UPDATED 17:28 EDT / DECEMBER 15 2016

APPS

Move over, Facebook: Reddit has a fake news problem too

Reddit is seemingly one of the most democratic communities on the web, allowing users to vote up good content while voting down bad content and spam. But this week, journalists Phil Harper and Jay McGregor proved just how easily advertisers can game the system.

“A couple of weeks ago, we got two made-up stories onto the front page of Reddit for less than $200,” Harper said in a video posted to YouTube.

According to Harper, users’ trust in Reddit’s upvote and downvote system is exactly what makes it so easy for advertisers and others to manipulate. And considering how popular Reddit really is, it is easy to see why it would be a hot target.

Users may sometimes like to pretend that Reddit is their own exclusive club, but it is actually one of the most popular websites on the internet, ranking as the seventh most popular in the United States. That puts it ahead of such juggernauts as Twitter, Netflix and Instagram, which explains why Reddit has dubbed itself “the frontpage of the Internet.”

Harper pointed to a study on Reddit votes conducted by Tim Weninger, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Notre Dame University. Weninger created a program that randomly upvoted or downvoted some of the most recent posts on Reddit, and he discovered that his single vote had a significant effect on how other users voted on the same link. Among Reddit users, this effect is known as “bandwagoning,” where the first few votes determine whether or not a post will be successful.

“It only takes three or four or five votes to have a sizable impact,” Weninger said in Harper and McGregor’s video.

‘Holy grail for advertisers’

Harper and McGregor conducted their own test by paying just under $200 for fake Reddit accounts that they could use to vote for their own content. They then created a fake news story, submitted it to the /r/UnitedKingdom subreddit, and used their illicitly-acquired fake accounts to upvote the story. The fake story quickly found its way to the front page of the subreddit, putting it front and center for users.

“A tool like this is the holy grail for advertisers,” Harper said. “Why? Because people, any people, are more likely to accept a message if they believe people in their group have done the same.”

In an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, Harper and McGregor explained why they wanted to expose this issue with the website.

“We did this because we love Reddit, and we think it’s way more important than people realize,” they said. “We think it’s way more influential than people realize.”

The danger with a website such as Reddit, they said, is that “we all really believe the links are prominently placed because the community likes the links. If a company can sidestep that authentication process and cheat their way to the top – commercially or politically – that’s a very serious issue that needs solving.”

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc., the key target of complaints about the potential impact of fake stories in the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, said Thursday that it’s starting to test a number of fixes. They include making it easier to report fake news and working with organizations such as Snopes and PolitiFact to label fake or erroneous stories.

Image courtesy of Reddit

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