While I am more curious than worried, I nonetheless keep running into eyebrow-raising circumstantial indications that Daily Kos content may be being partitioned with different information seen by different users. This may simply be an emergent property of DK4, and I haven't attempted any kind of in-depth survey, but the apparent behavior of this site over the past year or two has been strange to say the least. I describe some of the apparent patterns and possible explanations below.
1. Invisible comments without HRs.
This is a phenomenon I've run into on occasion, and it goes like this: A user will post a comment in a diary, and it will not be Recced - so far, so normal. Then, substantially further down the comment tree, sometimes hours later, another user will post a virtually identical comment and receive many Recs. I wish I'd kept URLs for these comments, but for now I guess I'll just have to rely on other people having seen similar occurrences.
Possible explanations:
- Coincidence - multiple users happened to overlook a highly-placed comment they would have Recced had they seen it, and also happened to notice a similar comment further down the comment tree. Given the repeat occurrence of the phenomenon across several diaries and the volume of Recs involved, this seems unlikely.
- Deliberate ostracism of the commenting user, despite support for the content of the comment. This would be plausible in general terms, but not in context: There were no follow-up comments warning others that the poster is a troll looking for mojo, the poster in each case had plenty of it anyway, and it's unlikely that everyone who saw the diary would know to avoid such a commenter even if a subset of posters had a problem with them.
- The Rec function failed to work for that particular comment among all users who would attempt to Rec it, but worked for all other comments in the diary. Improbable: Where the Rec function has failed, users often report the failure in a follow-up comment, e.g. "Great comment. Tried to Rec, but system wouldn't let me." I've also never personally run into a situation where Rec fails for only a single comment in an extensively-commented diary, and where I've run into any Rec failures at all, refreshing eliminates them. Everyone running into the same failure for only one comment, and the failure persisting seems unlikely.
- The comment was invisible, so users simply had no opportunity to Rec it, while the second comment by a different user was visible. This seems most likely. Possible explanations for selective invisibility:
(a) Transient glitch. A reasonable possibility. It would make no sense for an interfering party in the overall system (e.g., hacker, ISP, government entity, etc.) to block one comment and then permit an identical one. Unless...
(b) The user, and not the specific comment, is being censored, or if blocks of users are being partitioned to be mutually (or non-mutually) invisible under some conditions. This is pure supposition, of course, with very little concrete evidence, but isolating groups within a political movement from interacting with each other is a recognized tactic of dissent-control, so it at least makes motivational sense. Partitioning is also indicated in other phenomena, which I describe below.
2. Comments appearing mid-stream.
On occasion, I've refreshed a diary's comments and found a previously unseen comment appearing prior to old ones. Is this ever supposed to happen? If data takes a longer route through the system, is it supposed to be posted in a comment tree according to when it was sent vs. when it arrives? If so, then it is at least plausible that the phenomenon is a meaningless artifact of networking. If not, it suggests that it's a case of a comment being invisible to me becoming visible at some point for some reason.
Possible explanations:
- Data took a longer route through the internet because of meaningless network factors. Plausible if comments are treed according to when they were sent rather than when they arrive.
- Data was buffered on the site server due to meaningless network factors. Plausible if comments are treed according to when they were sent rather than when they arrive.
- Comment was posted and perfectly visible to the poster, but not to me and perhaps a wider block of users, then for some reason became visible later. Makes sense if some form of partitioning is occurring.
3. Diary Recommends occurring in block "dumps."
There seem to be oddities at work in how diaries are Recommended that - as far as I know - weren't occurring before relatively recently in the history of the site. Namely, Recommends appear to occur in substantial blocks within a short time of each other - I haven't attempted to chart them, so I can accept the possibility that this is an illusion, but it is nonetheless a rather obtrusive apparent phenomenon. A steady trickle of Recs does occur, but the "dumping" pattern is still apparent over and above it. There are prosaic explanations for such a pattern even if it is occurring, although it also fits the less optimistic possibility.
Possible explanations:
- Time zones. People waking up, going to lunch, or getting off work in a given time zone logging on and making Recommends within a short time of each other. This is probably occurring in any case, but I haven't noticed a strong association of timing with the phenomenon of Recommend dumps, so it seems on the surface like more is going on. Furthermore, one would think time zone-associated dumps would only occur a few times per day, but my vague impression is that Rec dumps occur every few hours. Again, I haven't charted it.
- Server buffering of Recommends. Plausible, but doesn't seem like there would be any point to buffering such trivial data for hours on end.
- Diaries posted earlier becoming suddenly visible to a new block of users. If this is the case, then it would indicate traffic being filtered through partitions. I have no idea on what basis such filters would be applied, although in the era of social networking it is plausible to statistically identify and disrupt the most effective interactions in an online group through selective interference. Again, just a supposition based on (several) circumstantial oddities. If this is happening, the steady trickle of Recs would be people within a partition logging on and seeing the diary normally.
