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So I've noticed something about sites like Reddit (and other user content aggregate sites)...

posted by ScorpioGlitch on Whatever

Nearly without exception, every anti-Trump post that gets popular is posted between 8 AM and 6 PM Eastern.

99% of those are posted in the 8 AM hour.

Of those posted within the 8 AM hour, roughly 75% of them are posted within the same 15 minute block.

One or two additional anti-Trump posts are posted and gain popularity between 9 and 1 PM.

Pro-Mueller posts seem to be posted generally between 9 AM and 1 PM.

Pro-Trump comments posted outside of the 8-6 time-frame get some kind of discussion. If posted within that time-frame are viciously attacked.

Anti-Trump comments posted outside of the 8-6 time-frame are largely ignored but are not attacked. If posted within that time-frame, they are echo-chambered to the top of any discussion.

Out of curiosity, I watched Voat to see if this held true. It (edit: generally) does, but only in Anon subs.

I thought perhaps this is because people are at work during those times and trying to avoid their jobs but that doesn't explain why content doesn't follow the same rules on the weekend.

I thought perhaps this is because everyone of consequence in the matter is working and so the content is generated, filtered, etc. but that doesn't explain why it stops at 6 instead of 7 or 8 (west coast being 3 hours behind).

Following occam's razor, the least amount of assumptions would seem to indicate that this is a coordinated effort.

Nearly without exception, every anti-Trump post that gets popular is posted between 8 AM and 6 PM Eastern. 99% of those are posted in the 8 AM hour. Of those posted within the 8 AM hour, roughly 75% of them are posted within the same 15 minute block. One or two additional anti-Trump posts are posted and gain popularity between 9 and 1 PM. Pro-Mueller posts seem to be posted generally between 9 AM and 1 PM. Pro-Trump comments posted outside of the 8-6 time-frame get some kind of discussion. If posted within that time-frame are viciously attacked. Anti-Trump comments posted outside of the 8-6 time-frame are largely ignored but are not attacked. If posted within that time-frame, they are echo-chambered to the top of any discussion. Out of curiosity, I watched Voat to see if this held true. It (edit: generally) does, but only in Anon subs. I thought perhaps this is because people are at work during those times and trying to avoid their jobs but that doesn't explain why content doesn't follow the same rules on the weekend. I thought perhaps this is because *everyone* of consequence in the matter is working and so the content is generated, filtered, etc. but that doesn't explain why it stops at 6 instead of 7 or 8 (west coast being 3 hours behind). Following occam's razor, the least amount of assumptions would seem to indicate that this is a coordinated effort.

11 comments

[–] [Deleted] 2 points (+2|-0)

Wow, what a great observation. So could it be something like bots timed to go off at certain time segments? Scrape a bunch of items from new sites with key words and post them to reddit?

Occam would applaude your effort!

[–] ScorpioGlitch [OP] 0 points (+0|-0)

Maybe. I don't know that most people or organizations are going to take the time to program an algorithm to scrape when you can just have a handful of people finding the articles and then a group of accounts, etc. to upvote them early on (or comment excessively) in order to push them to "front page" status. It'd be cheaper still to just buy the upvotes.

[–] [Deleted] 1 points (+1|-0)

I gotcha. That's my lack of programming knowledge, thinking it would be easy to write a scraper prog and go that route. I virtually never use reddit unless I want to find out something in r/piracy or where to find a free movie stream (I'm poor I can't afford pay streams).

[–] CDanger 1 points (+1|-0)

Poor or not, paying money to media companies is giving money to the enemy, so keep up the good work!

[–] ScorpioGlitch [OP] 0 points (+0|-0)

Edited

Scraping is easy in that it's linear. Load a page, look for words, grab things by code tags. It's difficult in that if the page layout or code changes, it can break your scraping. Each site has a different layout soooo..... one scrape style per site. That's a bit much.

Edit: Unless you're scraping RSS feeds but you'd still either need a keyword/intent algorithm or have someone curate the list.