Reddit is flawed or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the crowd

Reddit and other large vote-based aggregators favor images over text, titles over content and reposts over original pieces. This is a feature, not a bug. With their current operating logic this problem cannot be fixed.

Time is the major variable deciding how a new piece of content gets its votes. In Reddit, upvotes are counted logarithmically so that the first votes have a lot larger impact on the post than the later ones. Further, points are counted against time. Each submission gets more points per up vote action the quicker the article gets the votes after submission. (Check out Reddit's algorithm.)

The result in Reddit:

  1. Images that can be up voted from thumbnails or with a quick glance get a lot more points per up vote.
  2. Articles that have headlines that fish for votes get a lot more points per up vote.
  3. Reposts that users have already read through get a lot more points per up vote.

(Source)

In Reddit, the agenda is dominated by the few "Knights of the New", who vote up and down the new submissions. As the algorithm supports content that is not desirable for making sense to the world around us, and it is actually selected by a very specific (although dedicated) part of the user base, the content is not selected democratically although it is voted for. Reddit is flawed. Its content represents the opinions and preferences of a minority.

Also, this.

It goes without saying that in Scoopinion, where we follow the reading behavior of most of our users, the agenda is set in a whole lot more democratic way. From multiple sources, based on actual reading behavior.

Your peers guarantee that what you can discover at Scoopinion is worth reading. On the top of that, our algorithm purposely supports the stories that require time and interest from our users to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Image Credit: James Cridland

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