I tried and failed. I should try again though.

I tried making another reddit. My programmer fucked me over because he didn't know how to do it and made me wait months for nothing.

Yeh. I will try again. I lost motivation after waiting all that time but ok.. will need time though.

I will help you do it for free, provided it's using something open source like OP suggested. Not trying to write a system from scratch.

Now when you say you don't want to write a system from scratch, what else way is there to write the system? Open source sounds good.

As in I'd be happy to customize and add new features to Reddit or Steem's code, but starting from nothing is very time consuming. It took Voat's from scratch code like a year to get stable and they almost went broke.

What do you recommend on a server?

Either the Amazon cloud or a full dedicated server in a more liberty oriented country... like use whoever hosts thepiratebay.org.

Hmm, and how long would something like this take?

It all depends on what you're after. A copy of reddit could be up in 4 hours or so.

For sure. I have been talking to LightBringerFlex about and looked into the tech specs and Amazon hosting already. Reddit isn't the cheapest thing to host but it's doable.

Agreed. There's a chance the search functionity would take significant effort to get running not on Amazon (officially uses Amazon CloudSearch) but it's probably doable. I would have to do some testing. You need a server with at least 8gb ram and plenty of storage space, and more servers if it takes off. Would love to help anyone that's liberty minded with this stuff.

I will do a test install tonight and verify that search can work not on Amazon.

I will just do a local/offline/vm test and let you know. I don't want to pay to host this or be a mod or anything. I'm just offering voluntary tech services to someone so inclined. Tech is stupid and shouldn't hold anyone back.

I would love to help add RES features in provided the site is active and my time would be worthwhile. You are the man with the plan, I am at your service.

Sounds like a plan. I will do that search testing for Step 1 asap.

Update: search is finicky to get going but I'll have it dialed in soon. The rest went smoothly.

Hey. Your night was a lot like mine then, I think I spent 6 hours bashing my head against this, mostly on getting solr itself running, which I failed at. But reddit was up and running and I loaded it with sample data and was able to post and see what the admin interface is like.

I used the ubuntu install script on ubuntu 14.04. I ran into this issue at some point, can't remember if it held up the installer script from completing or if I encountered it after: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/issues/1815 I also messed around with reddit config files for too long before realizing I should just put everything in example.ini. (it triggered something to update that myreddit.update did not).

Were you on 14.04 and running the install as sudo? Were you on a VM? This stack runs so many services on so many ports that maybe something was conflicting for you.

Yes, I'd be happy to install the reddit stack wheverever you want. Everything seemed to run okay but slowly on my VM with 2.5gb of ram. Eventually I will get the process down pat and have good documentation for it, so setting it up multiple times shouldn't be as big of an issue. That seems reasonable to save money on hosting while it is in development. Ideally you would just pass the database dump around to different environments, like to put your changes on staging to show people.

Anyway, I will keep plugging away at solr because I feel like I'm close. I found the extra cron jobs somewhere that need to be configured for solr to work too, which are not in the official docs. Whenever you are ready for an environment, let me know. I can give you a public ssh key for access and you can remove it once I'm done.

Dang, it sounds like your install should have worked. That is a clean way to do it and as good as a VM. It sounds like a hardware problem, maybe there are linux drivers for that laptop. 7 times in 24 hours is nice, you are going to me the Rain Man of old ubuntu installs.

It might be worth the $10/mo to have something that's on 24/7 that multiple people can work on easily.

Agreed, especially if you have these people ready to go. I can pitch in on the server costs too if that is an issue.

Solr is the search service running on the Java Tomcat web server. It grabs posts from the postgres db and indexes them for fast keyword searching off in its own internal db. Reddit proper uses Amazon CloudSearch instead, but it does the same thing. So without Solr the search page says sorry under load or error or whatever.

Yes port 80 is already taken by whatever is serving the python reddit app. The missing piece is that the web server is already good to go with the install script. I don't know what the web server technically is, python has different stuff, but HAProxy is probably routing the requests. So just install the install script and nothing else.

Nice, I'm glad things are in the works. The timing feels right.

I got search working.. it almost killed me

https://ibb.co/kdxcpF https://ibb.co/j1uOUF

Thanks man! I've got good documentation going. I still have to figure out cron jobs and some other loose ends but not tonight!

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Oh wow. The commenters don't seem too pleased either.

I will do some digging but I'm not aware of any way to do it anonymously. Creating an LLC or non profit would do it if you knew anyone willing to register in their name. Speaking of, a non profit liberty oriented company/chsrity might just be the best kind of group to host the next reddit... Maybe this is the heroes quest and you name will be required. Man crazy shit.

Awesome. I'm ready whenever you are.

I think within 24 hours things will be ready to go and we can deploy the code on the server.

Yes! Nice work.

I love the RES focus... if we add new features then we are the next reddit/a competitor and not just a reddit clone. I think we can easily make RES work with our cloned site, I will have to look into the best approach for that.

But over the long term, we can gradually move features out of the RES browser plugin and into our cloned reddit code base so that they are native features. Some of them probably will take a long time, but we can do it one feature at a time. I would love to work on stuff like that and I'm amenable to working with other developers as well.

We should prioritize which RES features are the most important after we get launched. Eventually we should get a mission statement together, and maybe even a legal framework to protect you/the site's ownership. Ideally we will install infrastructure monitoring tools onto the server too, so select people can keep an eye on things like disk space and CPU load. We will also need to get daily offsite database backups in place, so that if someone is able to take us down, all is not lost. But baby steps, Rome/Khazaria/London was not built in a day. This is exciting.

Yeah, I can relate :)

Also, i woudnt give up on this sub. We can hold off the shills as they roll in and out.

Yeah I don't think so anymore. I think 80% of comments and votes on this sub are fake now

thats why your comments are important!. be a thorn in there flesh :)

It's really only 10-12 accounts that seem to be able to derail every thread and turn it into "anyone who doesn't agree with us is t_d hurr hurr.'

Most of them are <6 month old, hyper focused, and are here around the clock. I suspect that random 10-25 day old account that mimic their style and somehow end up as top comments are part of the same ... groupthink.

You've been a good contributor - try to remember that people read but don't necessarily respond; especially when it's a nonstop real life example of the gentleman's guide to forum spies. Who wants to put themselves out there just to get attached by people who are only here to control conversation?

The blanket effort they push works when everyone else gives up. Your comments have value, even if their coordinated efforts prevent it from showing via karma. Ignore point totals completely on this sub.

Just for your visibility because I also agree that your contributions have been a beacon of light, and you're not the only long time here that sees what's happening.

It's really only 10-12 accounts that seem to be able to derail every thread and turn it into "anyone who doesn't agree with us is t_d hurr hurr.'

Most of them are <6 month old, hyper focused, and are here around the clock. I suspect that random 10-25 day old account that mimic their style and somehow end up as top comments are part of the same ... groupthink.

There are also about 10 accounts with 2-5 years history that also push this exact same "stay silent and only speak what is (supposedly) important now" narrative. I've grown very hostile towards comments that offer nothing but to draw lines and derail discussion.

These people brigade every anti-Trump post with how stupid r/conspiracy is for having become TD2.0 allowing any actual discussion about a topic pertaining to him to be buried, a self-fulfilling prophecy they reference in support of their false narrative.

Furthermore, apparently every Hillary/Pizzagate/Seth Rich post is a deflection from Trump's actions despite 5+ top posts in the sub having discussed how horrible the pardon decision was, or whatever Trump may be up to.

I think it's obvious, but r/all eats that shit up.

It's really only 10-12 accounts that seem to be able to derail every thread and turn it into "anyone who doesn't agree with us is t_d hurr hurr.'

Most of them are <6 month old, hyper focused, and are here around the clock. I suspect that random 10-25 day old account that mimic their style and somehow end up as top comments are part of the same ... groupthink.

There are also about 10 accounts with 2-5 years history that also push this exact same "stay silent and only speak what is (supposedly) important now" narrative. I've grown very hostile towards comments that offer nothing but to draw lines and derail discussion.

These people brigade every anti-Trump post with how stupid r/conspiracy is for having become TD2.0 preventing any actual discussion about a topic pertaining to him to be buried, a self-fulfilling prophecy they reference in support of their false narrative.

What evidence do you have to support the claim that 80% of people on a relatively minor/unpopular sub are 'fake'?

Okay. It's obviously hard to point to votes and differentiate either way. But there's 27 comments right now in this thread, as of writing this. By your measure, around 21 of those are 'fake'. Can you point to a single one you suspect of being fake?

The 80% is an average over reddit.

But you said...

I think 80% of comments and votes on this sub are fake now.

So, which is it? Let's assume you meant this sub, because that's what you said originally. Find a thread from the past week on this sub that has a good amount of comments, and show me just a couple that you think are fake. This should be trivially easy to do; I'm letting you cherry pick.

80% of the sub, is not this thread.

I literally just said to find any thread you want. Please read what I'm writing before replying. It's pretty rich for you to complain about my reading comprehension when you aren't even attempting to read what I wrote. Allow me to quote it for you:

Find a thread from the past week on this sub that has a good amount of comments, and show me just a couple that you think are fake.

Okay, wait a second, step back. Are you going to admit that you are actually the one who failed at reading comprehension when I said pick any post from this sub?

Anyway, you made a very outrageous claim. I'm calling you out on it; the purpose is not to get you banned. I don't think you'd get banned anyway for pointing out a thread full of fake comments unless you personally responded to those people calling them shills.

To me, it looks like you're avoiding taking responsibility for your 80% claim the minute I ask you for some examples or evidence. Not cool.

Actually most people don't read this deep into a comment chain, so I doubt 'everyone' sees it. But all I'm doing is asking you for evidence of your claim. I don't think that's particular nefarious.

i have to agree with this guy. i am curious after being in reddit for 10 years how easily you can do it. not trying to be a dick, i want to know for my own how to spot fakes and shills. i agree they are here but what are some red flags? not everyone who disagrees is automatically a shill so how do you differenciate? its an anonymous chat with millions of users. how do you spot them?

Click on their profile and see if they post like a real person. That's pretty much all there is to it.

ill keep an eye out.

Just know that a lot of people that don't normally visit this sub are newly interested it in because of Trump-Russia issues. Whether you believe it's all fake news or not, it's a fact that it's pretty mainstream news, and it's unsurprising that this sub would see a fairly large influx of members due to it.

this is an awesome point as well! not only are the normal people here but now we have a bunch of newbs looking into this whole trump thing. great point!

Unless you're a mod it's against sub rules for magnora to point out a specific post to you. Though they seem fed up, they're a consistent and legitimate contributor to this sub and this is probably not how they're looking to go out.

Are you going to keep acting like you're not understanding their aversion to doing what you're asking and patronizing their broader point because of that alone?

And conversely, apart from your own are you willing to point to any posts with a 100% certainty that they're from "normal" users and not part of a larger campaign?

Are you going to keep acting like you're not understanding their aversion to doing what you're asking and patronizing their broader point because of that alone?

Is it really against the rules to point to a thread, rather than a specific comment, and say that 80% of the comments are fake? I honestly doubt you'd get banned for that, considering the rules are about accusations towards specific users.

I do understand his concern, but pointing to a thread isn't against the rules. He knows this, but also knows he's unable to back up his claim, hence his overly aggressive attitude.

And conversely, apart from your own are you willing to point to any posts with a 100% certainty that they're from "normal" users and not part of a larger campaign?

No, but I never claimed to do anything of the sort. What was the point in asking this?

Is it really against the rules to point to a thread, rather than a specific comment, and say that 80% of the comments are fake?

Yes, rules 2 and 10 are broad enough that if a user is concerned they're already on thin ice, their paranoia at doing what you're asking is not entirely unfounded.

No, but I never claimed to do anything of the sort. What was the point in asking this?

To illustrate how futile your insistence at the point is. If you can't be certain one way or the other already, how is what magnora says going to make any difference.

You two could go back and forth all day swapping examples but you're both too skeptical to make any headway and it would be a waste of everyone's time.

