Reddit Deceived Me
October 13th, 2007 by MarkI’ve recently discovered that all the comments I’ve made on Reddit.com for over a month have been invisible to the rest of the world. I had no idea, though, because reddit makes it look like they’re visible by displaying them to me while I’m logged in.
If you click through to Zooomr, I’ve set up some portals on the picture that illustrate what I’m talking about. On the left browser, I’m logged in as “xiaoma”, and my comment is visible. On the right side, I’m not logged in, and my comment is mysteriously missing.
I knew I’d been spending a bit much time reading and “participating” in reddit comment threads recently… but when I found out that all that time was spent in vain, it felt like I’d been punched in the gut. All this time I thought I was engaging with a discussion with netizens the world over, but instead, I’ve been typing in a vacuum.
Reddit, I used to be your biggest fan, but now I feel unclean even linking to you. Either your code is buggy, or you banned my account (except for my submission that hit #1). I can’t even fathom why my account would have been gagged, either. I’ve been reading through my comment history and both less profane and more thought out than most of what I see in the comment threads. You need look no further than the profane comment right below mine that wasn’t censored to see what I’m talking about.
Update 10/13/2007: It appears that Reddit is up to some other kinds of “covert” censorship.
Update 10/14/2007: My comments have mysteriously re-appeared, and this story has equally mysteriously been deleted from Reddit.
Update 10/21/2007: Now, reddit shows all my comments as “deleted”… unless I’m logged in, in which case it looks like nothing’s wrong. This whole business of trying to deceive the user is ridiculous.
Update 10/31/2007: The comments are visible again.
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October 13th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
That’s funny. Especially considering how holier than thou reddit is about Digg pulling stories that reveal leaked source code.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Dude that is f’cking weird. I can’t imagine they would go trough all the trouble to cover up your comments when they could just ban you and get it over with. But that’s one hell of an inconceivable bug.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Darin, I’m convinced it’s no bug. I made a new account, called gaggedbythealien, and nothing I’ve posted under that one show up either. Go to this account and click the permalink of any of the comments under it. They all turn up blank. Then try looking for the comments in the main comments thread… they’re invisible.
http://reddit.com/user/gaggedbythealien/
I wonder how many people out there realize Reddit does this kind of covert censorship. Oh and I almost forgot– don’t even bother voting up this story on Reddit. It’s probably filtered out, too.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Did you say anything that they would want to censor? I can’t figure out even why they would have any reason to censor you — the motive.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:05 am
No, I didn’t. All I can think of is that maybe they’re censoring a whole IP block, or maybe a user who disagreed with me reported me rather than just downmodding me.
Either way, it’s not very honest to let me think I was participating while I was actually being filtered out.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Did you contact them about it yet?
October 14th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I did contact them, but they haven’t responded. I’m not really holding out for a answer…
October 18th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I just checked and I see everything. That’s totally strange. Maybe they filter the comments that don’t have enough votes for guest users who don’t have accounts. Anyways, I’m not surprised. They probably got complaints from someone at some point. Reddit was bought out wasn’t it? Aaron Swatz was fired.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
No, no. It’s nothing like that, Range. Comments are visible until they go under -4. Even in that case, they still show up if you go directly to the comment URL.
I had been commenting regularly for months before they started being hidden, and they were hidden from other logged-in users. Look at the updates at the end of this post. I mentioned the mysterious return of the comments (and simultaneous mysterious deletion of this reddit story).
October 21st, 2007 at 10:59 pm
As of today, reddit shows all my comments as “deleted”… unless I’m logged in, in which case it looks like nothing’s wrong. This whole business of trying to deceive the user is ridiculous.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
Hi GaggedByheAlien,
The problem you are running into is that for some reason some people have hit the report link on some of your comments, so you’ve been tagged as a spammer, and any accounts made from your IP address will also behave this way. The behaviors that you see are the way reddit blocks spammers. If you are not shilling products or doing something spammy in your comments (I can’t see them), then you should contact the devs and tell them that you have been improperly tagged as a spammer and ask them to fix your account. spez (one of the folks who runs the site) tends to be very good about fixing this if people use the feedback system, I have seen a number of reports of people who inadvertently got tagged as spammers that he fixed. If they don’t respond, I’d try contacting them again, I know they’re bust and some of my feedback has been dropped sometimes. Unfortunately some people abuse/misuse the report button, so this comes up sometimes. Anyway, if you use this link you should be able to get your account fixed:
http://reddit.com/feedback
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:08 am
I did contact Reddit, but haven’t received any sort of reply.
I certainly didn’t use my account for spam or anything like that, but I suppose someone could have reported me simply because of an opposing view-point. You can see some of my comments via the screenshots linked in the 10/21/2007 update to this post.
The real issue, though, is why is Reddit using such a deceptive system? I should at least be alerted when a post of mine is reported. Letting me comment in vain for over a month is indefensible from an ethical standpoint, especially considering that they were earning add revenue from my usage while I was mislead.