Don't want to have a serious discussion about site mechanics and an ever-creeping destruction of the site you're paid to maintain? Meme it up! Edit: I would not be surprised to hear that this is...
[-] KeyserSosa [S,A] 157 points 32 minutes ago
And, yeah, I realize a trusted reporter system may cause some casualties. Remember, everyone: “report” != “super mega ultra downvote.”
[–] StandingByToStandBy 99 points 30 minutes ago
Rports are superdownvotes pal. I don't care what y'all designed it for. We know what it's real use is.
[–] KeyserSosa [S,A] 99 points 29 minutes ago
Hey I'm not your pal, friend.
[–] Sporkicide 27 points 28 minutes ago
I'm not your buddy, pal.
Don't want to have a serious discussion about site mechanics and an ever-creeping destruction of the site you're paid to maintain? Meme it up!
Edit:
I would not be surprised to hear that this is official policy at reddit - for admins to defuse situations by distracting people with memes when it comes to contentious topics. @Deimos, any thoughts?
I can't fucking stand Reddit's obsession with referential humor. You see the same 10 jokes taken from TV shows repeated ad-nauseam. Haha I too have seen that TV show! Upboat!!!
I can't fucking stand Reddit's obsession with referential humor. You see the same 10 jokes taken from TV shows repeated ad-nauseam. Haha I too have seen that TV show! Upboat!!!
I don't disagree -- lordy knows I did my time in alt.tv.simpsons -- but I can understand @novac 's frustration since platforms with upvotes, rather than chronological replies, make it so much more...
I don't disagree -- lordy knows I did my time in alt.tv.simpsons -- but I can understand @novac 's frustration since platforms with upvotes, rather than chronological replies, make it so much more annoying. Every new Brooklyn Nine Nine thread it's "oh boy, time to PgDn through three screens of 'noice' 'smort' 'bingpot!' to get to the actual comments that nobody upvoted!"
It's definitely always been a thing, but sorting by votes makes this thing infinitely more visible and repetitive than it is / was in other places. At least for me, it is much harder to filter out...
It's definitely always been a thing, but sorting by votes makes this thing infinitely more visible and repetitive than it is / was in other places. At least for me, it is much harder to filter out the noise in my head on Reddit and Reddit-likes.
I probably can't say too much (and I've been gone for over a year and a half now too, so I'm sure a lot is different), but something else that I think is worth pointing out is that they always set...
I probably can't say too much (and I've been gone for over a year and a half now too, so I'm sure a lot is different), but something else that I think is worth pointing out is that they always set the suggested sort to "Q&A". Because of the way that sort works, it means that they have a fair amount of control of which comments get higher rankings based on picking which ones to reply to or not.
That's a good insight. Now that the site is closed source I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with a completely manual sorting option. This could be marketed to companies holding AMAs and...
That's a good insight. Now that the site is closed source I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with a completely manual sorting option. This could be marketed to companies holding AMAs and boost reddit's income.
Good to know. I just want to add that I've spent the last hour or so reading all the Tildes docs and I'm very happy with all of the design choices that have been made thus far, especially the site...
Good to know. I just want to add that I've spent the last hour or so reading all the Tildes docs and I'm very happy with all of the design choices that have been made thus far, especially the site being open source which will prevent any comment manipulation like you described.
A very interesting comment I found in that thread from /u/AmitabhBakchod. When visiting that user's profile now, their account is suspended (the edit is made after the suspension). When visiting...
They typically did this by posting real, reputable news articles that happened to align with Iran’s preferred political narrative -- for example, reports publicizing civilian deaths in Yemen.
And that's wrong because...??? You seem to be under the impression that the Saudis have the right narrative, right down to glossing over the fact that Iranian posting re: ISIS is all anti-ISIS EDIT: I was permabanned for "ban evasion" (despite doing no such thing) and they only banned my subreddit /r/Russophobes, which is extremely suspicious and seems motivated by my criticism of Saudi Arabia (seriously, since when did mods ban subreddits for having no mods? /r/redditrequest has a number right now). Why only ban me when I criticise Admin agenda?
When visiting that user's profile now, their account is suspended (the edit is made after the suspension). When visiting the subreddit in question, it shows it was recently banned 3 hours ago with the following reason:
This subreddit was banned due to being unmoderated. If you'd like to take it over please make a post in /r/redditrequest
Since when did subreddits get banned for being unmoderated? Something is at play here, and I don't like the sound of it.
