3.7 Discussion
3.7.1 Manipulation exists
The interviews conducted during this study conclusively indicate that all participants believe ranking manipulation to be present in the social media site that they moderate.
This conclusion is evident in the analysis of subreddit rules and in conversation with administrators and moderators, and may be reached through independent analysis of each: both subreddit rules and modera- tor interviews reveal this information, though in different ways.
3.7.1.1 Manipulation is evidenced by subreddit rules
Subreddit rules reveal the existence of manipulation through the prohibi- tion of specific types of content.
A common element alluded to in Section 3.4.1was the fact that mul- tiple subreddits prohibit the posting of “image macros”, or images with superimposed text. An example of this type of content is shown in Fig- ure 3.4.
Certain subreddits forbid not just images that follow the same format
as Figure 3.4, but also the entire practice of posting content with the ex-
press purpose of gaining votes for oneself, as opposed to providing in- teresting content to the community. The rules for the subreddit /r/Game- OfThrones contain an explicit “What Not To Post” section, in which they provide concrete examples of material they consider to be contrary to the interests of the community’s members; in one particularly striking exam- ple, the subreddit rules state that while a link to a store that sells replica swords from the television show is permitted, a ”photo of you holding[the]
3.7. DISCUSSION
Figure 3.4: An example of an ‘image macro’. The photograph of a duck is a stock photograph, and is known as “Advice Mallard”; image macros that use this photograph typically present what the author either genuinely or satirically believes is good advice. This image was taken from the front page of/r/AdviceAnimals, a community for sharing similar images.
3.7. DISCUSSION
sword for karma” is not - casting this in the terms established inSection 3.6, the “reference to self” form of manipulation is expressly forbidden.
It is therefore reasonable to infer that the reason such content is forbid- den is that, prior to the establishment of the rule prohibiting their posting, users of these communities were seeing too many of these kinds of images. On Reddit, the only way for any content to be visible to large numbers of users is for it to receive up-votes, and consequently have a high enough ranking for it to appear on the front page. Consequently, a sufficient num- ber of image macro posts had to have received a high number of votes in order to appear; however moderators clearly did not feel that this form of content did not fit with their opinions of the types of content that the community should promote.
At this point, it is important to highlight the fact that administrators and moderators comprise a different population of users than non-moderating members of the community. Moderators and users may disagree on what constitutes appropriate content for a community, though only moderators have the ability to enforce their decisions on content in the community (through the use of tools such as banning users, deleting or editing posts, and other administrative tasks).
A user’s only recourse, if they disagree with the policies of a commu- nity’s moderators, is to leave the community and join or create a new one. Examples of this include the subreddit /r/pics, which has very strict and specific prohibitions on certain kinds of images: as a reaction against these rules, so-called “anything-goes” communities exist, with much fewer rules, such as/r/AnythingGoesPics19, active as at October 24 2014and/r/images20, ac- tive as at October 24 2014.
19http://reddit.com/r/AnythingGoesPics 20http://reddit.com/r/images
3.7. DISCUSSION
However, the subreddit rules of these anti-prohibition subreddits them- selves reveal the existence of moderator-perceived manipulation: the sub- reddit rules of /r/AnythingGoesPics (a subreddit whose rules were not in- cluded in the set of communities analysed in this study) prohibit“solicita- tions”:
“No Solicitations allowed. This isn’t Craigslist. Tagging Post with NSFW tag on submissions with such Content is Required.”
The context of the word “solicitations” is explained by the phrase“this isn’t Craigslist”: the online classifieds site Craiglist (Craigslist 2014) has a reputation for being a site where encounters with prosititutes may be ar- ranged (Lambert 2007). The reader may therefore reasonably infer that a type of content that the moderators of this self-declared “anything-goes” community have seen an influx of prostitute solicitations, which they con- sider to be a form of posting that they do not wish to see in the community that they moderate (the potentially illegal nature of online solicitation by sex workers notwithstanding.)
If moderators find a community overwhelmed with a certain kind of content, and feel that its prevalence is counter to the community goals, the establishment of subreddit rules that prohibit its content is evidence that they believe that type of content receives more votes than is due, and the regular voting system provided by Reddit’s infrastructure is insufficient for dealing with this type of content.
Consequently, subreddit rules indicate that ranking manipulation ex- ists.
3.7. DISCUSSION
3.7.1.2 Manipulation is evidenced through interviews with adminis- trators and moderators
Interviews with moderators and administrators indicate that they believe that manipulation exists, and is a problem in the communities that they moderate.
All moderators, when asked whether they thought manipulation was a problem, emphatically agreed. Administrators of the site, who operate at a higher level of moderation than the moderators of individual commu- nities, agreed with the statement that manipulation is a phenomenon on Reddit.
However, the degree to which they thought it was a problem varied between different types, and between moderators: one participant, who described himself as highly spam-focused, noted the difference between “casual” and “professional” manipulation, and noted that he only cared significantly about professional manipulation.