What are some examples of this extreme and blatantly obvious manipulation? Certainly it happens but you're making it sound like we live in the Truman Show.
A subreddit with 480K users manages to upvote the topic 1.3K times with 78% up ratio. A subreddit with 1.7 million users upvotes a similarly themed topic (expressing a different opinion) only to get it 555 points with 91% up ratio. Ten times the difference in engagement.
This is the norm. Reddit bans the fuck out of people with opinions that don't align with the hivemind. You can search HN for "reddit banned" and see a limitless supply of stories. At one point they deleted two thousand subreddits in one go.
I'm not going into certain topics magically not appearing anywhere on Reddit, because it would require a significantly more detailed examples, but it's a thing as well. It is the Truman Show for public opinion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/se7t5p/i_saw_the_t...
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/secvqz/i_stood_...
A subreddit with 480K users manages to upvote the topic 1.3K times with 78% up ratio. A subreddit with 1.7 million users upvotes a similarly themed topic (expressing a different opinion) only to get it 555 points with 91% up ratio. Ten times the difference in engagement.
This is the norm. Reddit bans the fuck out of people with opinions that don't align with the hivemind. You can search HN for "reddit banned" and see a limitless supply of stories. At one point they deleted two thousand subreddits in one go.
I'm not going into certain topics magically not appearing anywhere on Reddit, because it would require a significantly more detailed examples, but it's a thing as well. It is the Truman Show for public opinion.