It seems to me like some people made it their business to "hack" Reddit with automated scripts. Taking over subreddits, promoting content to the front page, that sort of thing.
Once they got good at that, they had a saleable product, as well as a worldview that treats online discussion as a resource strata to be exploited and shepherded, not nurtured.
Reddit itself is tracked as a social platform in the same vein as twitter or FB. Its astroturfed to hell and back, and there's no way to know who is posting what.
Governments have the resources to dedicate people to doing things like this. Once they have the ability to shape discussions, they will.
Russia doesn't care if Black Lives Matter or not. They promoted inflammatory postings on both sides of the issue simply because chaos and weaking public trust is a goal for them. Sure, you might not care about the issue and don't visit those subreddits, but it still affects you because the community you live in.
I don't think this is a very strong point. In this case we're talking about a Reddit user who has been an active redditor for a long time moderating various subreddits. What's the issue exactly? That he may sell his account or otherwise be influenced by state agents? That also applies to the CEOs and board members of Reddit, the regulators and lobbyists, and polticians. There are plenty of worse things to be concerned about than how many subreddits Gallowboob is moderating.
Someone watching that many subreddits can't have a good grasp on context. They'll end up moderating in a way that seems fine if they don't understand the culture of the subreddit.
Realistic example: someone makes a comment about something nice his boyfriend did. Someone else replies "sounds pretty gay, dude." Could one of these supermods understand that this is a normal and silly thing for queers of a certain age to say to each other? Maybe. I wouldn't count on it. They can't go and dig into each poster's history to see that they post in the same communities and often swap silly comments. The volume in their mod inbox is just too high.
You assume that the user account is anything more than a user-Agent. Accounts do not at all bind one-to-one with people. They never have, never will, and the push to try to make it so is a fool's errand.
That account could just be the tip of the spear of an entire department of information warfare specialists.
This is why the old tongue in cheek wisdom "On the Internet, no one knows you're a {dog,child,FBI Agent,Special Information Warfare Directorate Agent,Nymphomaniacal Grandma} " never stopped being relevant. User-Agents!=Users.
Don't get into the habit, lest the ones who don't run circles around you.
I will never cease to find it hilarious adults are afraid of Russians (as opposed to "Russia") posting on Reddit or Twitter, or buying a few ads on Facebook or whatever. Not, say, Israelis or Saudis or the Mujahedin-e Khalq buying congress and actively bribing our politicians: Russians posting on Reddit.
I didn't say it was only Russia. I wasn't writing a dissertation, and picked Russia as the most obvious and document example.
Also, countries don't post, people do. It is a well documented fact that Russian had a full time time operating thousands of fake accounts. Russians are posting those messages and spreading memes, but it it is in their official capacity of Russian agents that they do it.
I'm not worried about random Russian citizen posting their thoughts.
>Russians are posting those messages and spreading memes, but it it is in their official capacity of Russian agents that they do it.
I realize it's a popular, even government approved conspiracy theory, but it seems more like psychological projection (the US is absolutely doing such things, and has been long before the internet existed -for example[1]) rather than anything for which there is actual evidence.
Whether or not Russian agents are posting official FUD on Reddit is kind of irrelevant. The idea that anything on Reddit (or twitter for that matter) matters at all is what is so bloody funny about it.
Saying that the US intelligence does these things in not way refutes the point I was making. "Your honor, yes, I'm covered in exploding ink-pack stains, but Bonnie and Clyde have stolen from lots of banks."
What aren't you willing to dismiss by invoking the magic words "conspiracy theory?" Is this just a joke?
>What aren't you willing to dismiss by invoking the magic words "conspiracy theory?" Is this just a joke?
Lol, well, I'm definitely willing to dismiss the idea that reddit, twitter and facebook are why Trump is president if that's what you mean. I suppose Obama won the 2008 election because of some dank memes posted in 4chan, and Bush won in 2000 because of funny things some weeb posted on Usenet.
As far as why people continue to say it: as I said, it's projection. The US has done 1000x worse than whatever imagined ridiculously effective Reddit posts the Rooskies have done. The fact that adult humans with day jobs who are somehow able to feed themselves without choking to death on their tongues are able to believe in such nonsense will never ever cease to amuse me.
If you actually believe such things, you really need to learn how to count.
A pretty visible example of this is Iran on r/worldnews. Back when there was the US-Iran conflict in early January, the front page was filled with pro-Iranian content [0]. This is after hundreds of civilians were killed for protesting. It could just be that the people on that subreddit support Iran, but given that on many of the posts the comments were full of people saying they disagreed, and given that Iran has been previously found spreading propaganda on that subreddit in particular [1], I think it is suspicious. The posts seemed to mostly stop after they decided to shoot down a civilian airliner.
In all fairness this can be abused by any country not just Russia or China.
US and Israel could just as well use it to shape and support the endless wars and warmongering.
It could be used by left/right wing extemists just as well to push their own narative.
The fact that it can shape what is seen by your average joe to that extent is the problem regardless of who does it.
'Could' and 'Currently has a well know and active program dedicated to' are two entirely different things. Kind of moot to worry about hypotheticals when the existing reality is problematic enough.
Reddit is one of the largest international websites in the world and many careers, lifestyles and organizations have sprung up from it. If millions of dollars are being spent on this and the industry continues to swell, blaming passive observers for being concerned seems to be backwards.
Once they got good at that, they had a saleable product, as well as a worldview that treats online discussion as a resource strata to be exploited and shepherded, not nurtured.
Here's a comment thread about "Gallowboob" which documents all this to a T: https://snew.notabug.io/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/...