I know, right? From what I can remember there are several famous subreddit squatters who created dozens of subreddits and won't give up ownership. Haven't heard of any of them being banned.
Since when did subreddits get banned for being unmoderated?
I know, right? From what I can remember there are several famous subreddit squatters who created dozens of subreddits and won't give up ownership. Haven't heard of any of them being banned.
Right, but they have "moderators." According to the banned user, they were the only moderator of /r/Russophobes, so once they were banned, the subreddit was left without a moderator. That's...
Right, but they have "moderators." According to the banned user, they were the only moderator of /r/Russophobes, so once they were banned, the subreddit was left without a moderator. That's different from subreddit squatters.
I noticed that user in several places around the thread, and every comment I saw from them was either very anti-US, very pro-Russian, or very pro-Iran, without fail. They sounded like a broken...
I noticed that user in several places around the thread, and every comment I saw from them was either very anti-US, very pro-Russian, or very pro-Iran, without fail. They sounded like a broken record or spam bot. I understand this was likely an important subject to them, and that can easily make anyone sound like a broken record, but it definitely casts some doubt in my eyes as to whether the ban was deserved or not. I wish I could actually go and look through their comment history to investigate, but apparently when a user is banned on Reddit their entire profile is disappeared.
That whole thing was really sketchy and I have no idea what to think of it. :/
Banning accounts for posting factually true article from reputable sources that are anti-Saudi Arabia and anti-Israel. This has less to do with some Iranian influence campaign, and more to do with...
Banning accounts for posting factually true article from reputable sources that are anti-Saudi Arabia and anti-Israel.
This has less to do with some Iranian influence campaign, and more to do with banning opinions the admins don't like.
Just as a reminder: Saudi Arabia funds terrorism (including 9/11) and Israel is an apartheid state.
There must be a ton more to the story than is being shared or all of this is just a PR stunt to show the admins are being "proactive". Looking over the posts there is absolutely no way from the...
There must be a ton more to the story than is being shared or all of this is just a PR stunt to show the admins are being "proactive". Looking over the posts there is absolutely no way from the post history or comment history to tell that these are accounts that coordinated together for a unified goal or message.
There's a certain smell to all of this but it might just be me.
It works like this. Crazy shit happens on reddit Media picks up on it Rounds of anti-reddit stories circulate in the blogosphere Reddicorp does the bare minimum so they can claim to be improving...
It works like this.
Crazy shit happens on reddit
Media picks up on it
Rounds of anti-reddit stories circulate in the blogosphere
Reddicorp does the bare minimum so they can claim to be improving
Nothing at all changes
Repeat
Same deal here, reddit was getting some bad press lately about an issue that's now more than a year old. Just like always, they only take token non-actions so they can lie and claim to be 'doing something' about it when in reality they couldn't care less. Anyone who did care walked off that job or was fired from it for giving a shit when it wasn't their turn to give a shit.
I definitely agree. It's really interesting how they choose to link a handful of accounts instead of making every example available. Not only are the accounts sparse, but they restrict it to the...
I definitely agree. It's really interesting how they choose to link a handful of accounts instead of making every example available. Not only are the accounts sparse, but they restrict it to the least successful with barely any karma. According to their report, most of the accounts have a significant karma score (indicating 10-20 posts on all status) but don't share them.
The actions of the moderators and their investigation definitely put it in a more realistic perspective. Though the response from reddit though leaves something to be desired.
The actions of the moderators and their investigation definitely put it in a more realistic perspective. Though the response from reddit though leaves something to be desired.
I mod with abrownn and can confirm they are very thorough when investigating problem accounts on reddit. I've learned a hell of a lot from them. As some of us mods have experienced, it does suck...
I mod with abrownn and can confirm they are very thorough when investigating problem accounts on reddit. I've learned a hell of a lot from them. As some of us mods have experienced, it does suck when you give admin clear and detailed info only to get a "we'll look into it" after two weeks and then nothing happens
The tiniest of baby steps to address the issue (and lord knows how long it will take) but probably a positive move overall.
Through this investigation, the incredible vigilance of the Reddit community has been brought to light, helping us pinpoint some of the suspicious account behavior. However, the volume of user reports we’ve received has highlighted the opportunity to enhance our defenses by developing a trusted reporter system to better separate useful information from the noise, which is something we are working on.
The tiniest of baby steps to address the issue (and lord knows how long it will take) but probably a positive move overall.
I'm wondering if anyone could explain what the plan is, if any, for Tildes to combat astroturfing and botting that have been rampant on Reddit. While I understand the Reddit admins not wanting to...