Because of this, what you're repeatedly trying to get them to do comes across as subversive and an attempt to diffuse legitimate concerns and frustration as nonsensical fluff, exactly the kind of tactics people are fed up with seeing around here.

I get the need for supported claims, and this post is veering close to violating rule 12 anyways, but at least in this context it isn't as clear cut as "Well if you're so certain than prove it."

A conspiracy theorist might even say that's by design.

To illustrate how futile your insistence at the point is. If you can't be certain one way or the other already, how is what magnora says going to make any difference.

Now you're saying that 'calling out bullshit', which is exactly what I was doing, is pointless because there's no way I'd believe his bullshit? Uh, okay.

Now you're saying that 'calling out bullshit', which is exactly what I was doing, is pointless because there's no way I'd believe his bullshit? Uh, okay.

Yes, DukeNukemsDick, that's totally a reasonable takeaway from what I just said.

I get the need for supported claims, and this post is veering close to violating rule 12 anyways, but at least in this context it isn't as clear cut as "Well if you're so certain than prove it."

You've admitted you couldn't even prove the alternative POV on this issue if you were pressed. Yet you're so certain theirs is "bullshit" because they can't do the same? Because they can't do what you've admitted can't be done...?

You're saying the guy claiming a teapot is orbiting the earth is crazy until he can prove otherwise.

Fine, that sounds rational.

Until the point where you acknowledged we have evidence of teapots orbiting other planets (ie. shills do exist to some extent on the internet and you can't be sure who's who).

Now the guy sounds a little less crazy. Still, you probably have the rational upper hand.

But wait, there's laws against talking about how a teapot finds itself in orbit? And you're asking someone to prove that a teapot is in orbit?

Well, now a confrontational response from the guy that's been trying to talk to people about teapots in orbit without breaking the law about talking about teapots in orbit seems a bit more understandable.

Let's grant that an obsession with teapots in orbit is a questionable obsession. It doesn't change the fact that the plausibility for this teapot it isn't as nutty as it is sometimes portrayed.

r/shitconspiracysays

This sounds a bit like someone who is mentally ill struggling to cope with reality. And when challenged to provide proof of their claims they run and hide. Because there is no proof.

Irony here is you are leaving anyway, apparently. So why do you care if you get banned for sharing what you think are fake replies?

Lol you didn't even read my whole reply. Who is the fake one here?

Yeah. No proof and will latch on to any reason to not provide proof. Heck, even if he were claiming 50% he still should provide some evidence.

Wow, you don't have any proof so you immediately resort to name calling.

I can read where you called someone an asshole, yes.

Rule #10

That user is trying to get you to do more than that. Don't fall for it.

Yup. I know it's not, just a friendly reminder. And, yea... it's become a sad state of affairs all around. I've seen it coming. I think a new website needs to be created, but it would be very difficult without the proper funds. The coding is the easy part, it's the managing (technical/legal) aspect that is the truly tough part, imo.

lol, about us agreeing with each other, here. It's quite telling.

Yeah, maybe I'm just overthinking the legal stuff (policies, terms of service, management, etc etc - I'm not a lawyer).

I guess a poll would need to be done about what kind of a website people would want, and how similar to reddit people would want (feature wise, both on the front end and back end of things). I think making it a minimal paid for service could clean up some of the crap that reddit deals with.

This has been talked about many times on here, over the years.

There's a lot of interesting developments like bittorrent style (?) encryption to make it impossible to influence communities as badly as here and other major sites today.

Also, I had the user added onto my Friends-list (I do that to people who seem not that willing to debate but just attack the OP) and also know he's not someone you should be spending your energy on. I really like your sub (and you as a user by extension lol), so don't let these people make you feel like there's not a shit ton of normal people who see through this the same way. I don't know ANYONE in real life who isn't fed up with this, they just stay quiet because it's so absurd that it's borderline scary.

Dammit. You made me do it again.

I don't need to provide you with examples.

You make a pretty bold claim though. So if you want to be taken seriously it would certainly help to provide more than "because I said so"

I think your clumsy use of precise numbers like "80%" and "60%" based on your own impression is causing a bit of pushback--especially when your response is to simply insult the skeptical responses and accuse them of being shills themselves, rather than provide any evidence at all, or at least moderate your extraordinary claims so that they are less easily dismissed by skeptics.

• I agree with you that the agitprop is obvious on this sub sometimes (almost every day).
• I disagree that 80% of Reddit content is deliberately misleading propaganda activity by paid shills. Or was it 60%?

Earlier you asked:

Where is the real discussion(?)

Here it is:

Get over it. I've had enough pedantry for today.

Stop feeding the ..... This is what they do. Better to just block them.

Because you can't provide examples.

Because I don't want to get banned for

I stopped caring about that a long time ago. You cannot operate yourself like this, in fear of being banned from a stupid website for stating facts and speaking your opinion. Isn't that what you're here to do? Stop letting them win by enforcing a spectrum of debate you must adhere to. Do that and they win. The rules are meant to protect the mods. The mods don't deserve protection. Expose the truth if that means bending the rules. Break them. Get banned if you have to. Make a new account and proceed like nothing happened. Or make a new account to post your potentially banworthy thing. We are not even people with identities here, we are users, screen names, with opinions to share and spread. Names mean nothing. This is your true power and there is not a damn thing that can stop it.

Dude the guy is tagged by me (a month ago) for... you know. If you don't use RES add these types of users as your Friend on their profile page and see the pattern.

I couldn't prove this either but fully agree with op based on the general atmosphere. Reddit is fucked and I really only come here to witness the implosion and gather info as I can that will help steer others away.

I have no doubts that vote manipulation happens on a larger scale than most people realize. In a sense, reddit is a victim of its own success, it's just too easy to game.

However, I've seen no evidence that a smaller sub like this one would be the target of such manipulation, and his claim was that 80% of comments (as well as votes) on this sub are fake. I haven't seen anything remotely resembling that, so I was looking for examples.

Would you agree that /r/politics has been co-opted just based on the atmosphere? I think that can be concluded without hard evidence by anyone that has used Reddit longer than a year.

If so, why not here as well?

Politics is very left leaning. But that's just how polarized communities work; Trump supporters flocked to T_D, everyone else stayed in /r/politics. What evidence do you have that any outside forces are required for this polarization?

The fact that we use to have websites logging all the removed posts that were later made unfunctional by reddit admins, showing ONLY stuff negative of Clinton or positive of Trump was immediately removed. The fact the sub hated Clinton and loved Bernie and it all changed in a day. And more.

So quit concern trolling. Everyone who has been here for a while sees it as clear as day. Unless you are one of them?

I don't think you know what concern trolling is.

what concern trolling is.

I think it means 'disagrees with right-wing rhetoric'.

I have him marked for being suspect.

None. It's just a feeling they have.

Show me where I said conspiracies are fake. Oh, that's right; you can't.

Your conspiracy that anyone who disagrees with your narrative is getting paid for it, yes, I don't agree.

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

im still here man! i feel like the best thing to do is get to know one another. maybe with verified pics. that way we know each other and can keep bots from coming in.

thats also a good idea. my thinking is this thi. if we move to a new site there will be all kinds of new names, etc. if we build a community here and get to know each other it will be harder for them to infiltrate us. they WANT us to move around to keep the groups from actually becoming something real.

im sorry dude but this comment sounds dumb. you want us to move base because were compromised and instead of staying to fight you want to leave to go start a new convo about whats happening. sorry man but im going to stick around here and get to know these shills and how they operate. im not much for running away.

how will you move on? to where? will anyone worth talking to follow? idk there are people who are here that arent shills. it may seem like you have been trying to change the sub for years but maybe now your just starting to make a difference. i have been on reddit for a long time and an active member for at least 3 years now. i believe tou have your own sub, no? i enjoy speaking with you and the others here. maybe i can help you post more to show what is being done by the mods? it wasnt until this post today that i had any idea the depths to which they will go to disband us. just saying maybe your making a difference and there is no percieved effect but in reality you may be opeing peoples eyes

wish i was there for that. i joined as an active member just before the girl who fid AMAs got fired. after that i really felt the way the site was had changed.

me too my dude. that doesnt mean we cant soldier on

well lets keep this post alive and active because i completely agree that its a problem. problems dont get solved unless we talk and take acton. so what can we do to stay here? if we cant stay here, what is the best way to form a new place to converse? i suck at computers so i dont know if its possible but could we somehow link a new app built just for us to talk in? as new users join they just have to verify with a pic of them just like reddit.

how could users be verified. its easy enough to make throwaway accts and bot accts. if that part gets solved then it would be more feasible to me. as it is now if you just clone reddit; you just clone reddit... all the good and the bad come with ut. some modifications would be needed and for that, someone very trusted would have to write the code.

It could do something similar to chess playing websites. To get acknowledged for a title such as master or grandmaster you need to prove your identity to the site owners(there are various ways non intrusive ways). However, unless you publicly disclose your name people only see you have a verified title. I guess this would be similar to you tubes verified or twitters verified.

we just need to make sure thise verifying the info arent corrupted themselves

Well we already trust reddit with our IP, email address, and plenty of associated information. I sometimes log into reddit through my mobile so I'm pretty much done if reddit gets hacked and it's info in the open anyways.

yeah it isnt really hard to track the avg person

I hear you but evil win when good does nothing. I'm not even worried. I think we can take over the other subs eventually as well but we need a turning point. Once the shills are defunded, they will be gone. They need funding to survive.

Why don't you make the site yourself? This is coming from somebody who doesn't disagree with you.

Welp, so do I, so I deal with Reddit. There's still good people on here, and I honestly find the whole ordeal fascinating. ESPECIALLY mod response to it, or the apparent lack thereof in most subreddits.

In fact, I think watching the stories posted and the canned responses gives a lot of insight into the mind of the "enemy". All seem to have the intent of straddling the line between saying good intentioned things that most normal people would agree with, while at the same time not advancing logical discussion or outright demeaning dissidence of thought.

The Joe Arpaio pardon story and comments are a perfect example. Conspiracy theorists don't make strong emotional appeals or statements, and the comments in that story had ZERO to do with conspiracy, at all. Top comments were things like "Disgusting.", with tons of upvotes. How exactly is that related to conspiracy?

Have you thought about doing a Kickstarter or something along those lines? Especially now that Reddit removed their source code.

I'm sad to say I agree with you. I remember thinking I would never stop fighting the shills in /r/politics. Why should I give up and let them win? Well, eventually I did give up. That subreddit is a fucking joke now. It's completely futile to jump in there and battle shills because they have the numbers to drown everyone else out. I stuck around longer than most, but everybody has their limit and the shills know it.

I'm terrified to see this transformation happen here. I've been speaking out about it in the comments for months, but these changes come from the top down with admin and moderator guidance. Now I'm even worried I'll be banned for pointing that out.

I don't want to give up. I don't want you to give up either. I want to see the corrupt admins and moderators exposed and removed.

We need a new strategy. Perhaps I should spend some time drafting up a petition to have Reddit and Media Matters for America investigated by the DoJ for seditious acts and conspiracy to foment rebellion. What they are doing goes far beyond anything the world has ever seen. They are attempting to manipulate information and beliefs for political purposes and to overthrow the current president.

This is about way more than Bernie Sanders and CTR or Donald Trump and ShareBlue. This is about the formation of a propaganda social media machine and total control over the (once) free exchange of ideas on the internet. They must be stopped at any cost.

However I'm not sure how much traction you'll get since the PATRIOT act legalized propaganda from what I understand.

I don't believe that authorization extends to private organizations. Seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government is still a high crime, right up there with treason. The legal justification for legalized propaganda is ostensibly for use as a weapon against the enemy in a time of war or as needed to protect national security. The only way Reddit, Media Matters, and CNN are protected legally is if they are operating on behalf of the CIA or perhaps some other federal agency.

