[hospitalJail]

When they removed the upvote/downvote count, it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation.

Anything I read on the website has been met with extreme skepticism since it very well could be an astroturfer.

It's money. Reddit wants astroturfers, it grows their platform and helps sell ads.

[rootusrootus]

> Anything I read on the website has been met with extreme skepticism since it very well could be an astroturfer.

Good advice for any site. It's not like HN is immune to astroturfing.

[hospitalJail]

You have more courage than me to say that here.

[chippiewill]

> When they removed the upvote/downvote count, it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation

I wasn't a big issue to me tbh. Vote fuzzing had always made those counts meaningless.

[CincinnatiMan]

May not even need to be an astroturfer, it could be u/spez directly. Don’t forget that he went rogue and modified a user’s comment in the Reddit database!

[spiffytech]

Or that the Reddit founders used fake users to make the young site look busy:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...

[kobalsky]

> it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation

talking about manipulation, reddit's current ceo edited users comments back when the bad guys were on business side of it.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...