4. Bizarre persistence and relative popularity of Republican memes on a liberal activist website.
We do have trolls and fools, but even combined neither are nearly enough to explain both the persistence and popularity of memes that are obviously antagonistic to the core purposes of the site. This isn't to say that it's false traffic either - I think most of it is sincerely posted. But what raises my eyebrows is how prominent such diaries are compared to their opposing counterparts - how swiftly they seem to accumulate an audience, while controversial statements in the other direction seem to have a remarkably hard time attracting attention, even by the standards of mediocrity. One could say that such content appears to be somehow "frictionless" in its accessibility to the user base, while others seem very difficult to find and strangely easy to overlook.
Possible explanations:
- Large number of troll accounts with TU status periodically pushing GOP-meme-infested diaries on to the Rec List. Plausible, but I credit the staff with more vigilance than that, and it wouldn't explain the "invisibility cloak" that seems to envelope diaries more in keeping with the purpose of the site.
- Kossacks sincerely and enthusiastically support GOP memes in large numbers. Uh, no.
- Diaries harmful to our agenda are not hampered by the same anomalous network phenomena that affect normal Daily Kos content. I.e., not partitioned - they're exposed to the entire community immediately, creating ferment that further promotes the memes even while they're being criticized, and allowing some to enter the Rec List because of its time-dependent criteria.
5. Weird oversights.
On more than one occasion, I've had people who are very supportive of my work ask me where I've been - like they haven't seen my postings in ages - when I've been posting regularly the whole time. Sometimes they think I've abandoned the site entirely, and only realize I still exist when I comment in one of their diaries - comments that tend to get large numbers of Recs from other people who thought likewise, and tell me to hurry up and post again. What the hell?
6. Similar patterns communicating with users in China.
I don't know if this has been anyone else's experience, but when interacting with DK users posting from within China - even American ones with whom cultural or language differences wouldn't explain anything - there are strange non sequiturs in the discussion and failures to respond to statements that one would imagine the Great Firewall wouldn't allow through. This was the case before DK4 came online, only now it seems that somewhat similar patterns are generalized to the whole community. This was what originally caused me to suspect some kind of ISP or other architectural partitioning was taking place, dividing and perhaps selectively filtering this site's traffic.
We've known for a while there are various elements in government, business, and politics who admire the capabilities of the Great Firewall, but I wouldn't imply without evidence that anything broader is occurring than on this site, since that's the only experience base from which I see the analogy. But some level of interference in access to content seems to be occurring across the site.
7. Industrial-level inundation of troll accounts.
Diaries have been posted about this by others and apparently the staff were aware of it - in particular, the sudden registration of thousands of troll accounts - but it at least suggests there are highly organized attempts to interfere in the content of this site, which adds to the circumstantial context of the anomalies mentioned above. It may be completely unrelated, of course.
8. Radical cultural shift on Daily Kos in recent times.
To put it frankly, Daily Kos seems to have lost its sense of humor relatively recently and rapidly. Snark was an integral element of this site's content from the day I showed up here four years ago to about six months ago, and the Rec List was routinely host to content that ruined the keyboards of countless coffee-drinking viewers. Sure, there were misfires, but they merely contributed to the humorous ferment that gave birth to a large volume of classic hilarity. In recent times, however, humor has virtually disappeared from the radar - there are occasionally very cute pootie diaries, but the kind of disemboweling snark that was once a trademark product of this site is simply gone (or else we just can't see it anymore).
Possible explanations:
- My perception of the cultural shift is incorrect. It's not possible for me to argue with my own perceptions in the absence of contrary evidence, but I acknowledge the possibility.
- The thousands of highly active Daily Kos users simultaneously lost their sense of humor and stopped Reccing snark diaries, coincident with aforementioned anomalous content behavior. Obviously this is nonsense.
- Mentality(/ies) incapable of understanding or appreciating humor are interfering in site traffic. Humorlessness, as you probably have guessed, is a typical characteristic of the people we oppose here, and as anyone who visited Redstate or Free Republic over the years knows, our snark content routinely drove them mad with rage. I doubt any of those troglodytes would be involved, but people with the same mentality? Perhaps.
Now, it's unlikely that if interference is occurring that it would be occurring on a level controllable by the staff - more likely webhosts and ISPs, if not (less likely, but more disturbing) at the level of underlying architecture. I don't have nearly the technical knowledge to suggest any kind of specific avenue of investigation into this, but I'm just throwing it out there in case others have had similar experiences, and hopefully to encourage people with real skills to look more deeply at traffic patterns here and elsewhere. My thoroughly qualitative sense is that interference is occurring, but if no one wishes to look further, then I'll be content to periodically throw a curve ball and see if the same patterns persist. Could be fun, I suppose.
5:26 PM PT: As to the troll account swarm, I've received a pretty satisfactory explanation of what they were doing. The possibility that's been raised, and which I find very reasonable, is that they were a commercial swarm targeted at search-engine optimization by posting links in profiles.
However, the other phenomena have not been explained to my satisfaction, and requests for clarification have mostly been ignored by those who offer hand-wavy explanations. My impressions are not widely shared, but then that's been the case many times when I've been right, so that in itself isn't convincing.