Agreed, anyone good with comps?

lets just make another conspiracy site. not all of reddit has to be moved just this one cuz i like talking about what is really going on

thats true, i just dont really read into labels like that and hadnt thought about it. your right tho, i agree. how about we coin a new phrase?

lol i get ya. im saying we need a catch phrase better than"conspiracy theorist" because when it comes down to identifying groups the masses like something catchy. if we do it right we could start a new way of thinking for most people. if we can catch on as a group of people who simply want to examine life and inly seek the truth maybe we will sway society with us. one thing is for sure we have to start acting upon our words. its one thing to keep talking about these topics but what good does it do in the end if we just sit and bicker amongst ourselves?

the reason i think its important is because of the negative connotations associated with "conspiracy theorist". if pedogate or something else big comes out and we are right then a cat hy new name could be the key to spreading the knowledge. it may seem insignificant to you but marketing is something we conspiracy guys are not good at. even if were right people have the pre concieved notion in thier head already. to combat that notion we have to be different and be right. no false claims no speculation without evidence. if we do that and start at a fresh site and verify users, we could unite everyone who wants to know the truth and creat a powerful movement.

Public investigators?

its got to be something catchy and to the point. maybe we could even go the route of the c.i.a. or f.b.i. and come up with something that when abbreviated sounds cool too

Citizens investigating America? Lol

What about metathink.com or something like that?

haha i like the first one! im dying over here hahaha

Agreed...r/conspiracy remains an oasis of free speech within reddits vast fields of shit. However, the lefts slow and steady attack on this sub is obvious.

It's fallen off a cliff since our mods officially welcomed all the t_d users. Ever since, it's been a hyper-partisan fuck show.

Same went for the Sanders supporters via politics. They all got the boot from establishment neoliberals, that dominate the sub since after the DNC convention. The same narratives the shareblue shills are spreading. Reddit should be a circle jerk for anti establishment views if the demographics data is any indication. Somehow that data does not seem to apply here.

I think misinformation is deliberately upvoted to the top. It allows dismissed the sensationalized article/headline without giving the topic any kind of discourse. Prime example lately would be the DNC lawsuit, though there're many more.

im starting to get the impression that liberal/left leaning opinions being expressed = shilling

I've been noticing quite a shift here. I would like to agree that we can hold off the shills but it seems more and more difficult, especially in the past several weeks.

They will infect and disable. That is the 'intelligence' way.

No matter where you go, bullshit will find you on the internet.

But it is the problem, is it not? Otherwise you wouldn't have made the post. When I used the term "bullshit," I had the 90% you just mentioned in mind.

This new site you're proposing would have to be so underground, that the people who want to be there would even have a hard time finding it. You couldn't advertise it anywhere that's been compromised, and even still, the bullshit catches up eventually.

I still don't think we should just let them have this because they're here. That's a pretty losing attitude. Don't feed the organized trolls, and just keep spreading that 10%.

The idiots have taken over everywhere.

Not trying to make this partisan

literally blaming liberals

uh huh

The more people hate reddit the more I love it.

Will someone please make a new reddit?

Bruh... your life answer is exposing left violence to stir right violence against left violence. It's making a new reddit yourself, friend.

Oh, I just recognize your name from recent posts. Doesn't really seem like it. Feel free to link me a post you made about political right extremists. I gave up after scrolling and seeing reposts.

There is an easy way to test reddit. Make r/fuckantifa and see how it does. Also I don't know if you reported the subreddit but go ahead and limit their speech too for funzies.

If you believe I'm stirring up hatred by disagreeing with people and having an opinion, I can't stop you.

Even after a removal of all deep state cabals from either sides of all political spectrum people will still have fundamental ideological differences and opinions. If someone can't handle a difference of opinion that results in hatred well... humans are animals after all, can't fault, let's hope they don't kill each other over it like all of human history before.

Some people are of the opinion of "fuckantifa". A lot of people directly compare them to Nazis. Some people make lots of posts pointing that out to people.

It's pretty obvious by the people's attire they are prone to possible violence. They went as a "counter-protest" to a protest of the removal of a confederate statue, that is a fundamental difference in ideology.

I don't know if these people can work out their differences in talk. People are incredibly stubborn. I sure hope they just stop going out there though. The moment we see antifa actually holding their own rallies that doesn't involve protesting Trump then I think we can worry a whole lot more.

good thing the police have military equipment right? Makes the fascism transition so much easier.

What exactly do you find wrong with extreme right? They're not trying to censor you.

Outside of a very small religious right who want blow up abortion clinics...where do you see all this right wing violence in america?

Neo-nazi does not exist. It's a made up term by the left to demonize someone who is culturally conservative.

Just because some idiot calls himself a nazi, does not mean they exist.

Just like wearing a NASA shirt doesn't make you an astronaut.

So if some crackhead calls himself jesus christ, are you will to think he is Jesus Christ?

They have no leader, no power, no war money, no tanks, no army. There is nothing Nazi about it.

It's just a plain 'ol racist.

And that isn't right wing.

Yes, but what does that have to do with right wing?

Right wingers are just conservative.

I'm curious as to what specific subs you're referring to. There are subs like r/neutralpolitics and r/neutralnews that are unbiased. One of which requires legit sourcing to be linked with any claims made otherwise the comments/posts are deleted. Good places for facts

And why would "a new reddit" be any different than a new sub?

Typical thought process on this sub, everyone who disagrees with you is a troll or a paid shill. Delete your account, no one is stopping you.

Paint the sub in a bad light? You're the one with the stats regarding the amount of trolling and shilling is taking place and calling for a mass exodus. To this subs credit, I get on here and argue with people all the time about bullshit like pizzagate and sandy hook, and the mods have allowed me to continue on. I guess Soros will be sending me a check since I don't agree with most of the shit that gets posted here.

At least you didn't call it a false flag

someone who wants to paint the sub in a bad light

So what exactly is your OP doing then?

and people that disagree with you are...?

convenient way of thinking

Because the admins could ban the trolls instead of idly sitting by and letting them take over

what is the protocol for identifying trolls?

Let me guess, you'll spot 'em. You can spot 'em a mile away because they disagreed with you.

With your own comment, you put yourself in the bottom rung of your metric.

Unfortunately, magnora7 has a complete lack of self awareness. I pointed this out to him several times and every time he got one rung lower in his response.

You're literally a troll under that diagram

and let the adults talk, thanks.

Calling someone a child.

Sounds like you're wrong, and an idiot

Calling someone an idiot

over half the replies are from complete idiots

Again, calling people idiots

What are you talking about? I'm talking about how you're behaving like a toxic troll and these threads, and you're still being salty over the ban.

One you're apparently not interested in paying

That's responding to tone. Again, you're in troll territory. Try responding to my original point, which is that you're exhibiting the behavior you wish to ban.

I'm not attacking you.

"You're an idiot" is an attack.

"Your comments aren't constructive and you literally described yourself as a troll" is not.

And remind me, what is the thread about? Because absent of proof, it's literally you hyperbolizing...over, again, how you were suspended for 7 days from a subreddit.

Also the fact that you're downvoting me is incredibly obvious and just makes you look even more salty.

Literally every time you respond you seem more and more like a troll, lol.

If you weren't so condescending maybe people would be more willing to listen to you. Liberal application of sarcasm and your obnoxiously aloof attitude just make you annoying.

Ooh, and you downvoted me again.

Seriously, just step away from the computer for a while. You've made literally dozens of comments because you got banned from a sub you don't agree with. Some people get their entire families murdered and move on faster than you do. You're angry over what is ultimately nothing. Nobody cares that reddit is fucked because we're here voluntarily. People who don't like reddit don't use it. You're in the wrong place.

That's another item from your chart. Like, you're literally unhinged with anger over getting suspended on the internet lol

I don't think you understand how entertaining you are lol.

You know how you laugh at SJWs for being so unaware of themselves? That's me laughing at you rn

I'm literally just replying so i can hear what you have to say

wait so after this whole argument you admit you are just trolling? Amazing

Only after he completely lost it

If I ask the same question nicely will you respond to me?

wow that flow chart was right. He does all those arguments.

Here's a pretty good metric I've encountered with shills several times:

https://files.shroomery.org/files/07-004/966417319-flow1.jpg

If they're using sections of that flowchart to argue they're probably not worth the time. And almost certainly a shill.

Some people are just assholes too. I know someone who tries arguing like that in real life. They see debate more as an ego-driven quest to dominate than as a mutual effort to arrive at truth.

Man.. You're like "I try not to fight and stick to principles instead", and then they all gather around you, poking you with sticks, until you go "fucking stop!", then they're like "I thought you were better than that (poke poke) didn't you say you were better than that? (poke poke)"

Kinda depressing watching these swarms, sliders, and trolls prove your point. Herein lies the difficulty of starting a new site.

Maybe this is a dangerous line of thought, but it makes me want to fight fire with fire. Buy bots, shills etc for our side. Unfortunately most of us are fairly ethical and don't have unlimited funds at our disposal. I mean, Jesus we have 4,000 users here now, when I joined about a year ago it was in the few hundred range. Even then it was pretty bad, now it's awful.

The real users who are familiar with your work and character have your back.

I think there are a number of ways to take that (admittedly a bit left handed) path. I see many users talking about having made numerous accounts and using tor and vans and all that.

Remember this? https://steemit.com/conspiracy/@thatsnumberwang/guy-buys-upvotes-on-reddit-r-videos-get-s-to-front-page-and-releases-some-truth-reddit-is-truly-lost

If we just did what shills now do, it would work. Route all traffic through AWS servers, code an app that allows switching between multiple IPs and handles easily, set up say 20 accts, scrounge together some funds, hire a passionate alt-righter, and have them wreck votes and posts in the same infuriating way, but for the things that spez likes instead (I still have not seen proof that Cambridge shills; they deal in targeted ads and profile building, judging from the information available).

And we'd have him be fucking obvious. We'd want people to notice and think that something is very wrong. Like, maybe in one thread, we have him go in and tell everyone the exact same message, like "Hi I'm one of your new team of shills! My name is fuck you, and I have access to 300+ accts. I use Amazon AWS to spoof my traffic, so reddit can't stop me.

We are here to demoralize the shit out of you guys and pervert your message so that you cannot communicate effectively.

Every conversation that you want to have, we will be pedantic, litigious, and intentionally misunderstanding, and we will be there with 10 accts a piece, multiples of us in each thread you care about. We will call you stupid for not taking the time to relieve me of my responsibility to educate myself.

When you think you are gaining traction, we will downvote everything you would like to see upvoted.

We will fill your feed with pages and pages of useless junk, making this sub into something that we want it to be, and you'll just have to sit there, dealing with the injustice of it all, unless you can somehow make this illegal, but you won't."

Then you just repeat that same message from like 50 accts all over the place, with a bunch of open windows at once, just over and over and over, then we just fucking get down to it.

Then, we do the idea that /u/magnora7 was talking about, and we artificially upvote a ton of the posts, all in one day, to the FP. Votes are not that exensive, and we'd have limited spoofing abilities with our AWS range.

I'd be willing to invest in this. I know some people who could code a functional app in no time, I'm sure.

Whomever controls the servers and the code can always suppress and push whatever they want. This is a private organization that is built upon private servers that offer zero transparency and zero guarantee of message or vote authenticity. A distributed (mesh networks,) encrypted (think block chain tech), and open source (with 3rd party code verification of nodes designed in) system needs to be designed from the ground up for all social networks (e.g. Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn.) The general technical know-how of the population is the biggest barrier to the deployment of a balanced systems that provide what I consider public utilities that can't be so easily manipulated to the detriment of its users. Our social networks (read: our society) is too important to be left in the hands of private or governmental entities.

P.S. It will always difficult (if not impossible) to remove vote manipulation and suppression, but we can make it extremely more complicated for those that would choose to do it.

Thanks for the subs. On its face the news one looks like world News with slightly less editorialized headlines, but neutral politics looks awesome. Will check them both out.

As of right now most of the comments agree with you

It will flip once the brigade inevitably arrives.

Guarantee the top comments will be bashing OP and this sub while irrelevantly mentioning T_D.

Yeah, but when he made his comment, he lied.

Why would he lie about it?

He said half the comments. You didn't respond to what he said, but instead talked about top comments.

Why do you need to lie?

I wish I took screenshots because there was only one comment that could maybe construed as critical (but not really) out of about 10-15 that were agreeing with him.