I'm wondering if anyone could explain what the plan is, if any, for Tildes to combat astroturfing and botting that have been rampant on Reddit. While I understand the Reddit admins not wanting to reveal their tactics, it's still very frustrating to not get any information from them on what they are doing. With Tildes being open source does that mean the developers can be more transparent about their plans?
This could be done by restricting api to high-trust users. So if you want to develop something, you have to gain development access to api via trust system. But the thing you develop (3rd party...
This could be done by restricting api to high-trust users. So if you want to develop something, you have to gain development access to api via trust system. But the thing you develop (3rd party client, for example) might be used by any user on Tildes. To authenticate api requests, you'd need your development key and auth of user that's using it right now.
If someone makes some tool that's unusual in some way (bot mass upvoting, for example), Deimos might decide to ban it easily by removing development access for the developer.
Although what you described might help, you don't need an API in order to create a bot and you don't even need to use bots in order to coordinate an astroturfing campaign. The Iranian group that...
Although what you described might help, you don't need an API in order to create a bot and you don't even need to use bots in order to coordinate an astroturfing campaign. The Iranian group that operated on Reddit also posted links from legitimate sources and otherwise had pretty normal looking user activity from what I could tell by the example accounts that the admins posted. I'm more interested in knowing what Tildes can do to investigate, detect, and prevent/discourage these kinds of things.
I know. I actually used Selenium one time to gather data from Tildes. Deimos can do whatever he wants and he never will be able to completely stop bots. But he can make it as inconvenient as...
you don't need an API in order to create a bot
I know. I actually used Selenium one time to gather data from Tildes. Deimos can do whatever he wants and he never will be able to completely stop bots. But he can make it as inconvenient as possible without harming normal users. Did you ever use Selenium? It's pain to use, as it's really slow. Using API is much better, faster, and not so annoying to develop.
I'm more interested in knowing what Tildes can do to investigate, detect, and prevent/discourage these kinds of things
Well, I wasn't talking about it. I was talking more about how to control bots on Tildes and the possibility to link bots to actual user account.
I don't think one can actually detect this kind of things.
Selenium is definitely slower than an API (it better be!) but I wouldn't say it's hard to use; there are popular API wrappers in many popular languages. I have a project that can record all topics...
Selenium is definitely slower than an API (it better be!) but I wouldn't say it's hard to use; there are popular API wrappers in many popular languages. I have a project that can record all topics and comments on the site in less than 300 lines of (PEP8-complicant & commented) Python, using Selenium. It can be done in under 100 lines without much trouble.
Hm. I tried to use selenium once or twice and it was hell, as opposed to calling api which immediately works - usually with some wrapper as well. If you can achieve it so easily in Python - I have...
Hm. I tried to use selenium once or twice and it was hell, as opposed to calling api which immediately works - usually with some wrapper as well.
If you can achieve it so easily in Python - I have nothing to say.
Yes, I have. While it's slower than an API it's definitely fast enough for an astroturfer to make a post and then have multiple fake user accounts upvote it over the course of several hours to...
Did you ever use Selenium? It's pain to use, as it's really slow.
Yes, I have. While it's slower than an API it's definitely fast enough for an astroturfer to make a post and then have multiple fake user accounts upvote it over the course of several hours to make it look organic.
In theory you can track who is using an API for botting purposes though. Using Selenium would bypass that and make it harder to determine if the user is botting.
In theory you can track who is using an API for botting purposes though. Using Selenium would bypass that and make it harder to determine if the user is botting.
Deimos won't record much more than usage/month and probably votes,posts,comments/month with some system to alert him of high usage levels. He can do it on normal site as well, but I agree with you...
Deimos won't record much more than usage/month and probably votes,posts,comments/month with some system to alert him of high usage levels. He can do it on normal site as well, but I agree with you that it's harder to detect it when the user is using Selenium.
But when the api will be with no trust limit, users who want to make bots and don't care about rules will just create new account and use api. There is no difference between this and usage of selenium because api is locked - the only one is that bots using selenium are basically throttling themselves.
(reddit) They were posting real articles from trustworthy sites. The only issue was that they posted just some articles, that they liked, right? I don't really see the problem here. It's behaviour...
