site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5326 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In the last week I saw two instances of reddit comments that were unique in phrasing and almost identical. The first was in the same thread shilling some video game streamer, so that's not surprising, but the second was copying a comment from a three year old thread found via other discussions tab in /r/documentaries. Someone brought up a similar situation in a CW thread a few months ago but I don't remember it well. Anyways both comments were later deleted, and I only saved the second account name, a one year old account with only comments in the last week that just did the same^1 thing^2 today and most of its comments are copied from crossposts. Any guesses on the purpose of this?

Garden variety karma farming? Generating pre-good standing and aged accounts for later sale?

It's so inefficient at increasing karma I had ruled out that possibility.

I suspect the goal isn't to maximise karma, but generate a reasonable amount to make the account look as if it's owned by a real person.

Copying top comments is obvious and easy to see. Copying mid comments attracts less attention.

Posting only a handful of comments in the last week and taking so long to get to double digit karma is unbelievable too. Unless its behavior changes drastically I don't see how it can be worth selling or scalable as that would definitely attract notice.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are farming bots designed to look as human as possible, including posting at the average rate of a reasonable human. It may not be quite as fast, but it's easy enough to automate, and no reason you couldn't have a single bot run tens of thousands of accounts like this, so you might still get a reasonable number of decent karma accounts after a month or so.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats