Donald Trump’s Reddit AMA on r/the_donald was by all accounts pretty vanilla. But what was far more interesting was how Reddit responded to the event by effectively pushing the post from the frontpage of its “All” section.
At its peak, the AMA had about 11,000 points but with a high number of downvotes. Reddit “corrected” the score down to 1,700 pushing the AMA far off the frontpage.
Reddit recently changed their algorithm to promote “greater diversity” in the All section. The tweak was in response to too many the_donald posts reaching the frontpage due to the high-energy voting habits of Trump fans.
But the change does not prevent all the_donald posts from hitting the top and it certainly should not have prevented the highest upvoted post in the sub’s history from doing the same. Unsurprisingly, outrage on the sub toward Reddit’s staff was immense.
Admin spez, also known as Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman, came to the_donald to assuage the pitchfork wielding mob of Trumpsters, albeit unsuccessfully. Huffman blamed the burying on the fact that the AMA post had almost as many downvotes as upvotes, keeping the score low.
The_donald users were not convinced.
Huffman’s excuse doesn’t hold any weight when you compare the AMA post with the anti-Trump subreddit, r/EnoughTrumpSpam‘s protest post.
Trumps AMA has started. Time to get this on the front page! from EnoughTrumpSpam
EnoughTrumpSpam sent this painting of Trump to the frontpage undisturbed, despite having a worse upvote to downvote ratio. Trump’s AMA had 63% upvotes with a far higher vote total, while Trump’s tiny penis picture had 53% upvotes with 2,800 points and far fewer total votes. Huffman’s explanation makes no sense in this context.
So did Reddit manually tip the scales to decrease exposure of the AMA? Or is their something in their algorithm that treats the_donald posts differently than posts from anti-Trump subreddits?
Reddit did not return a request for comment by the time of publication. Maybe Russia can get to the bottom of this — if they’re listening.
Follow me on Twitter @William__Hicks.
