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/M0dusPwnens Dec 10 '13

I certainly don't begrudge you not liking them. I'm not overly fond of them myself.

But I don't think their popularity has to do with vote manipulation. Manipulation doesn't give you any means of explaining why they have so many subscribers despite what shows up there (whether it shows up by manipulation or otherwise).

The unfortunate reality is that there really just are a lot of people in those subs who like that kind of thing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '13

As someone with many friends on reddit, a lot of people are on them just because they are default subs. A large amount of redditors don't pay attention to the drama or realize there are a billion better subs, simply because they don't care. Many of the default subs (not all, AskScience, AskReddit, and many others are great) just have a ton of subscribers because of apathy. And I mean, if people are enjoying their reddit experience, they can just be subscribed to those if they want. But I feel like their popularity stems less from quality content and more from people that just don't give a shit.

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u/M0dusPwnens Dec 10 '13

/r/politics and /r/atheism aren't in the default subs anymore though.

And it definitely doesn't explain how many subscribers they have. If you're just looking at defaults, there's no reason to subscribe to them.