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Notes -
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.
You ever notice how political arguments usually have the same arguments, even the same sources? Plenty spreads through the networks of social media, I'm sure, but the idea that they're working from the same songbook because it's been provided to them by an organization is pretty credible. There's a LOT of money floating around, ready to chase after social influence.
Some of that is organic follow-the-leader, though. Important and influential activist posts thing, everyone else does too.
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