<story><title>Reddit’s empire is founded on a flawed algorithm</title><url>http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/2013-12-09-reddits-empire-is-built-on-a-flawed-algorithm.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yen223</author><text>But as the author pointed out, nobody visits &amp;#x2F;new.</text></item><item><author>raldi</author><text>No, they just vanish from the &lt;i&gt;hot&lt;/i&gt; page, and it&amp;#x27;s not necessarily permanent. They&amp;#x27;re still visible on &amp;#x2F;new, which allows for upvotes-of-resurrection.</text></item><item><author>randomwalker</author><text>tl;dr: Posts whose net score ever becomes negative essentially vanish permanently due to a quirk in the algorithm. So an attacker can disappear posts he doesn&amp;#x27;t like by constantly watching the &amp;quot;New&amp;quot; page and downvoting them as soon as they appear.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>atwebb</author><text>Maybe not the &amp;#x2F;all&amp;#x2F;new but I pretty much only visit &amp;#x2F;new on the subs I frequent. It&amp;#x27;s a much better way of using smaller subs from my perspective. Lots of things never make it fully to the front page of a smaller sub. The drawback is that subs which get caught in a filter appear to show sorted by their submission date and not the mod approval date so you can miss things on &amp;#x2F;new that might make it to &amp;#x2F;hot</text></comment>
<story><title>Reddit’s empire is founded on a flawed algorithm</title><url>http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/2013-12-09-reddits-empire-is-built-on-a-flawed-algorithm.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yen223</author><text>But as the author pointed out, nobody visits &amp;#x2F;new.</text></item><item><author>raldi</author><text>No, they just vanish from the &lt;i&gt;hot&lt;/i&gt; page, and it&amp;#x27;s not necessarily permanent. They&amp;#x27;re still visible on &amp;#x2F;new, which allows for upvotes-of-resurrection.</text></item><item><author>randomwalker</author><text>tl;dr: Posts whose net score ever becomes negative essentially vanish permanently due to a quirk in the algorithm. So an attacker can disappear posts he doesn&amp;#x27;t like by constantly watching the &amp;quot;New&amp;quot; page and downvoting them as soon as they appear.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phildeschaine</author><text>Lots of people visit &amp;#x2F;new.  They&amp;#x27;re called &amp;quot;knights of new&amp;quot;.  The total number of these people is probably far lower than the front page (where _hot &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;is&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; used), but it&amp;#x27;s how every submission gets its start.</text></comment>