Tag: Cheating

Yesterday it was reported that some publications began criticizing Reddit, the democratized social sharing forum, for banning certain domains from being posted to its website. The banned domains included respected publications such as The Atlantic and Phys.org. The reason for the domain bans was not made explicit, but it was stated that the banned domains were caught by Reddit moderators involving themselves with cheating or spam on its website. A Forbes article provided some of the most outspoken criticism of the new policy, and now Reddit has responded to Forbes.

Erik Martin, general manager of Reddit, spoke with Forbes contributor Dave Thier and shed a little more light onto the issue. Martin admits that one of the most difficult issues Reddit faces is dealing with the manipulation of content on the site that is of obvious quality and may have become popular on the site anyway. Reddit allows members to “upvote” or “downvote” posts, in theory surfacing the best content. Martin dismisses speculation that employees of banned domains were over-submitting their own content, and instead said, “We’re talking about relitively sophisticated, coordinated manipulation of votes.”

Martin stated that it could be the case that the management of the banned domains was not aware that their site was involved with the sketchy practices, but that Reddit would not make an exception. This all but confirms what was insinuated earlier this week – that the domains had hired marketing professionals who, unbeknownst to them, were cheating Reddit. From the Forbes article:

“There is a long history of high-quality publications doing this on Reddit and sites like Reddit — People in the industry know exactly what I’m talking about, even people who are pretending like they don’t,” says Martin. “I hope that this very clear message to this whole industry, that is a subset of another industry, that tries to manipulate social message on behalf of publishers.”

Martin also addressed the secrecy of the banned domain list, saying that a public list would give spammers a “roadmap to avoid detection.” He reiterated that the bans were temporary, meant as warnings to the domains. This might serve as a lesson for domains to keep a tighter rein on their social network marketing strategies, but there will still be marketing professionals who promise to increase Reddit traffic.

(via Forbes)

Reddit is one of the most popular content, link, and news sharing sites on the internet. Members of the site “upvote” or “downvote” posts, allowing the best content to rise to the top and be seen prominently. That’s the way it is supposed to work, anyway.

Sometimes, though, other websites cheat to make sure their content is featured highly on Reddit. Social media marketing professionals sometimes build up accounts on the site, and then take money from websites to subtly use the accounts to promote content. Others use massive voting rings to unnaturally upvote certain submissions. These cheaters, along with less-subtle spammers, are not welcome within the Reddit community, but they are sometimes hard to catch.

Just over one week ago, the moderators of the Reddit website implemented a rather sweeping change to its policies. Instead of individual accounts associated with spam or cheating being banned, entire domains that are involved with such marketing practices are now being banned. When it was revealed that this had resulted in Business Week, The Atlantic, Phys.org, and other “high-quality” domain links being banned from Reddit, protest editorials popped up on sites such as Forbes and The Daily Dot. Also, Redditors (as Reddit members are called) began to question the policy. Some suggested other websites that they think are worse than those that have been banned, and others questioned whether they could spam links to a website they hate to get it banned.

The response to the uproar has been rather thin from the Reddit moderators, and the details of why the sites were banned has not been revealed. The implication is, though, that most of the sites simply hired social media marketers, and didn’t know or care how the marketers practiced their trade. Reddit moderator hueypriest (who is, in real life, Erik Martin, Reddit’s general manager and an influential person) has stated that the bans are temporary. Feel free to follow all of the drama firsthand over at Reddit.

Keeping Reddit “clean” is a bit of a conundrum. On one hand, websites and authors that wish to promote their own content on the site might actually have something worthy of Reddit’s vaunted front page. Though self-promotion is not forbidden, it does put members on “thin ice.” On the other hand, similar democratized news sharing websites have been destroyed by spam and “power-users” who inevitably sell their services as marketers. Reddit wants to maintain the feel of a small internet forum community while seeing billions of pageviews per month. To do this, some undemocratic decrees will have to handed down from the people who own and operate the website. Warning bans for domains who are involved in sketchy marketing practices on the site are the first of many actions that will be taken to stem the tide of unwanted attention that is now being directed at Reddit.