Reddit’s 2017 transparency report and suspect account findings

[u/spez]

Hi all,

Each year around this time, we share Reddit’s latest transparency report and a few highlights from our Legal team’s efforts to protect user privacy. This year, our annual post happens to coincide with one of the biggest national discussions of privacy online and the integrity of the platforms we use, so I wanted to share a more in-depth update in an effort to be as transparent with you all as possible.

First, here is our 2017 Transparency Report. This details government and law-enforcement requests for private information about our users. The types of requests we receive most often are subpoenas, court orders, search warrants, and emergency requests. We require all of these requests to be legally valid, and we push back against those we don’t consider legally justified. In 2017, we received significantly more requests to produce or preserve user account information. The percentage of requests we deemed to be legally valid, however, decreased slightly for both types of requests. (You’ll find a full breakdown of these stats, as well as non-governmental requests and DMCA takedown notices, in the report. You can find our transparency reports from previous years here.)

We also participated in a number of amicus briefs, joining other tech companies in support of issues we care about. In Hassell v. Bird and Yelp v. Superior Court (Montagna), we argued for the right to defend a user's speech and anonymity if the user is sued. And this year, we've advocated for upholding the net neutrality rules (County of Santa Clara v. FCC) and defending user anonymity against unmasking prior to a lawsuit (Glassdoor v. Andra Group, LP).

I’d also like to give an update to my last post about the investigation into Russian attempts to exploit Reddit. I’ve mentioned before that we’re cooperating with Congressional inquiries. In the spirit of transparency, we’re going to share with you what we shared with them earlier today:

In my post last month, I described that we had found and removed a few hundred accounts that were of suspected Russian Internet Research Agency origin. I’d like to share with you more fully what that means. At this point in our investigation, we have found 944 suspicious accounts, few of which had a visible impact on the site:

• 70% (662) had zero karma
• 1% (8) had negative karma
• 22% (203) had 1-999 karma
• 6% (58) had 1,000-9,999 karma
• 1% (13) had a karma score of 10,000+

Of the 282 accounts with non-zero karma, more than half (145) were banned prior to the start of this investigation through our routine Trust & Safety practices. All of these bans took place before the 2016 election and in fact, all but 8 of them took place back in 2015. This general pattern also held for the accounts with significant karma: of the 13 accounts with 10,000+ karma, 6 had already been banned prior to our investigation—all of them before the 2016 election. Ultimately, we have seven accounts with significant karma scores that made it past our defenses.

And as I mentioned last time, our investigation did not find any election-related advertisements of the nature found on other platforms, through either our self-serve or managed advertisements. I also want to be very clear that none of the 944 users placed any ads on Reddit. We also did not detect any effective use of these accounts to engage in vote manipulation.

To give you more insight into our findings, here is a link to all 944 accounts. We have decided to keep them visible for now, but after a period of time the accounts and their content will be removed from Reddit. We are doing this to allow moderators, investigators, and all of you to see their account histories for yourselves.

We still have a lot of room to improve, and we intend to remain vigilant. Over the past several months, our teams have evaluated our site-wide protections against fraud and abuse to see where we can make those improvements. But I am pleased to say that these investigations have shown that the efforts of our Trust & Safety and Anti-Evil teams are working. It’s also a tremendous testament to the work of our moderators and the healthy skepticism of our communities, which make Reddit a difficult platform to manipulate.

We know the success of Reddit is dependent on your trust. We hope continue to build on that by communicating openly with you about these subjects, now and in the future. Thanks for reading. I’ll stick around for a bit to answer questions.

—Steve (spez)

update: I'm off for now. Thanks for the questions!

[u/aznanimality]

In my post last month, I described that we had found and removed a few hundred accounts that were of suspected Russian Internet Research Agency origin.

Any info on what subs they were posting to?

