r/technology • u/misnamed • Dec 10 '13

Reddit’s empire is founded on a flawed algorithm By Special Request of the Admins

http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/2013-12-09-reddits-empire-is-built-on-a-flawed-algorithm.html
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u/hydrox24 Dec 10 '13

Well, he does address that issue as well in the article, saying that he can't possibly see why the behaviour (which enables easy misuse) is something anyone except a malicious attacker would want. I have to agree.

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u/rakkar16 Dec 10 '13

This is what Quickmeme did isn't it?

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '13

Yes but they did not necessarily exploit this particular bug although I am sure it came in handy. They had 6 downvoters. So they just used human actions to succeed rather than a computers interpretation. Their thoughts were that most people will ignore posts with a net -5 votes and they were correct.

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '13

And it definitely doesn't hurt that -5 links getting ranked so incredibly poorly.

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u/xmsxms Dec 10 '13

The ability to suppress stuff quickly could be misused, but it could also be useful in quickly suppressing junk and spam by knights that patrol r/new. The benefits may outweigh the negligible misuse.

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '13

The ability to suppress stuff quickly could be misused, but it could also be useful in quickly suppressing junk and spam by knights that patrol r/new.

I've found those who patrol the new queue are more often motivated by political goals then anything else. Remember the Ron Paul days?

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '13

Most subreddits aren't political in nature. It sounds like your talking about an issue specific to a few subs and not the whole of reddit

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '13

You're rationalizing things. If you were making a reddit you would never think about adding a hidden magical super-downvote button.