There was litterally not one single comment regarding what he said

well seeing as you're always such a unbiased straight shooter I guess I'll just take you at your word!

He already admitted it

And you don't have to take my word for it. Stay in new and rising and you'll see these types of comments from folks like magnota7 all the time.

Your shameless ability to twist people's words notwithstanding, I have no idea WTF your second sentence is supposed to mean.

Then untwist what he said. Explain how it flipped

There are meta threads like this every single day, and the op of the post, or those who agree with the post will say something like "look at all of these people attacking me/op already"

But there will be like 10-20 comments with all of them agreeing with OP.

It's done on purpose.

There are meta threads like this every single day

Yep, and usually it's DAE think this is now t_d 2.0??? Or 'why don't you people like this real conspiracy???

I agree with you. Skygirl or whatever his name is should be banned.

Fair point, I'll toast to that.

Cheers.

Are you psychic?

/s

Seriously though, u/magnora7 was one of the names that meant good content was inside and level headed responses were offered.

u/magnora7 what happened to that conspiracy sub that you and u/totally_not_a_pirate were starting?

He won't tell what happened to the idea.

Wait, so you are acknowledging you were lying originaly?

Hey, take this as a learning experience, old pal. Now you get to both appreciate an organic thread and watch as it is slid.

Even in this thread, over half the replies are from complete idiots who seem to be trying to cast things in to partisan terms, make me look bad, or make the OP post look bad.

Do you really mean that? I've read this thread, and I don't see what you're seeing.

That's shitty. If someone has something to say they should say it out here in public.

Hold on you are complaining about people smearing you but you've called half the commenters idiots. I fear your approach maybe as much of an issue as anything else.

I think what is becoming obvious is he doesn't like anyone who disagrees with him or his thinking.

This is one of those posts

Even the chans get slid daily. I have a feeling this same crap will keep happening on any site.

I just assume the voting isn't real. If someone responds to your comment with a logical fallacy and gets double the upvotes as you, then it gives the impression that there are a lot of really dumb people who were convinced by some charlatan shill. That could really do some damage to your motivation and make you want to give up. However, if you realize the voting isn't real, then you may realize that there really weren't that many people who fell for the logical fallacy. For all you know, your comment that is stuck at -2 convinced nearly everyone who read it.

Try using a different account. Try that with a different IP address. If you are a prolific poster who they consider to be a thorn in their side, disrupting their propaganda from time to time, then they very well might be monitoring your account or may have placed some kind of handicap on how many votes you accumulate.

• "Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream -- people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc)."

Think of the implications if they know who the influential users are irl (which I'm sure they do)

Doesn't it suck when people don't accept your account without evidence other than "I'm super serial, shills have taken over Reddit"?

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

yeah but they're good guys and everyone actually hates DRUMPF! Its current year!

partisan terms You literally started out the thread bitching about shareblue, only a moron can't see the inherent partisanship in that. I've got more to say, but I'll post it in a general response to the thread as a whole.

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere stupidity.

I agree. I'm in no position to be the truth-sayer here, I just like to represent opinions that are underrepresented.

this thread is also being brigaded by topminds:

https://np.reddit.com/r/TopMindsOfReddit/comments/6wu1zz/one_top_mind_has_finally_had_enough_claims_reddit/

I mean you're darn negativity-biased.

It indeed does us far more harm than good in helping them manufacture opinions

Manufactured opinions and guided conversations are all over reddit.

I enjoy the "fun" part of reddit, but so much for taking it seriously for discussions of important subjects.

This is one of the few subs I like to have real conversations about certain topics.

I agree, by "fun" parts I referred to more specific topics that are fun for me like gaming, football, and graphic design.

But yeah the default "fun" subs are completely gone to shit.

It's size is its main problem. You could start 100 similar sites in 100 different countries. Any one of those sites becomes as big as reddit is now and you would likely have the same degree of control of the narrative. Only the illusion of free association and exchange of ideas is permitted.

Then you must realize it is a battleground. You want a new version of this (I do too!), but a new version of this will still be a battleground. Once it becomes a 'thing' it is infiltrated. You're a front line warrior general, must adapt to terrain and enemy placement and arms etc?

Also this

But they had to kill Swartz to get control. That's not easy to get away with.

I want to agree but it's clearly not the cases.

One of our own IRL MIA. Let's do it

I agree with the above post by u/flyPeterfly. Creating a new reddit is not a bad idea in itself idea, but, to also use the analogy of the battleground, wouldn't this be similar to retreat and regroup, only to wait until the enemy catches up to us again, and then what? I don't think the admins are that much of a guarantor for security. Just think about the AI in a few years, they could easily infiltrate any site with thousands of bots posing as seemingly real users.

So what to do? I'd say fight the battle right here, right now. And if an enemy is as strong as in our case, we need to upgrade our arsenal. I'm thinking along the lines of a new digital Operation mindfuck.

They pose as real users feeding propaganda to the masses? Let's poison their well with which they booze the sheep, let us induce a facilitation of the conspicuity of the general status paradoxus. This current state, which is the effect of this overwhelming machine of propaganda and ideologization, is our battleground.

Every online community starts out great, but they get too big and go to shit. Open membership is no good.

I think the quality of the organic users has gone down as well. As the site gets worse more of the smart/reasonable people leave, and as more of the smart people leave the site gets worse, and on and on.

Everybody sees it.

its not working, im a noob and i see right through it

trust your fellow countrymen

I know the feeling, trust me, but real users pretty much see right through these people. Their tactics are fairly obvious and they pretty much never change them, they only double down on their bullshit.

If it makes you feel any better, the three sites above reddit are also absolute garbage.

I've used Reddit every day for 10 years and I still think it's great. It's pretty much the same. What's wrong with it?

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

I think a large part of it is because of the younger generation using Reddit now. They don't care or even think about propaganda, only "dank memes". Look at the top you tubers. It's that valid anti-intellectual bullshit that they eat up. I'm sure some of it is an intentional distraction, manufactured idiocy, but there are others that just hopped on the gravy train. One of the reasons I think Trump supporters, at least on Reddit, are young is because of how much importance they place on memes. Most people don't care about propaganda if their side is winning.

Try Gab or Voat

Yeah lets goto voat guys! Head on over! I'll meet you there!

voat banned me for stating facts

When you "voat banned me," what does that mean? Is it not moderated like reddit or are there site wide admins that do all the moderating?

It's the same as reddit basically. Personally, I find voat is a lot more tolerant of free speech.

As is 4chan

Plus the super saucy memes

the only real freedom

Voat only has two admins, or one I guess now. @puttitout who took over for the founder @atko.

There are two kinds of bans on voat.

• Moderator bans, which are permanent.

• Peer bans via downvoating, which are temporary. If your CCP (karma) goes below neutral (I think it is neutral 0, could be below 100, not sure) you are only allowed 10 posts/comments a day. When your CCP is low you are also more limited via "wait 7 minutes" type messages.

The latter is the most bizarre. The masses will ramble on and on about how voat is "Free Speech", then down voat brigade you until your account is unusable. Talking about this form of censorship on voat is the best way to get brigaded into silence.

The admin posted an announcement last month declaring he'd be lifting the karma restrictions, but I wouldn't hold my breath. His favorite pastime seems to be rolling voat back to old code after fucking shit up, then blaming it on ddos attacks. The site is currently in a barely usable state, as it has been many times.

Sure they did.

What facts? They have to be good.

Voat is where people like you go. What does that tell you?

He's a topminsofreddit poster, the cancer of Reddit. IE brigading idiot and troll, don't engage.

What do you think of the idea that there's an irreconcilable difference between "useful online discourse" and anonymity??

Essentially, anonymous voices can be multiplied by astroturfing, social media account management, sock puppetry, and soon on a much greater scale by AI.

You can make as many new sites as you like. Infiltration, by voices pretending to be what they're not, will be directly proportional to the interestingness and popularity of the latest site.

I'm not suggesting that there are no benefits to anonymity. Maybe people could be anonymous in one place but "one person one vote/voice" in some other designated place... And I don't even know how it would work (yet).

But currently there are motives to "cheat" forums like reddit. And this problem will migrate to every other site like it.

Maybe some sort of point system like reddit, but give the established community some power- some sort of "verified user" type of thing.

Gross, us HRC shills will just stay here. You can go if you want to, but we're definitely not leaving Reddit.

:(

Seriously, you don't have to give up this subreddit completely but just open up voat.co every now and then.

guess who runs v/conspiracy on voat? the same people who run r/conspiracy! they are literally the exact same mods.

It looks like there is a push now to move people from here to there. More foxes guarding different hen houses.

Voat Sucks

Yes! I fucking hate the PG mods on voat. They are way too fucking dense to do their jobs.

That's not true.

I'm not on there.

voat is coopted.

There's few people on voat. If we all go over, we can dilute the racists.

lol its a good site design. More transparent then reddit, but still susceptible to corporate shills.
I'm amazed reddit lasted as long as it did. I agree though, it's basically broken now.

At least digg was honest about the massive change. They had a huge update, and suddenly we couldn't vote anymore.
Here it's all secret and nefarious manipulation. Basically we're being lied to on a massive scale, and reddit admin are complicit.

It's bad for the corporation too, since eventually people (advertisers) will realize that half the participation on this site is shills and bots.
We need a new economic model. Steemit is neat, but it's basically just blogs. We need to be able to post links too.

I'm sure the admin are trying to figure out a way to sell votes directly without admitting the totals are bullshit. They're gonna make a mistake, and reveal the whole thing.
I'm still betting on voat. Those skinheads are gonna be pissed when they lose their safe space. Let's go!

It's a good platform, and they are few.

I second that. Go to voat. Been there for two years now and it's just like reddit only more free [for now].

Ugh it's an ugly community at the moment. So much hatred and group think.

no but it is too dead and hence boring

Which one, Voat or reddit? If you mean Voat, think about this one: At least people are allowed to voice their hatred or opinion etc. One can always counter post with good arguments and evidence if one doesn't like the comments. I do. That is preferable to being banned from saying anything that isn't of someone else's liking.

I agree, which is why we should all flood voat

If one person is the asshole then they are the asshole, if everyone is an asshole then you are the asshole.

Take a deep breath. I know you and like you and your sub although I am pretty much a lurker. Let these fake users downvote you and then act as if you're saying or implying things you didn't. You know it's all the same inane shit from their script. "Bye bye, see you on Voat then! Lalalalala!" as if you ever even implied that etc. Basic button-pushing.

He's right and I bet you and the other obnoxious right wing complainers all feel the same way as your op, I wonder why?

Everyone is an asshole in their own way.

If you've been tagging sliders you'll see that all the same accounts pop in here with the same regular tone they treat any discussion in this sub.

Yup, and this sub just recently got fully taken over by the same shills that you see on most of the other major subs. I still post here anyway because there are still plenty of thinking people to discuss things with.

Sounds like OP is angry that this isn't t_d2.0

You made this thread to whine about 80% of reddit being fake, are unwilling to provide proof to support your claim and then go on some weird tangent about shareblue. You're an angry trumpster with nowhere to go.

Remain upset.

Good cover story. I think we both know what you're doing here.

If you really hate reddit so bad, go away. Stop being a drama parasite.

You thrive on the attention you're getting. I'm sorry your real life is so empty that you feel like causing a scene on reddit is your only way to get human interaction.

I would suggest taking some exercise, trying to meet some new friends, and spending less time on the computer. Good luck, friend!

Already did champ! That's why I'm a well adjusted adult, and your life is in shambles and are incapable of insulting someone on an adult level and resort to YEAH WELL YOU TOO parroting. :)

kys

Removed. Encouraging suicide. Only warning.

You could always leave, there's plenty of BMWing here without you.

I'm not the one saying all is lost and doom and gloom.

Oh, so you're just a troll. That's all you have.

This wasn't a post of substance. You disagree with everyone who has offered a solution. You seem to want to be validated and have a circlejerk of what Reddit used to be, whatever that means.

What constructive things has this post brought?

Offered you a solution to your problem. How is it distracting people? Do you see new Reddit like sites popping up?

Nope, just one big circle-jerk of why won't the people I don't like be banned.

