Is anyone else noticing an uptick in far-right content and Russian propaganda on reddit lately?
To me it almost seems like reddit has started pushing it.
Is anyone else noticing an uptick in far-right content and Russian propaganda on reddit lately?
To me it almost seems like reddit has started pushing it.
Yes. I noticed it. It’s maddening. On certain things, half or more if the posts are Russian assets or bots. Reddit could do something about it, but in classic corporate fashion, the Russians increased their user engagement metrics, so they won’t do anything about it.
How do you tell that they’re Russian bot and assets, and not American or indian or any other country?
I dont doubt it. What kind of topics? And how can you tell they’re bots?
The assets are easy to spot because they spout Russian propaganda, are more articulate, show up suspiciously early in threads, and often post when it is night in the USA. I generally assume the threads with a sheer mass of early comments spouting Russian propaganda are bots, since they have bad grammar, and almost never respond. I guess they could just be from a huge troll farm with bad grammar that almost never response to comments.
How do you determine that something is Russian propaganda specifically?
It’s usually not subtle, and are almost always outright lies. Statements along the lines of ‘Ukraine is infested with Nazis, so invasion was justified’, ‘The threat of Ukraine joining NATO caused the war’, ‘Russia is the new Rome’, etc.
Ok, but that doesn’t answer my question. How do you determine that something is Russian propaganda specifically?
russian trolls are the meat of reddits account and engagement numbers, somewhere like 43-50+% of comments are bots on the site. reddit is just doing performative actions, by going after lowest hanging fruit: OF accounts, advertisers, and people like us.
reddit is basically a hybrid between FACEBOOK/youtube, and X. i also seen significant amount of reposts from truth socials too.
How did you determine that?