[kfoley]

Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level.

I posted a comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs. Later that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word in reply to the same article on Reddit.

I still have no idea why someone would do that. I thought at first it was some kind of karma farming operation but the post history of the Reddit user didn't really fit that profile. Plus,it seems like r/emacs would be a really poor choice for that.

I've always been curious to know why someone would do something like this. It's interesting to read about it happening on a way larger scale.

[cortesoft]

There was a Reddit bot a few years ago (aptly named 'trappedinreddit') that would automatically post the previous top comment on reposts. Predictably, those comments would get upvoted again, and trappedinreddit would end up with the top comment on most posts. It lasted a few months before the bot was outed and it went away.

[worker767424]

Sweet, sweet karma. And then you go sell the account.

[okamiueru]

Interesting. Do you know what the marked value is for karma? Is the value tied to something practical, e.g. easier to pass spam filters with an account?

[StellarTabi]

Karma? It doesn't get more valuable after you have enough to get you past the "you didn't register your account yesterday" type automod filters. Anyone buying accounts for "huge karma" didn't fully research how Reddit works. If you have low karma in one specific sub (because you are trolling or spamming), no amount of shameless repost karma in r/funny will protect from the "you are posting too frequently" message you'll only get in the sub you are getting downvoted in.

Accounts that will likely get big offers will have a large number of followers, mod large subreddits or targeted subreddits.

Having an active account before the 2016 Russia thing is also worth something. When you want to spread misinformation or do shill marketing, it helps a lot to see any of the following when checking a user's Reddit profile:

- the user didn't register a month ago.

- the user didn't register just to talk exclusively on this subject/product.

- the user registered before Russia's IRA became active on Reddit.

- the user didn't stop exclusively participating in porn or sports subreddits just to make this comment.

- the user is writing enough quality comments that they don't feel compelled to delete most, if not all, of them.

- the user is not making contradictory claims (there is a famous example of someone claiming to be a cis woman in computers who had clearly cis male comments in several cis male oriented subreddits, one of them called something like "semen rentension". They were called out.

- the user posts in subreddits that are on good terms with the subreddit we found their suspicious comment in.

Source: I'm a Reddit moderator and work at a marketing startup.

[numpad0]

I assume the actual value would be in history of an account as a whole, and karma is a simplified explanation.

There’s no easy way to identify comments on the Internet as stolen, so with enough dedication it’ll be possible to create a system that generate profiles with years worth of life by just mishmashing elements. That will help bots pass spam filter developer on top of existing filter itself.

[livre]

Many subreddits automatically delete posts or comments from users with low karma. Also people trust users with older accounts and a good amount of karma more than new users or people with low karma.

[dredmorbius]

Keep in mind this is either a subreddit or Automoderator setting.

Subs can limit posts to users with some minimal karma or age. Typically this still permits comment, though harvesting comment karma is then incentivised.

Automoderator, a rule-driven automated moderation tool, can actively interact with posts and comments based on various criteria, including automatically holding or removing posts or comments, messaging submitters, and other actions. This is heavily used on highly-active subs, and pretty well documented.

[cortesoft]

Do many people on Reddit actually check an account history before deciding whether to upvote or downvote something?

[livre]

The power users do, moderators do, those obsessed with reposters and bots too but I don't think the majority cares enough to check that. Most just follow the initial votes, so if the users who were early decided it was worth upvoting the rest of the people will generally just follow along. I think that's why selling votes is also profitable, you can get your post to the frontpage if it is good enough and you bought a few hundred early upvotes.

[DoubleGlazing]

Happened to a friend of mine. He'd posted an article on a website devoted to a specific form of fluid dynamics discussion. This was a site with less than 50 active users.

Someone submitted the article (edited to sound more academic) to a journal - and with extra authors added. The journal almost published it, but they didn't because at the last minute one of their reviewers felt they recognized the content as having been published before.

I think the moral of the story is that some people are up to no good and we'll never understand why.

[whatshisface]

Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level. There was a Reddit bot a few years ago (aptly named 'trappedinreddit') that would automatically post the previous top comment on reposts. I bet it was Reddit internal bots. That process is an order of magnitude faster on Reddit than control-v.

[niels_bom]

Is this a meta-joke? 4h ago somebody posted your exact first sentence. :-/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26604648

[boogies]

(and second, third, and almost exact fourth)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605151

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26606165

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605093

[u801e]

Are you making an attempt at humor or are you just copying and pasting parts of comments to make your own comment?

[AussieWog93]

Given the context, it's clearly a joke. Pretty clever and funny too, IMO.

[tinus_hn]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605151

Is this some bizarre coincidence?

[Kpourdeilami]

OP is just trying to be funny but it seems like it confused a lot of people

[sjfidsfkds]

> I bet it was Reddit internal bots.

This is a compelling idea, but I think they wouldn’t be so obvious about it.

[aero-glide2]

>specific form of fluid dynamics discussion I've been searching for niche forums such as this, if you don't mind, which forum was that?

[b112]

Could be for a US H1-B VISA. Skilled category counts things like published works...

[jancsika]

> I still have no idea why someone would do that.

It's a fundamental way to learn.

E.g., suppose people tell me I'm a real funny person. Let me test that.

