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0 pointstomhoward2y ago0 comments

First, a couple of claims of fact to correct:

- Reddit, HN, X/Twitter, Instagram, plenty of other sites have no bans on the kind of usage of multiple accounts that the Reddit founders were doing. Plenty of people have multiple accounts for all kinds of different purposes and nobody considers it wrong. The kind of sockpuppeting/astroturfing/self-posting/ringvoting that is banned on social sites is very different, and banned for very different reasons, vs. the early Reddit conduct.

- 'In what universe is that "no goverment has expressed concern" when they went full end of privacy over it?' - "...over it" is a complete falsehood and another sign you're on weak ground. Some governments have proposed identity requirements on social media platforms but for reasons that have nothing to do with anything the Reddit founders did for a few weeks in 2005.

- "it is wrong entirely based on the fact its deceitful. And lies are inherently wrong" - As I wrote elsewhere, we all accept that mistruths can be benign, beneficial or funny in some circumstances; white lies, pranks, jokes, stunts, hacks. It all comes back to who was harmed, and you still can't name a case of someone who was harmed by what Reddit did, you've only suggested hypotheticals and inferences.

I've certainly spent enough time in this discussion, and I know it's a bad look on HN to perpetuate tit-for-tat arguments, so I'm certainly out. When I engage in a lengthy discussion like this, which I don't do often, it's to try and figure out what I'm missing about a topic - i.e., what has someone thought of about this that I haven't thought of?

What I see in some of your comments is at least borderline fulmination, which is in breach of the HN guidelines. I also see in this and other of your comments, as well as those from others taking the same position in the subthread, several cases of the beg-the-question fallacy: that is, trying to prove that this act was something egregious by assuming it was egregious, and using words that necessarily characterise it as the worst kind of transgression, when the severity of the transgression is the very thing that's in question.

The right way to discuss this topic is to explore exactly what kind of deception was committed and who was actually harmed by it, but I'm just seeing repeated insistences that we accept that this was a terrible act, without any earnest effort to demonstrate it.

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Arkhaine_kupo2y ago

> Reddit, HN, X/Twitter, Instagram, plenty of other sites have no bans on the kind of usage of multiple accounts that the Reddit founders were doing.

Reddit founders were posting, commenting and using various accounts. It all fits astroturning and sockpuppeting. Again if they wanted to just have content there is 0 reason to not disclose they are admins. They pretended it was organic for a reason.

> Some governments have proposed identity requirements on social media platforms but for reasons that have nothing to do with anything the Reddit founders did for a few weeks in 2005.

Stopping bots astrofurning (more i the political context) is a reason given both in US and UK proposals. So yeah goverments have mentioned "people pretending to be more than they are" as a reason. You can be extremely nitpicky and pretend that it doesn't cover this case, but its certainly in the intention of the law.

> you still can't name a case of someone who was harmed by what Reddit did

Every other forum that provided a similar service. From niche forums, that were gobbled up by reddit, to other digg alternatives. Reddit swallowed communities with insane growth, all predicated on fake engagement. If you make a hoodie brand and buy 10,000 followers on instagram and people think you are popular and you jump over other brands who are doing a better job, you have lied and deprived people from finding those other brands that had a better product.

> The right way to discuss this topic is to explore exactly what kind of deception was committed and who was actually harmed by it

The deception was non transparent content, predicated on the expectations of the audience, intended to portray the product as more popular than it is. This lie vulnerates the predicate of honesty of the optimal market hypothesis which is the basis of the modern market economy. The people who were harmed where thus direct competitors and future consumers because those are the intended parties of the optimal market hypothesis.

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