• katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    6 hours ago

    wait /r/all isn’t just pulling any post from the database regardless of subscription to subreddit? i just assumed all would be all.

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 hours ago

      Sort of. But the sorting algorithm is not so simple that you can call it neutral or natural.

      I don’t think the details of Reddit’s ranking algorithm are public. Even within a single sub, it’s not as simple as counting user votes. That’s weighed against age, and all sorts of fuzzy bot/fraud detection mechanisms. I think Reddit intentionally injects noise into the system. You’ll see phantom votes all the time to keep things “balanced”.

      And then in /all, I believe some subreddits are banned entirely, and again it’s not as simple as “most votes” or “most votes weighed against age”.

      Here’s a Chicago Tribune article from 2016 that mentions the change I mentioned before: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2016/12/01/reddit-to-crack-down-on-most-toxic-users-of-pro-trump-forum/

      Reddit had to change one of its algorithms over the summer to try to stop r/the_Donald from dominating the board that displays all of Reddit’s content, known as r/all.

      It’s light on details and again, I don’t think details were ever published. Reddit is closed-source so really it’s anybody’s guess how they’re really ranking posts.