The Iranian group
the behaviors of this group were different. While the overall influence of these accounts was still low, some of them were able to gain more traction. They typically did this by posting real, reputable news articles that happened to align with Iran’s preferred political narrative -- for example, reports publicizing civilian deaths in Yemen. These articles would often be posted to far-left or far-right political communities whose critical views of US involvement in the Middle East formed an environment that was receptive to the articles
(reddit)
They were posting real articles from trustworthy sites. The only issue was that they posted just some articles, that they liked, right? I don't really see the problem here. It's behaviour of normal user. Me and you post things that we like (or like to discuss about) as well. It's more likely that I'll post something about Trump wanting to make multi million military parade than something positive about him - just because I don't like him. I'm biased against him and there's not much I can do about it. So is everyone else - everyone is biased about something.
I think we should welcome all points of view as long as it's legal, it's not spam and it's not hurting anyone. I think I'd be fine with people posting articles that are critical against US interventions in middle east time to time - as long as it's generating healthy discussion. Just because someone is critical doesn't mean that it's bad.
I feel like there's a big difference between an individual posting content they like and a group working to promote content. Monsanto could be paying employees to post information and opinions to...
I feel like there's a big difference between an individual posting content they like and a group working to promote content. Monsanto could be paying employees to post information and opinions to paint themselves in a positive light (and can be done with factual information because information is very malleable). EA could be having its employees post content for its games under the guise of being legitimate fans. Or a country's government can be working to shape the public opinion into their favor. I feel like all 3 scenarios go against the spirit of reddit and user content. Whether reddit is consistent in what content it removes might be questionable, but I agree with the need to curb organized influences.
I mostly agree with this. If the group is generating meaningful discussion, I have no problem with it. The problems starts when the group starts breaking rules about promotion.
group working to promote content
I mostly agree with this. If the group is generating meaningful discussion, I have no problem with it. The problems starts when the group starts breaking rules about promotion.
I'm on board with that. The issue with astroturfing isn't that a group might promote points of view they like and/or you dislike, rather it is that they also work to suppress opposing points of...
I think we should welcome all points of view as long as it's legal, it's not spam and it's not hurting anyone.
I'm on board with that.
They were posting real articles from trustworthy sites. The only issue was that they posted just some articles, that they liked, right? I don't really see the problem here.
The issue with astroturfing isn't that a group might promote points of view they like and/or you dislike, rather it is that they also work to suppress opposing points of view. An astroturfing group could easily accomplish this by using multiple user accounts to upvote their posts and comments.
So, registered app + OAuth - pretty standard. High-trust is so vague though, and contrary to the plans so far: Deimos has worked more via trusting and then revoking if that trust is broken. EDIT:...
So, registered app + OAuth - pretty standard.
High-trust is so vague though, and contrary to the plans so far: Deimos has worked more via trusting and then revoking if that trust is broken.
EDIT: also wanted to add that if I'm not allowed to use the API when it comes out because I'm not at some trust threshold, I'm going to be pretty unhappy. Botting / spamming / API misuse are definitely things that we'll want to avoid, totally agree, but I hope Deimos / we can come up with a better way than barring access.
I think development access to api shouldn't be gained immediately after registration. It doesn't have to be difficult to get access to, but it should be hard enough to get access to it to not...
I think development access to api shouldn't be gained immediately after registration. It doesn't have to be difficult to get access to, but it should be hard enough to get access to it to not allow users who broken rules mass create another accounts to access api.
Most people still spend lot of time on a site before they start developing something, the limit wouldn't affect that many users anyway.
And I think if it will be locked behind reputation wall, deimos could still manually provide access to people that he trust.
Don't want to have a serious discussion about site mechanics and an ever-creeping destruction of the site you're paid to maintain? Meme it up!
Edit:
I would not be surprised to hear that this is official policy at reddit - for admins to defuse situations by distracting people with memes when it comes to contentious topics. @Deimos, any thoughts?
I can't fucking stand Reddit's obsession with referential humor. You see the same 10 jokes taken from TV shows repeated ad-nauseam. Haha I too have seen that TV show! Upboat!!!
It's not exclusive to Reddit, I've been on forums and chat rooms since the day of BBSes and this has always been a thing.
I guess I just hate the internet.
I don't disagree -- lordy knows I did my time in alt.tv.simpsons -- but I can understand @novac 's frustration since platforms with upvotes, rather than chronological replies, make it so much more annoying. Every new Brooklyn Nine Nine thread it's "oh boy, time to PgDn through three screens of 'noice' 'smort' 'bingpot!' to get to the actual comments that nobody upvoted!"
It's definitely always been a thing, but sorting by votes makes this thing infinitely more visible and repetitive than it is / was in other places. At least for me, it is much harder to filter out the noise in my head on Reddit and Reddit-likes.