You could always leave. Sometimes the best solution is to not play the game at all.

Weak

If someone doesn't agree with you they're derailing the thread? No wonder you hate Reddit.

Your post is a rant. There is nothing to derail.

I'm trying to help you figure out why you hate Reddit.

Maybe you should post proof so you can get banned. Then you won't have to spend anymore time on this website that you supposedly hate.

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

Ok. Great work. Now where's the proof this specific sub is 80% fake? I do not doubt that the cited activities happen- They do. OP's claim is a bold face lie, however.

Oh I can promise you, ShareBlue is lucky to get to insert a post or comment here and there they are not running this site.

It would be more likely that the people running this site created ShareBlue to create an impression there is opposition.

And just what would a site look like that you would like, r/conspiracy is more conservative now than it was the first 4 years, and back then it was a young libertarian kind of place not this hard core Bircher/libertaran operation it seems to be now.

So what does a dream site look like to you.

You want some liberal posters to bash.

But not too many?

Because if you want straight up conservative sites there are hundreds.

And what has your research shown you about the origins and workings of Share Blue.

It would be more likely that the people running this site created ShareBlue to create an impression there is opposition.

Wtf? Shareblue is owned by David Brock. It's public knowledge.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock

^{HelperBot v1.1 /r/HelperBot_ I am a bot. Please message /u/swim1929 with any feedback and/or hate. Counter: 106508}

Well there some people responsible for turning the DNC conservative, I suspect Brook is a likely member of that group.

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

I think your imagination carried you away.

the fact that you mention shareblue only makes me feel like you are unhappy that liberal opinions are being expressed. how are they able to make 80% of all posts on one of the most popular message boards in the world? their budget would have to be enormous, and this place would have to be a ghost town otherwise

its not like twitter, bots wouldnt suffice here

Fun fact, by election day this past november, highly-automated pro-trump bots outnumbered pro-clinton bots by 5:1 on twitter. Source Now I know that's twitter and this is reddit, but it'd make sense to assume similar efforts were made on every social media platform. Why assume shareblue is so much bigger?

from what I understand, shareblue has a wider reach and hires more employees to comment on more websites.

how did you come to this understanding? from what i can see, people just like to use ctr and shareblue because its not exactly hidden, and because of partisan reasons.

i've never heard of cambridge analytics anywhere but this sub but everyone knows shareblue everywhere

i dont know what either are. links?

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

Nice collection of info. I had a 9+ year old account I deleted during the election last year when Reddit decided it would change it's front page algorithms to basically eliminate the_donald, deleted pizzagate sub, and other BS. The censorship. I only created a new account just so I could keep subscribed to this sub and a few others. It is really sad this site was once a proponent for unfiltered open and free information but has completely sold out. Reddit is probably being ran by CNN now for all I know. I'll keep coming here (for now) to check a few things but this site has been dead and full of propaganda for awhile now.

"ShareBlue's presence is much more visible" makes me wonder if it's actually the opposite. Is it difficult to write a bot that spams about "ShariaBlue"?

Feels bro. Feels

Great now assholes in this sub are even having divisive conversations about which political wing shills more.

You fucking kidding me with this shit?

Just further evidence of the ass cancer that has destroyed this website.

I am convinced they are all robots.....

With a name like Cambridge they seem like classier shills. If they exist at all. Shariablue is omnipresent. Although recently the has been a backlash. Non Trump folks are mocking the shilling from the left. Askreddit users have grown a set of libertarian balls in some humorous threads that usually get shit all over by sanctimonious SJW types.

Far more frightening than twitter bots are CA's ability to generate and microtarget something like 100,000 ads an hour on Facebook through a genius mixture of personality profiling and automation.

Ie auntie sue is old school so we need to make this negative Hilary headline appeal to her sense of authority in order for her to click. Oh that didn't work? Well she also has a brother in the military so let's try slightly changing the wording so that it sounds like Hilary is anti-military. All done automatically by AI. This specific ad targeting aunt Sue may only ever actually be viewed by aunt Sue on her Facebook, while aunt Sally the old hippy gets something about Hilary hating pot.

I'll see if I can find the article about it when I get home and edit it here.

Oh yeah, that's my point. It's how the world is run these days.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of awesome GOOD could be done if all the metadata was combined and analysed with a view to create a better world for all. They probably have determined things about human behavior that would blow our minds.

Instead I get microtargeted ads about some stupid bullshit that's supposed to get me upset with the "other", or to make me buy something / read something / somehow make someone else money.

Shareblue is all unpaid interns in a basement, 30 of them.

It was in Hillary's emails

I have a friend who shilled for israel on r/worldnews during the 2013 conflict with gaza. It was part of a community service component of their scholarships and was coordinated via a twitter aggregator that linked to specific posts or even parent comments. I think it worked too tbh because the target audience and the site at that time was just so prone to blindly believing whatever the top comment was. The only reason I didn't fall for it was because I had been overseas during the 2007 conflict with lebanon and seeing non-anglo coverage showing israel's atrocities and then coming back to america and seeing clips of jews running into shelters as an alarm sounded was really eye-opening. If I had just been a normal 18 year old average reddit user I would've walked away from those r/worldnews threads thinking "well shit I guess both sides are bad" that I'm sure most on here think due to idf.

As much as I think the democrats are corrupt, their base does lean anti-israel and I think if another prolonged conflict arises, their establishment's hypocrisy will become unavoidable. Hell, it could've even happened with the boycott but it seems msm doesn't want to touch that for obvious (((reasons))).

Cambridge Analytica spread political ads on facebook. They analyzed data and picked out specific people to spread ads to. To my knowledge, it has never been shown or admitted that they hired shills. However, exactly how they spread those ads to people on Facebook may have been through shills. I wouldn't know because I don't have facebook and don't know much about it. I gave up trying to figure out exactly what CA did. I also asked others to explain a few times but nobody has.

That said, someone out there hired pro-Donald shills.

The "5 to 1" bot ratio on Twitter was actually measured in tweets. The pro-Donald bots tweeted 5 times as often. (or 4 times, whatever it actually was)

More than four times as many tweets were made by automated accounts in favour of Donald Trump around the first US presidential debate as by those backing Hillary Clinton, a study says.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37684418

And sorry to go there, but I'm pretty sure Putin's online propaganda army was gunning for Trump throughout much of the election as well. I noticed the pro-Putin posters and the pro-Trump posters on news sites become on in the same long before any allegations of a Russia conspiracy.

Maybe you could link a source that is actually credible instead of a no-name website hosted in the UK?

The source is those three researchers and their findings laid out with sources of it's own. Why in the world are you focusing on the website as if that's more important than the actual content.

Because my default position with literally any "study" linked through a website nobody has ever heard of is to assume it's bullshit. This is the conspiracy subreddit, right?

It's not worth it arguing with D&Cers like that. It's very fucking obvious WHO is in control of reddit, and it's not goddamn Cambidge Analytica. Not by a long shot. The fucking admins are overtly political, and uhh I don't think they voted for Trump, to say the least. Every fucking major subreddit has been overtly political, often in direct violation of the subreddit's rules. And it's NOT to sing the praises of Libertarian government or Trump. This website is an extension of the Democratic National Committee, full stop.

No more false equivalences. Acting like "WELL BOTH SIDES SHILL HERE" motherfucker the two-party paradigm is exactly the kind of thing /r/conspiracy rejects. Anybody who doesn't realize who is doing the takeover of reddit is a fucking moron. But we're supposed to pretend it's equal or whatever just to appear politically neutral. FUCK that. It's a fucking JOKE.

Maybe.. just maybe, most reddit users don't like Trump. And political content is ramping up because the national discourse on politics is much more prevalent now. Not everything is a conspiracy theory, some thing can be explained by common sense.

Also you saying T_D was discriminated against for "paper thin justifications" is laughable. I guess brigading and doxxing people and giving a safe haven to vile racist comments is no biggie.

Like I said - there's absolutely no point in arguing with people like you. If you can't see what's right in front of your face you're a moron.

................................................ Really

He is one of them lol

what makes you say that

ShareBlue has been here since the 6 months ramping up to the election. I've conceded that this site is run by corporate minded SJW 3rd wave feminists. If you need proof, check SRS.

What is the reason you come to reddit? News, entertainment, comradery? You can find all of that elsewhere on the internet... places like you want do exist.

Reddit is a clusterfuck, but theres not much one person can do to change that... I don't think reddit will ever be "fixed" but I betcha you can find a place with a a bit more intellectual honesty.

I've had a lot of trouble finding decent forums elsewhere online, especially in the last couple years. Most are either dead or not relevant to my interests (celebrity gossip, etc).

Time to go back to Digg?

Digg was rigged, too.

Slashdot still exists...

Hmmm... I may look to see if they have an app.

I've been finding myself on voat and the chans more and more. yeah there can be a lot of hate and they fall for all the Divide and conquer bullshit, but they are hosts to discussions that aren't happening in other places.

Feel the same

Of course it isn't that the majority of people on reddit dislike the must disliked president in United States history, it must be shareblue paying everyone off!

Fomenting extremist violence on the front page everyday?

What subs are you subscribed to, because I see nothing of the sort.

Do you mean stuff like this?

http://www.businessinsider.com/national-rifle-association-ad-call-to-violence-2017-6

Lol I've heard this line parroted so many times in response to anyone mentioning shills. They don't even have to mention Trump. You guys are so obvious.

Obvious what? Paid shill or simply one of the vast majority of American's who disapprove of trump?

Guess what? There can be both! There are also lots of people who approve of Trump. There are definitely lots of shills, regardless.

So what am I?

Blocked.

hahahahahaha

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

Funny how you only mention anti trump bots, and not all the russian pro trump bots.

everyone ignore the bad rule

I just want to chime in that I completely agree.

Reddit's whole design is fucked up. It ensures the popular opinion always wins, it allows anyone to make a million accounts and there's almost no accountability for anyone.

This site's only purposes are to shill, witch hunt and spread propaganda.

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

the mere fact they scrubbed pizzagate.wiki should tell us something.

We need walnutsauce.wiki

Hey, I have an idea that you might be interested in /u/magnora7 - Compile a Platform and Business Model, have a bunch of us sign it and send it to Notch. He might be interested ya just never know!

You just never know until you try! Shoot for The Moon my friend!

I agree, they're desperately trying suppress the overwhelming evidence of plano-terrestrialism.

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

• [/r/topmindsofreddit] One Top Mind has finally had enough, claims "Reddit is fucked" and thinks Conspiracy was "taken over" by Shareblue.

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)}

Yeah the problem is share blue, it's not the dezinformatsiya, it's not the web brigades.

No, it's share blue.

Try Gab.ai

It won't ket me do the insert link thing because I guess Reddit doesn't know it's a valid URL.

But yeah, it's very conservative sided currently because it doesn't have very much publicity in the liberal spheres if that affects anything, and it's formatted kind of like Reddit and Twitter combined into one.

Gab.ai

Seems android and cell phone centric.

Also they are selling your data. Check the privacy policy. Secondly, your personal information is considered a business asset and by signing up you agree to it being sold wholesale should the company go under :)

They couldn't get apple to approve its review for the App Store it without exposing all of the hateful gross trash on it.

The top comments will soon devolve into mocking OP, bashing this sub and talking about T_D 2.0.

And it will only prove OP correct.

Really appreciate your contributions today, just to let you know.

Is this a tactic to get everyone to go? Why?

Also - I don't get that no one here seems to accept that everyone all over Reddit comes here to join in a conversation or two, because this is considered the free speech area. There is inevitably going to be new people every day, depending on what is trending in news and society in general.

The new place is.

/r/conspiracyright

But... it's partisan.

I've been around these parts for a long time, and what you're complaining about is not new. That being said, it has gotten much worse in the past couple years.

At this point it's my personal opinion that most top comments on Reddit (and any large online platform for 'public' discourse) are:

1. Vote-rigged/brigaded

2. Paid for by corporate entities as an advertisement, or public relations move

3. Paid for by nation state entities for "reasons".

There is very little organic discussion to be found anywhere. It's almost all PR/Propaganda with the aim of either pushing a narrative or to foment more "us vs them" between the underclasses, or for more traditional propaganda.