1. I remember a joke from a professional funny person widely considered to be one of the best.

2. I tell that joke to the people who told me I'm a real funny person.

3. I measure the laughter I get.

If the laughter is different-- e.g., if the people tell me this is by far the funniest thing I've ever said, then I know I've got a lot more to learn about jokes. On the other hand, if it's the same amount of laughter I usually get, perhaps I've got a real talent here.

Of course, it could be these are just close friends and they are primed to think anything I say is funny. Nevertheless, just the act of telling that joke as if it were my own gives me the experience of the timing and emphasis of that comic. It's a gain of knowledge.

That process is an order of magnitude faster on Reddit with control-v. Who know, maybe it even makes that person a bit more cynical about "karma" points. If so, they've at least become a less naive person.

[m463]

(slightly off-topic)

When I was young, all my jokes were from somewhere else (101 funny jokes!) and people thought they were funny. My problem was remembering them.

Nowadays everybody has seen all the good ones ("Bring me my brown pants!")

So now the problem with telling jokes from a "professional funny person" is that if you've heard it before, chances are others have too and you're getting polite laughter.

[mannykannot]

Copying a post is completely unlike this. There is nothing in doing so that compares to improving one's delivery of a joke.

[nchelluri]

I understand what you are saying about copying someone to learn. I'm just not sure I agree it applies to digital media or bits especially in the exact same context (in response to the same article).

[imagica]

Retelling helps learning a lot more than copying verbatim.

[personlurking]

I used to have a niche blog that was an off-shoot of a more popular blog I did within the same general area of knowledge. I would put in many, many hours doing deep dives into foreign historical archives and translating what I found into English for my niche blog.

I would also read any MSM news in English that came out about the general topic. I would often find pieces of my research inserted into these articles, by different outlets and different authors. Never any credit given. Sometimes the entire article was centered around something I'd uncovered, and published 4-5 days after posting it in my blog.

[easton]

I once found a link on reddit that I had posted on HN, and in it, several people had word for word copied comments from the HN thread without attribution. I presumed it was karma farming too, since they had gotten a lot of upvotes but not a lot of responses. reddit's anti-evil team didn't though, so I guess it was just people that wanted to "retweet".

[dylan604]

Could it be an attempt to at legitimacy to fake accounts so they seem less fake on cursory glances? Using these accounts to support that the profile they are really trying to use is not fake?

[sokoloff]

That seems like so much more pointless effort (to find a good comment about a topic, find the right subreddit, and post it) as compared to actually just wasting time on Reddit on some topic that you’re actually interested in.

[nerdponx]

This is always an issue on Reddit.

[brendoelfrendo]

It's almost always bot accounts. Reddit is decent at catching bots so the botters copy legitimate comments, build a post history, and then switch to scamming or spamming after the account has some credibility.

[duxup]

>Reddit is decent at catching bots

I don't know about that so much. I'm seeing a lot more straight up spam on reddit that looks easy to spot, but I think reddit gave up or something...

[brendoelfrendo]

Totally possible. Maybe enough people figured out how to game their detection so they gave up, or if it was so gameable in the first place it was never as good as I'm remembering.

[FDSGSG]

>Reddit is decent at catching bots

I don't think you've tried to bot reddit.

[luckylion]

Did it make sense in the thread on reddit?

There are a couple of bots (I hope) on Stack Overflow that re-post answers to other questions that are vaguely related based on keywords or tags. They usually didn't make sense in the question context, but were upvoted by people for some reason.

[pmiller2]

Maybe they're upvoted by other bots as well?

[SubiculumCode]

I mean its plagiarism, but motivation was probably something like: I liked this comment i read on HN. It answers a question that is being discussed in reddit. I could attribute it, or just copy and paste...or so goes the modervn internet share

[headmelted]

Others have said bots, I’d lean more towards someone thought it sounded like a clever reply, went to reddit where the same conversation was taking place and posted it in the thread in hopes of scoring some cheap karma.

[malwarebytess]

I post other people's answers that I've read, but it's always with attribution or at least with "copied from x". I imagine if someone did the same with your post but didn't provide attribution it was out of pure laziness. When I post on /g/, an anonymous message board, I often copy paste other answers or code without attribution since it's easier and people don't usually care where it came from, and no one will care whether I wrote it or not. I imagine I'm not alone in this.

[hellbannedguy]

I bet it was Reddit internal bots.

I feel that company scrapes sites continuity, trying to elevate their discussions—- which are basically a mad three word race to the fart joke.

[m463]

I think there are some direct ways to profit (like "recommending" items from amazon that are from top-sales statistics)

I wonder at all the indirect ways though. Maybe the account is enhanced to a reasonable reputation and is "banked" for later. Maybe there are levels of reputation that unlock abilities either on or off the site.

Or maybe some people are addicted to those silly internet points.

I'm surprised HN has a visible "score". I remember other sites would cap it at some value, basically reputation: excellent.

[baud147258]

I remember someone telling how his Steam review was copied verbatim... Maybe it was for the 'awards' users can get on their reviews?

[mannykannot]

Maybe they think it's the smart thing to do - in fact, maybe they have a degree in doing it!

[gverrilla]

they agreed with every word you said?