I'd like to submit a request that my fellow redditors evaluate the change of tone of the reddit hivemind that has associated the exploding/burning hoverboards as evidence that corporations are using reddit as a viral marketing platform and subverting honest and open discussion here.

If anyone DARED to say that we shouldn't call these devices hoverboards just two weeks ago, those comments were downvoted to oblivion and people were called names and mocked for being so "insightful"! "Of course it doesn't hover! we can all see that!" etc.

Now that the devices are exploding beneath people's feet, the viral marketing effort has ceased as the corporations selling these devices focus their efforts elsewhere. Now the bashing of this corporate asset is completely acceptable on reddit as it should always have been.

Why the fuck do I care?!

I understand that I shouldn't care. I understand that reddit is a privately owned space where I shouldn't have any say in what can or can't be said here. But when big money is allowed to control our discussion, it can be a bit more deleterious (bad) than just shutting down criticism of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. We can have politicians manipulate public opinion - we all know that the hivemind is swayed easily by a quick glance at the vote count for a comment.

So discussions about big political issues can be shut down swiftly. A post about the old "TPP" could just get a few early downvotes and never cross the minds of the masses. A comment about net neutrality could get a few early downvotes and never get appropriate attention.

If you don't care about a corporation paying people or robots to manipulate our discussions here and our content here, then you must accept that reddit is for nothing more than entertainment and that entertainment is sponsored by corporations and politicians. That means the entertainment is censored in a very modern and interesting way (paid downvotes, paid comments calling you an idiot to suppress your viewpoint)

I would love to see some pushback from the general reddit community against this sort of manipulation. Dip down to the bottom of the comments now and then and upvote a few that don't seem to belong there. I guarentee you there are paid downvotes and paid upvotes all around us. It's not a question of if they exist or not, it's a question of how many there are. We have our thought police.