Oh, a lot of them are just plain old advertisements as well.

Now, on to the scarier things that I have noticed recently.

1. A lot of purportedly esoteric truth posts that seem to have a "left hand path" or "satanist/luciferian" undercurrent. Reminds me of how pretty much any cultish group (ie ISIS) recruits disaffected people (ie conspiracy theorists).

2. A lot of purportedly "truth seeking" posts that have a decidedly anti-Semitic tone. (Not anti zionist, I know the difference).

3. A lot of posts pushing obvious disinformation.

What I think has happened is that in order to slow the inevitable trickle of information about the actual conspiracies in the information age, the disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt on those who dissented against the conclusions of the Warren Report has been ratcheted to 11. Eg. Any news report about flat earthers says there are literally hundreds of them "officially" registered in the US. Hundreds! Yet I see flat earthers commenting every day (hopefully ironically or for the lulz).

Anyways, this has been quite disorganized as I am commuting home, but my point is this: Reddit is broken, the internet as the great leveller is broken, and I am not sure that we can ever recover.

Gotta go back to beer hall discussions, only this time with longer haircuts and less racism.

Still gonna read /r/conspiracy though...

I'll end this rambling rant with my own original conspiracy theory: America/Western Capitalism is on its last legs economically and TPTB actually wanted Trump to get elected so that he could be the fall guy when SHTF. My opinion is the shit hitting the fan will be an even bigger financial crisis than in 2008. Hopefully I am wrong as I too live in the west...

Anyways, I'm just some old fogey who's read way too many conspiracy theories. I'll see myself out.

I just hope enough people can see through the charade to not be fooled.

Hoping against hope, I would suggest. The reality is that most people still believe aluminium planes can pierce steel buildings. If you can;t see through that, you simple can't see.

https://8ch.net/index.html

this is a bit like the old reddit.

But how do I get that sweet sweet karma? http://imgur.com/accdcZG

not for normies though.

Nuclear false flag...

Oh come on everyone knows that jet fuels melts steel.

Perfectly said.

I like your last theory since a crash is coming. Would have happened regardless of a Clinton or Trump presidency. It will make 2008 look like nothing. We can even use history as a rough guide. There was a crash in 1920 IIRC. A big one. What followed was the roaring twenties; a huge bubble financed by debt and other forms of predatory capitalism fueled with massive amounts of new technology due to the expansion of electricity.(sound familiar?) Nobody even thought the 1929 crash was a big deal at first cause they had gotten "through" 1920 one.

That being said, I think you're giving HRC too much credit though. Groupthink is real and they can't fathom the system they've built is set to collapse.

As a counterpoint to that, maybe the reason HRC was such a blatant warmonger was she knew the system is collapsing and the only way to prop it up is more imperialism? Our economy is heavily finacialized and we would probably have collapsed already if we weren't an empire with specious things that could go away propping us up like the petrodollar.

Sigh. We're fucked. I just hope we don't take the place of the Germans. (Aka "are we the baddies?")

this thread is also being brigaded by topminds:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TopMindsOfReddit/comments/6wu1zz/one_top_mind_has_finally_had_enough_claims_reddit/

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A lot of purportedly esoteric truth posts that seem to have a "left hand path" or "satanist/luciferian" undercurrent. Reminds me of how pretty much any cultish group (ie ISIS) recruits disaffected people (ie conspiracy theorists).

What do you mean by this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuNKs0RKHtw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGe3pypQWl0

Take from these what you will.

I also agree that Trump is the fall guy.

Look at the way in which they're blatantly plundering the government. The U.S is a corpse by this point, like the Roman empire after the sack.

That said, I think all the Satanic/Luciferian buzz is disinfo. MAPs just pushed the FDA to accept the medical legitimacy of MDMA. Ayahuasca is the secret to Christianity. Jesus probably drank Soma and encountered this Ayahausca who is tied to DMT, LSD, and mushrooms. He saw her in his consort, Mary. Church slandered this by demonizing snakes and associating them with Satan.

My own personal belief is that the reason trump was elected was because he makes a great figure head for division. Since he has been elected people have automatically assumed that if you are a "conspiracy theorist" or if you dislike corporate media you love trump and are a bigoted moron.
He has been used to hate the media which causes people to want to trust said media, to spout random conspiracies and then try to associate those conspiracies with bigotry and stupidity. He has made himself hated and loves at the same time by so many by driving a wedge in the population. Basically with him as president they've thrown a huge wrench in public opinion towards people who want real change on all sides of the debates. It's almost impossible now to have a decent conversation with either party as they seem so dug in on their views and immediately think you're for the opposite team rather than actually listen to what you have to say. It was a brilliant move on their part and I for one didn't see it coming as I was pretty positive Hillary was the choice candidate for the banking cartel but as I watch trump in action I realize that he is no different and is pushing the same agenda she would have.

Hillary would have deregulated and got out of the Paris Climate Accord?? NAFTA TPP..

Well seeing as those aren't exactly the agenda I was referring too probably not. Obviously the two parties have minor differences to try and convince people that their choice matters. But when was the last time a president actually stood up to the banks? Or how about the war machine as it rolls onward towards any country that dares resist said banks. Some great examples is North Korea and Iran. Both whom the media and trump are very angry at and seem gung-ho to start a war with. The last president I know of who actually stood up to our military and our banking system ended up dead. As I said I believe trump is exactly what the deep state needs and wants.

i think reddit still got to you even though you think it didn't. Everyone thinks the US is falling down and i think it might just because hysteria

Excellent commentary and insight. I hardly ever agree with a post wholeheartedly, but yours just hit home in its entirety. An entire series can be based on what you just said. Thank you.

who's read way too many conspiracy theories.

If all you do is consume and inundate yourself with conspiracy theories as your sole source for "news", you'll easily become paranoid, dejected, confused, and ultimately apathetic. Step out of the echo chamber, leave your bias at the door, and let credible facts guide you.

The world isn't as terrible as you think it is. There's a lot of good people out there fighting against "them".

Agreed. Here's an interesting take on things by Adam Curtis (the guy made the documentaries, The Century of the Self, HyperNormalization and others)

Worth the listen. Start about 7:30 into it.

Economic guy here. I agree with your assessment of said coming crash. Nothing from 2008 was fixed. The proverbial can was just kicked down a road paved with massive amounts of debt. The only way this is avoided at this point in time is if they can keep that can rolling until 2024ish. This is when the largest generation (millennials) hit their peak spending years. It should be a period of time similar to 1993-2007. That, or an invention that rivals the industrial or computer revolution. Something that truly changes how we work and live.

America/Western Capitalism is on its last legs economically

I don't believe this entirely. Even if the US becomes a fully Communist country on the surface, there will still be that underground Capitalist element. One thing I've noticed in some of the countries that are Communist or used to be "fully Communist" is that they still have the black markets which essentially is Capitalism. Unregulated Capitalism where you may get rat meat instead of beef or chicken or you may get plastic rice or dirt passing off as pepper or, in the case of Venesuela (I know socialism not Communism), products from the black market that only the rich can afford but still its Capitalism.

I'll never understand why anyone with any ounce of sanity would take this websites seriously. Its been a propaganda machine for over a decade.

Nothing has changed outside a few deaths and popularity increasing.

Friend, the whole fucking world is fucked. Aliens should have hit the delete button on us a long fucking time ago. The fact that they haven't means either no other intelligent life in the universe has found us, or that intelligent life is inherently evil.

Idk which is scarier, but the fact that this much human suffering has been allowed to go on is pretty fucked IMO. Some alien species should detonate a black hole weapon and end it already.

Hey, thank you for this. I really needed to hear that right now. Peace be upon you friend.

Not necessarily, if intelligent life existed where had gone through a similar history in order to advance as a civilization, it's possible they would have a prime directive to stay hands off in order for species to go through the same growing pains. That or complete annihilation.

It's hard to imagine intelligent life resulting from our current situation.

Please don't give up. Still plenty of real humans here who enjoy us some good magnora7 posts. :)

Dude, start posting your content in this future sub till this one gets regained by the long standing Mods. They are mounting a comeback!

/r/conspiracyright

Both sound good! I think the national borders issue might be more eye-opening for the "regulars" around here, who I think are already well aware of CIA media infiltration. But the nefarious intentions behind the placement of some of the international borders definitely needs more exposure. Goes back to the Great Game era or earlier I would imagine? The way the Ottoman Empire was carved up definitely reeks of long term divide and conquer strategies and we've seen it play out over many decades now. IDK what I'm rambling about, I need a nap, anyway, rock on my friend. ;)

It's all about expectations.

For me, I found your work here as well as others. So there's been some interesting stuff. There's also a lot of garbage to wade through.

Approach it like you would the writing on a bathroom stall and be pleasantly surprised when you find something stimulating.

Simulation beats truth every time for me. My "truth" has objectively changed so many times I've lost a use for it. Now I'm pretty much decided about everything I read in the news. From the mainstream and in here.

I do miss original content OPs. I rarely click links.

A lot of garbage. And I believe the garbage tends to rise to the top via hired astroturfers (or bots).

Any reddit alternative needs to show IPs or at least approximate IPs.

Recognize that it's not a left-right dual party pseudo democracy issue.

i get that shills are like a bad virus, but what i'm wondering is if there's a larger solution than just reversing the bad. what if a website can be made where shills can exist yet no matter what they do they can't harm the site. a system where anyone can exist. no banning. like some online version of non violence. something that doesn't fall to the same fate as the rest. an incorruptible system.

not saying i have such a thing figured out. but a vision like this can be a start of some kind, i suppose.

This.

Shills shill, no consequences.

Users call out shills - Bans ensue.

I come here only too laugh at you all.

I'm sad to see you go sir, I have enjoyed reading your content for many years :(.

I hope you will stay in touch if you do choose to pop in to reddit now and again.

I'm sad to see you go sir

Pure and utter Bullshit!

You are responsible for the undermining of this sub so just start telling the truth if you want this sub to survive. Once the current mods are gone, this sub may have a chance to regain its glory that it once was!

The wise people see the truth. That will never change young man!

I think the mod who acted unilateraly, removed all of their co-mods, and then re-added two mods who had been pushing partisan views for months undermined this sub.

You've been smoking too much dope man.

The top mod created and owned the sub to which they can to do as they please. You will be remembered as the Mod responsible for killing this sub! The community will never let this go regardless of your reasoning.

Reddit ruined you.

I use cannabis for my ulcerative colitis :(.

The top mod created and owned the sub to which they can to do as they please.

Also, that is not how reddit works anymore; and top moderators who act unilaterally and literally try to subvert the mod team can be removed- https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/wiki/top_mod_removal

You will be remembered as the Mod responsible for killing this sub!

The vote to switch the acting head mop to /u/axolotl_peyotl was unanimous without a single vote against.

I use it to get high :)

but seriously it weakens their mind control beams when I'm zonked.

who act unilaterally and literally try to subvert the mod team can be removed

You don't get it do you. The top mod owned the sub and choose to return it to its former state of greatness. So you are solely responsible for undermining that effort and this will never be forgotten. Users are pissed with your stance on this take over.

The vote to switch the acting head mop to /u/axolotl_peyotl [+1] was unanimous without a single vote against.

Of course the baby Mods will vote towards having them removed. Thats a no brainer. The community should be responsible who Mods this sub and you'll see the truth.

Again, you are responsible for killing this sub!!!

I'm confused as to why you are defending SC, who lied multiple times in the other thread about his actions as proven here (something the community was very upset about, which lead to multiple calls from users for him to be removed)- https://np.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6w5eah/regarding_the_upheaval_on_the_mod_team_last/dm5rwhu/?context=10000

There was an attempt to undermine and subvert this sub, and the mods stopped it with a unanimous vote. I'm not sure why you are trying to frame it as exactly the opposite, other than to sow discord for some strange reason.

I'm confused

That's very obvious.

Its very simple. It was SC's sub. You are only a short term guest and will remain a guest!

So, are you saying Sarah didn't lie about removing AP's perms?

