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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3678 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 11, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does Reddit use any kind of cross-account tracking system between multiple accounts? I've had interactions on a throwaway recently where it really felt like reddit knew who I was and almost, directed not just me to subreddits but people to me on that basis. It's...freakish. It's making me paranoid.

Yes.

When my oldest and most used account got suspended it took a couple alts with it.

Supposing it was true, have you considered that you might just be predictable? All the illusions in the world cannot hide revealed preferences/behavior.

I am highly predictable, but to predict me would require a degree of granularity that I didn't think Reddit had achieved. Politically I'm not predictable in the way that a partisan Republican is predictable, or in the way a grievance studies M.S. is predictable, but probably if you knew me well enough or just read all my Q.C.'s on themotte you could figure me out. But that's a category so small I would expect it to escape the notice of a big sorting machine.

I don't think anyone here could know for sure. Presumably they have some way of tracking such things for admin-level stuff like ban evasion and self-promotion. But how would they direct people towards you specifically? Maybe on subs with huge post and comment counts they could list your posts/comments higher than normal for some specific people. That seems like an awful lot of work on their side though, and what's the benefit?

If that's happening, seems more likely something about your opinions or writing style sticks out. I've noticed before that I have several opinions and pet positions that seem rather unique, and wonder if anyone ever took the trouble to try to correlate other accounts across the internet based on that.

That seems like an awful lot of work on their side though, and what's the benefit?

Presumably, assuming it were happening ad arguendo, I would guess it's for micro-targeting ads and content? And then, once you already have this micro targeted content, you want users to engage with other users, increase conversations = increased engagement and time on platform getting served with ads.

I just started a new account, completely fresh, and I'm getting that "Of all the gin joints in all the world" feeling from the replies.

If you’d said Meta or Alphabet, I might have believed it, but reddit just strikes me as too incompetent on every level from the management to the programmers to pull off something like that.

Highly doubt reddit's "directing people to" your alts. Reddit does track associated accounts - for preventing upvoteing on alts, and enforcing ban evasion sitewide and per subreddit. Also ads and such, maybe.

I can see the recommendation system sharing code with the ad system. So it's a possibility.

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