jeroboam
1d ago
It's All Astroturf
I came across this post today comparing two Reddit threads on LateStageCapitalism, posted 10 months apart, with essentially the exact same content, including top level comments and replies but with different user names.
Discussion on HackerNews.
The posters on HackerNews, ever blinkered, theorize that this is some sort of effort to farm karma in order to promote products. That theory is almost certainly not true. There is minimal commercial value to Reddit accounts.
The alternate explanation seems obvious. Hacktivists are manipulating Reddit to promote far-left ideas, creating fake accounts to post and vote. This does not take much imagination. In fact, Trump supporters were doing the very same thing in 2016 prior to being stomped by the site admins.
You'd have to be pretty simple to think that most of the political stuff you read on Reddit or Hacker News isn't deeply manipulated. It doesn't take many votes to sway things in one direction or another. All it takes is a few downvotes to keep dissenting voices from even appearing in front of real users. On the other hand, with a few upvotes, your own content will be featured front and center. It's comically easy to achieve.
It's been said that most of what you read on line is written by crazy people. I think it's worse. I think it's written by people who are trying to manipulate you.
jeroboam
1d ago
because manipulation implies an outcome the target isn't desiring to happen.
This is a good point. In the past, both left-wing groups and right-wing groups sought to manipulate Reddit. Both were successful. Back in 2016, many posts from /r/thedonald reached the front page. Then their subreddit was banned.
Now only left wing groups are allowed to manipulate Reddit. It's anarchotyranny.
jeroboam
1d ago
I just bought an account with 1 million karma. Now I want to reach all the people who like me so I can spam my product.
Oh wait... I can't.
Karma is absolutely useless beyond a minimal amount needed to get around spam filters on some subs.
The open internet is clearly dying. Most discussion now happens now on walled gardens such as Discord and Facebook.
LLMs will make this much worse. For example, ChatGPT-5 has been presumably been trained on internet data such as as StackOverflow. But no one will post any more questions to StackOverflow since GPT-5 will just give them the answer directly. StackOverflow will die. Rinse and repeat for any site where people once posted questions.
In some ways, the tweet is not wrong. Protesters at elite universities will be tomorrow's leaders. They will be on the "right" side of the history not because they are morally right, but because they will be able to shape history to their whims.
The Ivy League protests are not a street movement, they are an elite rebellion.
And in that way, it's really no different than the Vietnam protesters who shared the same elite characteristics. As early as 1966 Normal Mailer noted how the protestors were upper class while the policemen they fought were working class.
Sadly, these benighted and often mentally ill children are our future leaders. They will no doubt treasure the memories of their "rebellion" in 30 years as they sit comfortably inside the halls of power.
jeroboam
1d ago
What I saw was that a lot of them get banned pretty quickly, but some of them turned around and sold their account to a third party.
But... why? Reddit users don't have followers like Instagram or Tiktok.
There's almost no value to a Reddit account, even if they have 1 million karma.
No. SGOV dividends (as well as treasuries) are taxed as ordinary income at a rate of up to 40.8%. Add in state taxes, and you're paying nearly half of your already paltry income. It's a very bad deal.
BOXX is taxed as capital gains and only when you sell. If you hold for a year, the maximum rate is 23.8%. Note that this is a somewhat novel product so there might be ruling against it in the future, but in theory it works.
Perhaps you are confusing SGOV for a muni, which is generally not taxed at the federal level. These have other downsides, such as higher risk and lower yields.
In any case, lending money to the government is a pretty awful deal. They dilute you constantly and charge you extortive taxes for the privilege. In the end you're much better off owning a shiny rock (might write a post about this later).
In case anyone is reading this far down. You said: "SGOV dividends are largely federal tax exempt since it's 90%+ treasuries."
Now you posted a link that said the opposite.
I'll concede that states might not tax the dividends of SGOV. CA appears not to. https://old.reddit.com/r/tax/comments/1194lbk/treatment_of_treasury_income_in_etf_for_state/
Other states might. ChatGPT-4 thinks they do, but could be hallucinating.
In any case, in order of tax advantage, for high earnings, it's pretty clearly:
BOXX > SGOV > Bank interest
jeroboam
1d ago
These are the type of posts which reach the front page of Reddit. The first one had 15.8k upvotes which means it reached hundreds of thousands of people.
The value of spreading a political message at that scale is far in excess of the value of a porn bot.
Did you read the threads? The comments were all political, not selling products.
Also, as a Reddit user, I can tell you that I almost never encounter any "bots" shilling products. It simply doesn't work. You can go into a user's history quite easily. And if someone posts 10 comments for "Product X rules!", someone else will notice, post that, and they'll be downvoted to oblivion.
jeroboam
1d ago
I am also curious and PM'd the user. I am 90% sure he's talking about Bogleheads because we live in a boring world, but hopeful for something better.
"Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a black bear or a black man"?
I bet this would invert the response percentages.
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