Are you also saying mods can't vote to change their acting head mod?

The top mod owned the sub and choose to return it to its former state of greatness.

Yeah...no.

This link only refers to situations where the top mod is inactive on the sub but otherwise active on Reddit. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

This process only applies to removing top moderators who are inactive in a particular subreddit, but are otherwise active on the site

You are a dishonest person. The mod team has been locked for a while now because a few of you will not take the necessary steps to curb the brigading or even acknowledge the massive shilling the sub is under from astroturfing organizations.

When the few mods that were taking a stand against that took steps to reorganize the mod team to break the stalemate YOU immediately contacted your buddies on the admin team to stop the changes.

YOU will be remembered as the one whom let the shills take over this sub!

Are you van evading on an alt account?

I am not an alt of anyone.

But I won't lie, the atmosphere of this sub and other subs really keeps me from wanting to write more. Because I know anything I write, I'll get attacked and deliberately misunderstood like 100 times to smear me and derail the thread, and it's absolutely emotionally exhausting.

Indeed, being a mod presents similar challenges. Alas, I think both your writing and moderating to thwart those who seek to censor this subreddit are beneficial on the whole so I do hope they both continue :)

I'm not giving up forever. I'm just giving up on reddit. I'm done trying to save it. I may still post from time to time, but I have no more illusions this is going to turn around or get better. That's why we need a NEW reddit

I guess in some ways I share your jaded predisposition, I mean Alexis sets the tone for the platform after all :(- https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?q=antique+jetpack&amp;mfrom=&amp;mto=&amp;title=&amp;notitle=&amp;date=&amp;nofrom=&amp;noto=&amp;count=50&amp;sort=0&amp;file=&amp;docid=&amp;relid=0#searchresult

A new reddit based on the same code might work at the beginning but would soon also be infested by bots and agendas. It's the way reddit works at its core that promotes the propaganda etc. that's the problem.

Well ok sure I agree. But who is to say the same thing won't happen again? A new reddit may be fine for a while, then get bought out (it will be too tempting for the owners), and then again go to shit.

So the entire reliance on admins to keep things on the level is what is wrong with the system.

A new 'reddit' or something similar needs to be able to run on it's own without interference (apart from keeping servers up etc.).

Not everyone can be bought.

Astroturfing organizations only need to buy off enough people to tilt the decisions in their favour. It's almost never everyone.

If the site owner is not bought they can be banned when they start to shill and get caught. It is hard to shill while appearing organic. Often it takes years to start become credible. If all you do with a new account is argue a certain position in one subcategory it is almost obvious.

I'll miss your posts dude. I always appreciated seeing an r/conspiracy guy in lostgen, cuz that sub desperately needs some light in there.

Will someone please make a new reddit?

lol. Yeah come on guys. It's easy!

It's quite involved to run a website like Reddit. There's more to it than plopping the source code on a server

Yes. The next step is acquiring several million dollars of capital.

I got $5

Say something against the national consensus, and instead of people arguing the point you get a few arrogant fuckheads treating you like an idiot. They think being condescending makes them correct when they offer nothing but attitude.

Most people on here want to look smart, not really talk.

There's more to Reddit than just political subs (and yes, conspiracy is indeed a political sub because most of the commonly discussed conspiracies revolve around politics. Hell, a decent chunk of conspiracies are actually floated by politicians for cheap political gain, but I digress). While I do spend an unhealthy amount of time here and in other political subs, there's a whole ecosystem of fun subs to hang out in that you're missing out on.

Let me recommend /r/nonononoyes as a breather sub. They generally have some good videos.

I considered switching to voat myself but the v/conspiracy is basically a carbon copy of r/conspiracy. I feel like everyone on voat is also posting the same exact thing on Reddit.

Let's all go back to IRC

Or Usenet

A new Youtube too.

Well when net-neutrality is finally crushed, then all battles will be for nought if I understand the situation correctly.

youtube creators should host their own content and use external sites to take donations.

waaaaaaaah muh freeze peach

If anyone thinks the "leftist extremists" rule reddit you are sorely lacking in knowledge about the true left.

Centrist status quo rule reddit. I've not seen true leftists or leftist ideas outside the socialist subs. One or two here on r/conspiracy.

I call them pseudo-liberals.

Find different subreddits according to your interests, that's the beauty of reddit, not the big news/politics/drama/default subs.

Here's a list of some reddit alternatives already up and running:

1. Snapzu - Great design mixed with what seems to be a friendly and mature community. Really good content on a regular basis.

2. Hubski - Shares are used instead of voting to make things popular. I don't like how their front page shows month old things though.

3. Empeopled - Gives more voting power to experienced users, although I'm not sure if that's a good idea after what happened at Digg.

4. Hacker News - Lots of programming talk and tech talk. Hosted by a tech incubator so it makes sense about the content.

How does this have 3 to 1 comments to votes?

The WORLD is fucked up . . . you don't have means to leave the planet (if you do, please let me know).

You can check out any time you like but you can never leave!

http://www.subbmitt.com

The hobby subs are still good until they get political

It's true, the whole site and especially this sub is pretty much skullfucked. At this point I'm posting more on private Facebook groups then anywhere on here and I have zero of the problems I deal with here when it comes to disrespectful users, useful idiots and partisan shills.

Wow, you fought to collect all that karma, and for what?

I hear u bro. I hate this shitty website. I only stay for the entertaining conspiracies and Indian food recipes (r/indianfood) The rest is bullshit and circle jerking garbage. If you don't follow the narrative you get shit on. People hold fake internet points on a pedestal and conform their ideas to gain them, which is an extremely fucked up concept.

Good luck introducing new ideas or opinions to r/worldnews or any other default sub. This site is definitely fucked up beyond all repair.

I'm pretty sure it's time for all of us to unplug and take up a new productive hobby and bail on this cesspool.

The account you made isstill not deleted.

Tldr. He hasn't given upon reddit shitposf

hey now Reddit still has lolcats

Let me tell you, and ive been here a long time; readit is not fucked up or rigged. It is a place where people come to share ideas and mentally fuck each other. It is not rigged, your mental process is rigged... When people don't upvote your ideas it doesn't mean there is a conspiracy it just means you're intellectually lower class. Its not rigged its a free market place buddy, sorry.

"Intellectually lower class"

Its a real thing.

Oh, I'm sure you're the expert.

You're blind or a moron if you don't see its full of shills. Downvotes are often done by bots. "Intellectually lower class" lmao you really have to be joking

"Intellectually lower class" lmao you really have to be joking

Says the guy who blocks people he calls shills because he can't defend his accusations.

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

I was watching an OWS protest from 2011 earlier, not that I particularly supported them, but I didn't really disagree with them either. It was interesting that there was a large multi-racial crowd all chanting 'The People United, Will Never Be Divided', and now it's all violence and screams of 'NAZI!'or 'Terrorist' depending on if you support a particular side. Media are pumping lies and propaganda to fire up a minority of fools and making this happen, America didn't get stupid overnight. Nazi's ain't never gonna be a threat to anyone and violence solves nothing. Ask yourself, why would the media want a civil war in the US? It's probably going to happen and I hope the police can keep order, they might need some more toys and vastly increased powers to do it though.

So... Get this... Perhaps we need to play by their rules. We need to use their methods against them. Let's start playing dirty. Who else is with me. It's the only way to get the facts out. We are on dying ground here, so let's go all out. Do what you have to in order to get the word out.

By any means necessary.

Has anyone ever considered that this is what the internet was always supposed to be?

We live in a world where everything is a good idea until it is exploited. The infancy of the internet was the good idea, the golden age. Now people exploit the reliable information it provided by muddying the waters with disinformation.

The only possible outcome for everything is exploitation.

Hit the nail on the head. Everything gets corrupted/co-opted in its ascendency. Look at history, from towns that sprang up near the mines in the Old West. Bleed it dry make a buck. There was a brief glorious moment then the decline. For me, I'm reminded of my own experience listening to grunge-alternative 92-95. By the time I was old enough to love it the party was over. So many 3rd albums just sucked ass when shit became over produced. Then you end up with Creed which you actually miss when Nickelback comes along. All the while the music scene evolves and carries on.

because ShareBlue runs the site now but so few realize it.

Try posting factual negative information about major GOP billionaires and see how many downvotes and threats you get...

How much would hosting the server cost. If we can find someone to do the dirty work, I will bankroll what I can and we could crowdsource the rest.

Essentially. I can't promise I won't ban all the normies though.

You guys are doing business!

Keep the faith! Not in Reddit per se, but in the majority of people's ability to see through the bs. The lady doth protest too much is a good way to look at it.

Who ran Reddit before ShareBlue existed?

Coincidentally, media, TV and movies are done, too.

I mean they've been owned by the industrial military elite since forever.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

You host it. Youll find it isnt easy. Reddit voat and any clones made on the same source code all have the same problems. Upvotes are bullshit complete bullshit and easily bought and manipulated.

WAAHHHGGF MOMMY THEY WONT AGREE WITH ME

Don't let the door hit you on your way out lmfao

There is plenty of evidence out there about astroturfing organizations. I have compiled a few links.

There is a lot of info on the astroturfing organizations Correct the Record, ShareBlue and Media Matters. Their official mission statements that are publicly available state their intent to use propaganda for the DNC on the web and on social media such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This implies the use of social community opinion management software and other tools.

Task force will help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates

Hillary Clinton PAC Spends $1 Million "Correcting" People Online And Reddit Is Furious

Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Podesta meets with super PACS (Priorities USA and CTR) at law firm (Perkins Coie LLP.)

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

For further reading I would suggest these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

How reddit is being manipulated

Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200

Reddit is Being Manipulated by Professional Shills Every Day

Guy makes short video where he explains that he has bought upvotes for his submission on /r/videos, submission has 20k+ upvotes before moderators deletes it to hide the incident

HOW THEY MAKE FAKE NEWS AND MANIPULATE REDDIT

How We Hacked Reddit to Generate 5 Million Media Impressions in 3 days

An Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

From this Oxford research paper on astroturfing:

There is no doubt that individual social media users can spread hate speech, troll other users, or set up automated political communication campaigns. Unfortunately, this is also an organized phenomenon, with major governments and political parties dedicating significant resources towards the use of social media for public opinion manipulation.

... In many countries, political actors have no reported ability to field social media campaigns. In some countries, one or two known political actors occasionally use social media for political messaging, and in a few other countries there are multiple government agencies, political parties, or civil society groups organizing trolling and fake news campaigns.

Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8

I posted this in another thread about /r/MarchAgainstTrump but it fits /r/politics too, I'll recap

/r/MarchAgainstTrump uses bots to push posts and submissions as evidenced in these links.

More people need to be informed of these kinds of organizations.

These are a few examples:

• Evidence of MarchAgainstTrump moderator using 5 bot accounts to post almost 5000 articles to their sub in under 2 months
• 100% bombproof evidence of massive botting in /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• r/MarchAgainstTrump : out of the top 100 submissions for the month, 32 are from suspended or deleted accounts. 39 are from currently active bots.
• Manipulation, automation, and shenanigans are killing reddit. For example r/MarchAgainstTrump
• I'm heavily involved in the anti-Trump community on reddit, and I believe /r/MarchAgainstTrump needs to be stopped. Vote manipulation, botting, ban evasion, etc. Reddit needs to nuke that sub.
• More evidence of shenanigans by /r/MarchAgainstTrump
• A real-time illustration of gaming the #1 hot thread using r/MarchAgainstTrump as an example
• Even more proof that /r/MarchAgainstTrump is vote botting, courtesy of /u/CleanBaldy
• MarchAgainstTrump drops a 'T' from their name and creates new sub to evade /r/all filters. Hits front page with 26 subscribers. Reddit admins when will you openly address this problem?
• Are /r/MarchAgainstTrump and /r/esist cut from the same cloth?
• The Admins censor T_D for "spamming " the front page but /r/MarchAgainstTrump gets away with fucking retarded Shit posts and posts that are against Reddit ToS. Shit like this is killing this site.
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump is both exploiting the Portland tragedy for subscribers and claiming credit for a GoFundMe they have nothing to do with
• A 20 day old account with only 4 posts all on MAT (two have hit front page). This is its first post. They aren't even trying to hide the fact they are using bots.
• MAT is doing more suspicious shit
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump at it again with verified fake news
• r/MarchAgainstTrump has thread about reporter claiming Trump never visited hospital of shooting victim reach r/all, then locks thread after 2 hours to prevent people from commenting that the image is in fact false and the reporter made a retraction
• Guess what? Barawo33 did it yet again. Locked post with only his comment in order to gain karma in his BS sub
• r/MarchForTrump isn't even trying to hide how fake their upvotes are
• /r/MarchAgainstTrump moderators remove comments showing Acosta issued a correction in order to further their narrative
• New Anti-Trump sub "march agains trump" with 26 subscribers has a post at 764 post karma. Currently its over 2000 post karma

Now, several more botting anti-Trump subs have surfaced with nothing being done about them from the admins.

