Topic: Josh Zerlan & Butterfly Labs paid or bot downvoting Reddit video of his outburst (Read 27380 times)

or they got a nice proxy list and/or botnet

Then in that case Mr Zerlan or BFL zealots are quite the organized downvote brigade.

I believe you!  I recon it could be the same guys responsible for chemtrails!

Which is also the same group who is giving the UN power to bring together the NEW WORLD ORDER!

Nah, you can't do that from the same IP. Useragent is also another detection method used, even if you have different IPs.

And then people wonder why reddit is such a socialistoid cesspool. Well...what else could it be, on those premises?

I've been on reddit for a while(3 years) and yeah, it can be gamed pretty easily since you can have 8-10 accounts made in a few minutes and individually downvote with each content a particular person or group does not like.


Just like with Digg.

Actually, reddit has a number of systems in place.

Vote normalization - voting is heavily normalized so top posts get around 2,000 to 3,000 upvotes. In reality, those posts actually can have 15,000 or more score (upvotes - downvotes), it is just that reddit admins keep the scores low for 3 reasons:

1) Less numbers are easier to compare
2) Keeping people thinking reddit is an exclusive club when it's the one of top 100 sites.
3) Allowing comparison of "topness" over time - otherwise, top posts would pretty much be composed of all recent posts, since there are more and more users (& upvotes)

This can be observed with posts before normalization (for example, "Test post please ignore" which was before normalization was put into place), and the normalization engine only works after the first hour is up (and the score is no longer hidden on the left). Steve Jobs' death had a score of 9,000 before the 1 hour mark, to which it was promptly normalized.

On r/TheoryOfReddit, there's being analysis of top submission's score, and it sharply went to ~2400 in a month and has being there ever since (give or take a few hundred).

Spam vote detection
Obviously a lot of factors goes into this, and it's hard to reverse engineer. But "accounts without a clear history of contributions" will not have their upvotes counted as downvotes. That is another behavior, it happens when you vote a series of times rapidly without browsing new pages. Voting up will counter it with an automatic downvote (1 - 1 = 0), voting down will counter it with an automatic upvote (-1 + 1 = 0). This is mistakenly taken as "if you downvote on profile pages, it doesn't count" because it is not just profile pages that trigger that.

Buying Reddit Upvotes/Downvotes
Yes, there are bots that do this. Yes, they are still around. Yes, you pay money for them.

The example in this trend fits in a lot of the signs of paid for downvotes.

Do you know who helped design the security features in the checks and money you use?

Scammers! If it's just my input that's not welcome in the thread and not another person with this tag, then I'll gladly stop posting if the OP wishes me too. Thank you for reminding me to be humble about my past mistakes. It will take some time to live down I know.

Leave how you came as you've said. Your input is shit scammer. 

I'm not sure if this helps or not, but reddit has algorithms in place to help remove votes created by bots. As a part of this algorithm, accounts without a clear history of contributions will have their upvotes counted as downvotes in some cases. This is why you see SA goons on the bitcoin reddit posting nonsense all the time (it's to help bring their karma up so that they can mass downvote better).

This may or may not have been the case here.

This is type of company we are dealing with:  solely focused on damage control, increasing spending on advertising to increase total $ in pre-orders coming in. 

They are either gambling with the pre-order monies hoping to find ASIC sourcing that meets specs promised or they just know it's game over and plan to cut-and-run, but still taking max pre-order monies all the way down.

confirmed for bot:

>check downvote count, 31 downvotes
>create new account, upvote, still 31 downvotes
>refresh 2 seconds later, 32 downvotes

seems legit

It's Defcon 1. Or in your instance, "Buffcon 1". The higher the number, the less of a threat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFCON#Levels

My opinion about BFL is that we can only start calling them scammers if and when Avalon ships in time/with a small delay/ever.

What do we know about the process of producing asics?

I downvoted some of your posts because you were reposting them repeatedly.  I'm not a bot and I wasn't paid.

There are clearly issues with BFL that need to be explained but you are making a big mistake dragging your personal history with Josh at the booth into this. Everyone knows you and Josh have a history and it looks like Josh is just pissed at you because you were trolling his booth the day before and now you want to make him look bad by manufacturing circumstantial evidence.

If you really think BFL are scammers pass this off to someone who can do a real investigation into BFL. I.E. visit the fab, take photos, talk to their accountant, etc. Call that news TV show that investigates frauds or something, get them to go down there with a TV camera and see what's up. BFL has $25 million? Ok, then get some real evidence.

Definitely look like downvote bots.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16fjxj/josh_zerlan_a_principal_in_butterfly_labs_i_cant/

That reddit flew up as soon as I posted it, then the BFL damage control team went into Buffcon 5:  Josh Zerlan spoke or posted mode and immediately started fighting the "fuck-you machine" with paid or botted downvotes - and they weren't even smart about it - notice all the commentry, then if there was some way or it may already be a function.... I'm a reddit newbie... but if you could graph the Reddit voting it skyrockets up then skyrockets down to exactly 0, then up a little again then down to exactly, exactly 0... hit it with 1 up vote, insta-0'd again.

idk how long they have it on or whatever but if you guys know Reddit (I'm a total newb, if this is something regular that happens then apologies / sorry / at least I didn't steal ur btc and generally try and work for good) can some1 please take a look?  I have this feeling that BFL is mostly concerned with 3 things right now:

1)  Damage control from not shipping ASICs [and generally letting Josh out in public with a BFL nametag and speaking on their behalf in any way on any form of media]
2)  making sure the pre-order $ keeps rolling in.  By all means necessary.  All ad networks.  All search terms close to bitcoin
3)  talking shit about Avalon.  I think i read something on their forums today about Chinese new year *not* affecting their shipping, and I think I remember reading Avalon is China-based and CNYE is huge there with fireworks and shit]

Guys, I'm just going to get real with you all, like I do with business - I just plainly say what deal I want and why I want it, then go from there.  I'm the same way when you meet me IRL.  So let's drop the bullshit, I don't know much about mining.  You all know that.  I don't know about Avalon or BFL or bASIC except a casual glance over the forums.  I live in Vegas, help run SealsWithClubs, and when I see a btc scam I like to blow it's spot up as soon as possible before it damages the community further.   I bat a very high % with scam detection at this stage in my life and have a few hides of a few scammers who now have shit on their name when any potential future mark googles them [try "Justin Wade Smith" and see how far you have to dig to find the video of him smoking meth] to prove it.  When CES comes to Vegas I go to CES.   I didn't plan any of this, I always thought BFL may be a scam from a few months ago but never really looked into it, I have businesses to run, poker and sports to bet on, and oh yeah a brand new baby girl to look after and provide endless love to in this most important time of her life.   I see the bitpay guys every time they come.  I have seen all 3 of their bitcoin girls.  They are nice guys, they are running a btc->fiat business with easy to use merchant APIs and charging 1% to do it - what an amazing business, we should all be thanking them for being a solid company that gives any restaurant, bar, or *any other small business at all* the instant ability to add bitcoin to their shopping cart check out payment options.  Bravo Bitpay, mad internet brofist for offering that service.  I hope you guys make a mint and whoever tossed in the $510k gets richer as well.  It's a much needed service that directly benefits bitcoin as a whole.  Another word of advice to Bitpay - GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM BUTTERFLY LABS ASAP.  Do not share booths.  I don't fault Bitpay for processing BFL transactions up until somewhere about nowish, but now I think if I were them, having just acquired a very public and awesomely received round of funding, it's best from a marketing perspective to stay away at all costs - you don't want to be the guys that made 1% on all those boys getting rolled.  Get all BurtW and Paytob.tc on 'em.