I probably can't say too much (and I've been gone for over a year and a half now too, so I'm sure a lot is different), but something else that I think is worth pointing out is that they always set the suggested sort to "Q&A". Because of the way that sort works, it means that they have a fair amount of control of which comments get higher rankings based on picking which ones to reply to or not.
That's a good insight. Now that the site is closed source I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with a completely manual sorting option. This could be marketed to companies holding AMAs and boost reddit's income.
Good to know. I just want to add that I've spent the last hour or so reading all the Tildes docs and I'm very happy with all of the design choices that have been made thus far, especially the site being open source which will prevent any comment manipulation like you described.
A very interesting comment I found in that thread from /u/AmitabhBakchod.
When visiting that user's profile now, their account is suspended (the edit is made after the suspension). When visiting the subreddit in question, it shows it was recently banned 3 hours ago with the following reason:
Since when did subreddits get banned for being unmoderated? Something is at play here, and I don't like the sound of it.
I know, right? From what I can remember there are several famous subreddit squatters who created dozens of subreddits and won't give up ownership. Haven't heard of any of them being banned.
Right, but they have "moderators." According to the banned user, they were the only moderator of /r/Russophobes, so once they were banned, the subreddit was left without a moderator. That's different from subreddit squatters.
I noticed that user in several places around the thread, and every comment I saw from them was either very anti-US, very pro-Russian, or very pro-Iran, without fail. They sounded like a broken record or spam bot. I understand this was likely an important subject to them, and that can easily make anyone sound like a broken record, but it definitely casts some doubt in my eyes as to whether the ban was deserved or not. I wish I could actually go and look through their comment history to investigate, but apparently when a user is banned on Reddit their entire profile is disappeared.
That whole thing was really sketchy and I have no idea what to think of it. :/
Banning accounts for posting factually true article from reputable sources that are anti-Saudi Arabia and anti-Israel.
This has less to do with some Iranian influence campaign, and more to do with banning opinions the admins don't like.
Just as a reminder: Saudi Arabia funds terrorism (including 9/11) and Israel is an apartheid state.
There must be a ton more to the story than is being shared or all of this is just a PR stunt to show the admins are being "proactive". Looking over the posts there is absolutely no way from the post history or comment history to tell that these are accounts that coordinated together for a unified goal or message.
There's a certain smell to all of this but it might just be me.
It works like this.
Same deal here, reddit was getting some bad press lately about an issue that's now more than a year old. Just like always, they only take token non-actions so they can lie and claim to be 'doing something' about it when in reality they couldn't care less. Anyone who did care walked off that job or was fired from it for giving a shit when it wasn't their turn to give a shit.
I definitely agree. It's really interesting how they choose to link a handful of accounts instead of making every example available. Not only are the accounts sparse, but they restrict it to the least successful with barely any karma. According to their report, most of the accounts have a significant karma score (indicating 10-20 posts on all status) but don't share them.
The actions of the moderators and their investigation definitely put it in a more realistic perspective. Though the response from reddit though leaves something to be desired.
I mod with abrownn and can confirm they are very thorough when investigating problem accounts on reddit. I've learned a hell of a lot from them. As some of us mods have experienced, it does suck when you give admin clear and detailed info only to get a "we'll look into it" after two weeks and then nothing happens
Is abrownn multiple people on one account or are you just being gender neutral?
Force of habit of trying to be gender neutral
4 years, actually. They were easy to track and would often make accounts in batches, lucky for me.
The tiniest of baby steps to address the issue (and lord knows how long it will take) but probably a positive move overall.
I'm wondering if anyone could explain what the plan is, if any, for Tildes to combat astroturfing and botting that have been rampant on Reddit. While I understand the Reddit admins not wanting to reveal their tactics, it's still very frustrating to not get any information from them on what they are doing. With Tildes being open source does that mean the developers can be more transparent about their plans?
This could be done by restricting api to high-trust users. So if you want to develop something, you have to gain development access to api via trust system. But the thing you develop (3rd party client, for example) might be used by any user on Tildes. To authenticate api requests, you'd need your development key and auth of user that's using it right now.
If someone makes some tool that's unusual in some way (bot mass upvoting, for example), Deimos might decide to ban it easily by removing development access for the developer.
