Yeah, upvotes aren’t strongly correlated with accuracy. Could be informative. Or informative but false. Or just a joke. Or a troll that voters enjoyed. Or a plain old aggressive comment against someone they don’t like. Or positioned such that an unusual number of people accidentally tap upvote. Or brigaded from another more popular sub. Or the votes were botted or bought. Or randomly upvoted to camouflage a bot always upvoting its owner’s account. Or its visibility is better than an even better comment and thus got more total votes.
That’s why I think reddit is a shit source if you want an accurate bot, but might be pretty good if you want a propaganda tool because each of those things can play a role in effective propaganda.
Yeah, upvotes aren’t strongly correlated with accuracy. Could be informative. Or informative but false. Or just a joke. Or a troll that voters enjoyed. Or a plain old aggressive comment against someone they don’t like. Or positioned such that an unusual number of people accidentally tap upvote. Or brigaded from another more popular sub. Or the votes were botted or bought. Or randomly upvoted to camouflage a bot always upvoting its owner’s account. Or its visibility is better than an even better comment and thus got more total votes.
That’s why I think reddit is a shit source if you want an accurate bot, but might be pretty good if you want a propaganda tool because each of those things can play a role in effective propaganda.