech. You are free to NOT click on the links with Ron Paul in the title. But to deny those people who do want to see those stories the opportunity to do so… Well. Lets just say its a bad idea in real life, and I fail to see why it’s not a bad idea online.

So, to sum up:

1. On any social new site, the most popular stories will be the ones that appeal to the most people
2. It’s stupid to complain that there are too many popular stories about X
3. Arbitrarily down-voting anything with X in the title skirts close to a morally repugnant position
4. If you want custom-tailored content, roll your own with RSS

Musings