Lol I aint readin' any of that shit idgaf. find a new website if you actually care that much for this pathetic essay

You cement your position as a shitposter. If you don't give a fuck then don't open your mouth in the first place.

Worth it for me tbh to see u type up all that dumb shit lmao

It's a copypasta, they post it whenever someone tries to cast doubt on the idea that online shills are a real thing.

I've recently taken a hiatus from alot of the more left/right focused battle subs and even some of these types and stuck primarily to the gaming/TV show subs and it's been a much needed break. There's not a neutral ground for most discussions anymore, so I've just found different discussions to participate in.

The problem is that TPTB will be quicker to infiltrate any new site.

I think it took them so long for Reddit (et al) because they didn't understand how important it was/would become. When they finally did realize that, they needed to come up with a plan. So, now they have a plan in place for any subsequent Reddits. :/

"This website is done."

proceeds to post dozens and dozens of comments on own paper while simultaneously commenting in multiple other threads on website

K. Bye.

Reddit is going to be replaced by something better soon.

Anyone look into Steemit?

https://steemit.com/

Everything is on every other platform. Nothing is organic anymore. It's tainted

I only use Reddit for entertainment, it was pretty clear on my first day what was up around here

Same here, I don't come here (reddit in general, not the conspiracy sub) for politics. There are plenty of subs I subbed for entertainment.

Can't we make a bot that shows the karma and age of the accounts. That could be a way to expose shills.

Thank you for posting this. I have felt this way about Reddit too. This sub feels like the last bastion of free expression on here. Long live r/conspiracy

I was banned for a comment saying

"r/im14andthisisdeep"

That's literally all it said. I had to appeal to get unbanned. Apparently mocking OPs for not posting quality content is worthy of a ban, meanwhile there are hundreds of people posting literal shit who aren't getting the same treatment.

This place is definitely NOT a bastion of free speech.

You aren't meant to read the main subs. Read the good subs.

I don't know why people assume that you can just make a new site that catches on without it being taken from you..

What we are controlled by is no longer governed by ethics, or morality. Without question.

The problem with Reddit is in the design. If you reproduce the existing site you're going to end up with the same problems. The problems are: upvoting/downvoting, anonymity, and karma. Get rid of all those things and a Reddit-like site might work. Otherwise, it's doomed to the same fate as the current Reddit.

I wish internet point systems for individual comments would just go away completely. That have a lot of downsides while adding very little value to discussions.

I don't think you will.

In case you do.

Go into the real world now and do what you've been trying to do here. That's how you spread truth.

Trying to educate people on internet forums is mostly a waste of time, if the intention is to teach them. Most don't want to learn, just an experience. Self learning is probably the main purposeful goal of web forums. Some times lessons repeat. Sometimes people get lucky.

I think what helps are improved web search tools. A radical change would be a way to access the crawlers of internet data. Revealing in real time, what's actually going on, with say, corporate power users of the web.

There's just more sifting of data. Bound to happen as the web grows. We just get better at searching. As you learn, things get more nuanced and complicated. If we're that lucky.

I think you're looking for Voat or 4chan or some onion site. There is no truth to be found at reddit.

Sounds like you want to control the flow of information on the internet, with the way you talk. We might be better off if you just leave.

The rest of us are doing just fine. There is an information war, and you can win if you just try. Stop trying to kill Reddit please.

Voat already exists.

Specially r/theRedPill is made to ruin and trick people

basically you gotta start lurking in the non administrated forums and accept all the crazy people with their sick posts. 4chan is full of some sick crap, but its open to everyones ideas and there is a wealth of unadulterated opinions which I find very honest.

I wholeheartedly agree. Abondon ship. We need a better ship.

Please leave then

You've always written some good posts Mag, it would be a shame if you pulled out from this site. I do still think there is hope. Especially on some smaller subs there are still plenty of amazing discussions going on. Even r/conspiracy has not yet been completely infiltrated. Yes there is a lot of noise, yes it's a battleground in a sense, but there is still plenty of interesting threads of conversation. Nearly every thread will have paid-for comments and paid provocateurs, but if you're used to it you can get used to just tuning that out.

But to be fair, I do suggest that people posting things here should also post them somewhere else, like a blog or general website. Especially quality posts - and you definitely have made some high quality posts, as have many others. I suggest making your own site/blog. I have done so myself (link to site - embraceyourexperience.com) , I haven't been updating it much recently due to the lack of time but the future may bring more content to it (it's not strictly conspiracy related, more alternative psychology, esoteric/metaphysical thought, spirituality and simply basic ideas on how to find inner peace, compassion and spread it, which I think is one of the fundamentals of humanity's ability to be free from external control and sociopaths coming and staying in power - a united, empathic and internally fulfilled populace cannot be controlled, it's just not possible... you cannot create hate when peace is the norm).

Anyway, with the amount of stuff your write here, you should probably have created your own site ages ago. But you can still continue posting here and keeping the dream alive. If everyone that makes quality content simply disappears, Reddit truly is going to die. Now it's more like a harsh battleground (on the main subs at least, some smaller subs can be amazing - like CST for example imho).

Creating a new Reddit is going to be difficult. This is where the people will stay. If you want an audience to spread the awareness this is the place to be. It was obvious Reddit was going to be infiltrated because it has grown so popular. This is destined to happen to all forums and sites that have millions of visits per day. Reddit is huge, it's absolutely one of the most popular websites, so it's not a surprise this is happening. I agree that there should be a new place, but I do still think that from time to time people should post some good stuff here as well, simply to be the light in the darkness - and that light is what Reddit so desperately needs right now.

Stay well man. If you truly feel it's done for you here, then maybe find another active forum + start your own site/blog, or perhaps simply post on smaller, more sane and less controlled subs. It's going to be a while before a new Reddit can appear (and become populated to this degree - but who knows maybe it can happen).

Don't let the Flat Earth hit you on the way out.

Reddit is just a symptom of the sick state of everything lately. Is there anything that hasn't been corrupted?

Pre 20th century literature, as long as you stay away from the English departments at popular universities.

Voat.co

First of all you're wrong about reddit being 90% true...did you see the post with the guy and his dog that bought upvotes to get to the front page of r/videos? Reddit is the piece of shit father who has a child, runs from responsibility and failes to pay child support....or the murry povich of websites.

User subreddits are the future brother.

De Sharken de jumpent

Voat is cool

Meh, right now it's only suitable for people with very specific political obsessions. I'm not the easily offended type but I don't enjoy seeing comments about race/gender shoehorned into so many unrelated discussions. Just gets boring and annoying after a while.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself engaging in much more conversation with people IRL these days, spending less time on reddit has been quite good and given me a lot of hope for Millenials and iGen.

In general I hope the trend is towards Balkanization, decentralization, and IRL communities forming to actively create alternative presents/futures.

The circlejerk was strong even before the astroturfing. We need active reality creators, information sharing can be helpful for that but reddit has never been a good platform for actualization.

There's really only 3 subs I visit any more here, I have unsubscribed to just about everything else. It's pure garbage.

My days are definitely numbered here as well.

This is my second Reddit life. I punched out about a year ago after a three stint because of the changes. Got back in about 3-4 months ago....don't know why I thought it would've gotten better! It didn't BTW.

ShareBlue runs /r/conspiracy?

Where's all the pro-Hillary posts making it to the top of /r/conspiracy?

Where's ANY pro-Hillary post?

Why are there regular pro-Trump posts in the top 25 of /r/conspiracy?

See voat dot co.

Good, go away and take td and all the detriment that lives in it with you

Somebody make a blockchain powered reddit with microtipping and full transparency in how upvotes etc are calculated. I'd gladly tip some of you guys directly instead of paying for reddit fucking gold.

Maybe it's time, reddit isn't pushing my buttons either, lately.

I've been lurking a bit these past few months and the forum sliding is absurd. Shills are lame as ever though (always a good thing). My guess is ShitBlue is rotating employees from staying to long here, lest they go native tinfoil.

Anyway, a little change would be good. I'll gladly contribute via crypto to costs for a new venture such as this, but it would be best if everyone also used crypto and TOR over VPNs in order to register and run the site.

Would be bad idea to create a conspiracy/free speech site completely "naked" IMO.

Steem is pretty close to that

Is that the ethereum thing?

Looks like Steem is a currency too https://steemit.com/faq.html

I'm working on something like that, check out summary www.raddi.net (and maybe also /r/raddi).

To be honest the up/downvote system is broken. I would think an upvote only system, or a system where you can sort by most viewed, would be best. Voat has no good mobile app, and 90% of my Redditing is done on mobile. What Reddit did that was revolutionary is the way the forums are organized by subs and that the posts have a comments section which is organized. Most other forums still use this old ass confusing format from the 90s. Where you click on a thread and it's just a bunch of comments in chronological order. Whereas Reddit makes it easier to follow a conversation cause you can comment on a comment.

Go to steemit. It's a social media platform where people get paid in cryptocurrency with upvotes. It usually means better content with less ads.

I think it will really take off when it's not just filled with people that are complaining about the status quo, but when steemit becomes the status quo and people can talk about stuff that matters.

Edit: was open source: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6xj7ru/reddits_main_code_is_no_longer_opensource/

we-who? hopefully good new places to have real discussions! :)

Question: What happens if the new platforms become taken over/coopted by the types of people you complain about? I've seen many Youtubers and people from Twitter talking about leaving the platforms and going to alternative sites and everything. That's all well and fine for now but if those platforms become popular it will bring the same types of people into those places and we'll be right back to where we are now. While I respect your ideas I don't know if abandoning the site is entirely the only possibility. Something has to change. Something significant. I wouldn't know where to start though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EffortPost/comments/1r5chu/effort_post_can_users_address_policy_through_the/

This came from three years ago. It sounds interesting. Don't know if it would work.

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Fomenting extremist violence on the front page everyday?

What subs are you subscribed to, because I see nothing of the sort.

Do you mean stuff like this?

http://www.businessinsider.com/national-rifle-association-ad-call-to-violence-2017-6

I tried making another reddit. My programmer fucked me over because he didn't know how to do it and made me wait months for nothing.

well lets keep this post alive and active because i completely agree that its a problem. problems dont get solved unless we talk and take acton. so what can we do to stay here? if we cant stay here, what is the best way to form a new place to converse? i suck at computers so i dont know if its possible but could we somehow link a new app built just for us to talk in? as new users join they just have to verify with a pic of them just like reddit.

Show me where I said conspiracies are fake. Oh, that's right; you can't.

Your conspiracy that anyone who disagrees with your narrative is getting paid for it, yes, I don't agree.

Really appreciate your contributions today, just to let you know.

what concern trolling is.

I think it means 'disagrees with right-wing rhetoric'.

But how do I get that sweet sweet karma? http://imgur.com/accdcZG

not for normies though.

Well when net-neutrality is finally crushed, then all battles will be for nought if I understand the situation correctly.

If the site owner is not bought they can be banned when they start to shill and get caught. It is hard to shill while appearing organic. Often it takes years to start become credible. If all you do with a new account is argue a certain position in one subcategory it is almost obvious.

Steem is pretty close to that

I'm working on something like that, check out summary www.raddi.net (and maybe also /r/raddi).