Although what you described might help, you don't need an API in order to create a bot and you don't even need to use bots in order to coordinate an astroturfing campaign. The Iranian group that operated on Reddit also posted links from legitimate sources and otherwise had pretty normal looking user activity from what I could tell by the example accounts that the admins posted. I'm more interested in knowing what Tildes can do to investigate, detect, and prevent/discourage these kinds of things.
I know. I actually used Selenium one time to gather data from Tildes. Deimos can do whatever he wants and he never will be able to completely stop bots. But he can make it as inconvenient as possible without harming normal users. Did you ever use Selenium? It's pain to use, as it's really slow. Using API is much better, faster, and not so annoying to develop.
Well, I wasn't talking about it. I was talking more about how to control bots on Tildes and the possibility to link bots to actual user account.
I don't think one can actually detect this kind of things.
Selenium is definitely slower than an API (it better be!) but I wouldn't say it's hard to use; there are popular API wrappers in many popular languages. I have a project that can record all topics and comments on the site in less than 300 lines of (PEP8-complicant & commented) Python, using Selenium. It can be done in under 100 lines without much trouble.
Hm. I tried to use selenium once or twice and it was hell, as opposed to calling api which immediately works - usually with some wrapper as well.
If you can achieve it so easily in Python - I have nothing to say.
Ah gotcha, perhaps the Python wrapper is much easier than other languages. Either way, I'd definitely prefer an API too.
Yes, I have. While it's slower than an API it's definitely fast enough for an astroturfer to make a post and then have multiple fake user accounts upvote it over the course of several hours to make it look organic.
I agree with you, but if they only use it once every several hours, they can do it via api as well, as nobody will likely ever notice it.
In theory you can track who is using an API for botting purposes though. Using Selenium would bypass that and make it harder to determine if the user is botting.
Deimos won't record much more than usage/month and probably votes,posts,comments/month with some system to alert him of high usage levels. He can do it on normal site as well, but I agree with you that it's harder to detect it when the user is using Selenium.
But when the api will be with no trust limit, users who want to make bots and don't care about rules will just create new account and use api. There is no difference between this and usage of selenium because api is locked - the only one is that bots using selenium are basically throttling themselves.
(reddit)
They were posting real articles from trustworthy sites. The only issue was that they posted just some articles, that they liked, right? I don't really see the problem here. It's behaviour of normal user. Me and you post things that we like (or like to discuss about) as well. It's more likely that I'll post something about Trump wanting to make multi million military parade than something positive about him - just because I don't like him. I'm biased against him and there's not much I can do about it. So is everyone else - everyone is biased about something.
I think we should welcome all points of view as long as it's legal, it's not spam and it's not hurting anyone. I think I'd be fine with people posting articles that are critical against US interventions in middle east time to time - as long as it's generating healthy discussion. Just because someone is critical doesn't mean that it's bad.
Edit: relevant comment from edward
I feel like there's a big difference between an individual posting content they like and a group working to promote content. Monsanto could be paying employees to post information and opinions to paint themselves in a positive light (and can be done with factual information because information is very malleable). EA could be having its employees post content for its games under the guise of being legitimate fans. Or a country's government can be working to shape the public opinion into their favor. I feel like all 3 scenarios go against the spirit of reddit and user content. Whether reddit is consistent in what content it removes might be questionable, but I agree with the need to curb organized influences.
I mostly agree with this. If the group is generating meaningful discussion, I have no problem with it. The problems starts when the group starts breaking rules about promotion.
I'm on board with that.
The issue with astroturfing isn't that a group might promote points of view they like and/or you dislike, rather it is that they also work to suppress opposing points of view. An astroturfing group could easily accomplish this by using multiple user accounts to upvote their posts and comments.
Hm, didn't know they did it, thank you.
So, registered app + OAuth - pretty standard.
High-trust is so vague though, and contrary to the plans so far: Deimos has worked more via trusting and then revoking if that trust is broken.
EDIT: also wanted to add that if I'm not allowed to use the API when it comes out because I'm not at some trust threshold, I'm going to be pretty unhappy. Botting / spamming / API misuse are definitely things that we'll want to avoid, totally agree, but I hope Deimos / we can come up with a better way than barring access.
I think development access to api shouldn't be gained immediately after registration. It doesn't have to be difficult to get access to, but it should be hard enough to get access to it to not allow users who broken rules mass create another accounts to access api.
Most people still spend lot of time on a site before they start developing something, the limit wouldn't affect that many users anyway.
And I think if it will be locked behind reputation wall, deimos could still manually provide access to people that he trust.
That's fair, and a good point about protection against just making a new account to hit the API that I hadn't thought about.