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Monday’s Reddit Digest—upvotes for cash

Learn about how spammers are trying—and failing—to buy influence on the social news site.

 

Kevin Morris

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 12, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 8:13 pm CDT

Want to read Reddit but don’t have the time? Our daily Reddit Digest highlights the most interesting or important discussions from around the social news site—every morning.

  • Are spammers buying upvotes? Redditor The3rdWorld has collected evidence that seems to prove so. Interestingly, the scams hardly ever seem to work. “Reddit can be gamed, but it takes a lot of intelligence and a lot of work,” Gimli_The_Dwarf writes. “It’s kind of like steering the Titanic – you can’t just yank the wheel over, you have to coax it. (/r/theoryofreddit)

  • Remember Lucas Gonzalez, the three-year-old with a rare blood disease? Reddit raised about $50,000 so his family wouldn’t go broke paying for costs related to his treatment. On Wednesday, he gets his bone marrow transplant. r/Assistance moderator backpackwayne says he’ll launch a special update thread on Wednesday. (/r/Assistance)

  • Everyone’s favorite Reddit leak scandal continued over the weekend. That’s right: The Sushileaks are back. There are private chat logs released in the latest dump: In the first, two so-called “power users” discuss how to deal with Reddit’s favorite bogeyman, r/ShitRedditSays. In the second, moderators discuss tools for “sniffing” an alleged spammer’s IP address. (/r/SubredditDrama)

  • Why do television screens emanate a blue light? (/r/askscience)

  • Redditor cheesesteak22’s parked car was hit by a hit-and-run drunk driver. Unfortunately for the drunk, he left a piece of his car behind. But what was it? And what type of car did it belong to? Cheesesteak22 took a picture of the mystery part and posted it to Reddit. Within four hours he had his answer: it was “a tension strut off a Chrysler 300, dodge charger, dodge magnum, or dodge challenger,” redditor Sousy writes. He or she adds: ” I’m a Chrysler jeep dodge technician, I’m pretty sure its this part because we replace them fairly often. If its what I think it is then he probably didn’t make it very far.” (/r/AskReddit)

  • Here’s an interesting AMA from the weekend: “IAmA Employee of a state lottery with intimate knowledge of the industry.” How easy would it be to game the system from the inside? “The lottery industry operates like Las Vegas … It’s virtually impossible to ‘rig’ a drawing or generate a winning wager post-draw without collusion on the part of at least five or six people. And even then, it would take a miracle to get past audits, system checks, etc.” (/r/IAmA)

Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments!

Image by mehul.antani

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*First Published: Mar 12, 2012, 10:40 am CDT