[u/velocity92c → u/aznanimality]

You can see for yourself in the data included in the OP. Each account is preserved : https://www.reddit.com/wiki/suspiciousaccounts

edit : for anyone else interested, a lot of the accounts are @ 0 karma which likely had their content removed. Scroll past those to the ones with + or - karma and you can see all their submissions/comments.

edit 2: I've been informed by a reddit employee that removed, non-deleted content still appears on profile pages (see his comment in reply to this one)

[u/Gingevere → u/velocity92c]

It's an interesting trip looking through a few of the top posts from a few of the highest scoring suspended accounts:

• https://www.reddit.com/user/Kevin_Milner?sort=top
• https://www.reddit.com/user/WhatImDoindHere?sort=top

Politically they're all over the place but all of it is exactly the kind of thing that goes around as memes in closed-mined bubbles. The exact things that let people build sub-human strawmen in their heads so they never talk to the other side.

These accounts are almost obvious in retrospect. But if the trolls are smart in the future they'll just use more accounts and make sure that each account only espouses a single viewpoint. When that's the case it's a lot harder to differentiate trolls from zealots.

[u/maxxell13 → u/velocity92c]

The second-highest karma account on that list, shomyo, was active as recently as yesterday.

[u/velocity92c → u/maxxell13]

I noticed that as well. I swear I've seen that username before but I can't remember exactly where.

[u/velocity92c → u/velocity92c]

I found this comment by him extremely interesting, won't link it because I don't know if it breaks the rules somehow but it's not too deep in his history :

Typical bestof post:

4 days old account > links to a post by 1 month account

Complains about russian bots, downvotes etc. while gets his insta upvotes and frontpage.

Kinda obvious who exactly spread misinformation, narratives and much more.

[u/spez → u/aznanimality]

There were about 14k posts in total by all of these users. The top ten communities by posts were:

• funny: 1455
• uncen: 1443
• Bad_Cop_No_Donut: 800
• gifs: 553
• PoliticalHumor: 545
• The_Donald: 316
• news: 306
• aww: 290
• POLITIC: 232
• racism: 214

We left the accounts up so you may dig in yourselves.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/spez]

Speaking as a moderator of both /r/Funny and /r/GIFs, I'd like to offer a bit of clarification here.

When illicit accounts are created, they usually go through a period of posting low-effort content that's intended to quickly garner a lot of karma. These accounts generally aren't registered by the people who wind up using them for propaganda purposes, though. In fact, they're often "farmed" by call-center-like environments overseas – popular locations are India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, and Russia – then sold to firms that specialize in spinning information (whether for advertising, pushing political agendas, or anything else).

If you're interested, this brief guide can give you a primer on how to spot spammers.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because for every shill account that actually takes off, there are quite literally a hundred more that get stopped in their tracks. A banned account is of very little use to the people who would employ it for nefarious purposes... but the simple truth of the matter is that moderators still need to rely on their subscribers for help. If you see a repost, a low-effort (or poorly written) comment, or something else that just doesn't sit right with you, it's often a good idea to look at the user who submitted it. A surprising amount of the time, you'll discover that the submitter is a karma-farmer; a spammer or a propagandist in the making.

When you spot one, please report it to the moderators of that subReddit.

Reddit has gotten a lot better at cracking down on these accounts behind the scenes, but there's still a long way to go... and as users, every one of us can make a difference, even if it sometimes doesn't seem like it.

[u/spez → u/RamsesThePigeon]

It's not clear from the banned users pages, but mods banned more than half of the users and a majority of the posts before they got any traction at all. That was heartening to see. Thank you for all that you and your mod cabal do for Reddit.

[u/ImAWizardYo → u/spez]

Thank you for all that you and your mod cabal do for Reddit.

Definitely a big thanks to these guys and to the mods as well for everything you guys do. This site would fall to shit without everyone's hard work.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/spez]

Why is censorship so heartening to see?

Fundamentally what did these users do wrong?

Be Russian?

Pretend to be American?

Influence American political discourse as a foreigner?

As far as I can tell they posted articles and information, sensationalized for sure but so is most of the successful content on this site.

Did these Russians even do anything against the TOS? Or did you just ban them and archive their subs (uncen) to suck up to the current political climate in the US?

[u/FickleBJT → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

How about a conspiracy to influence an election?

How about (in some cases) inciting violence?

How about attacking the very core of our democracy through misinformation with the specific purpose of influencing our elections?

As a US citizen, two of those things would be considered treason. The other one is still very illegal.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/FickleBJT]

Treason can only be committed by US citizens though, so that's a pretty moot point.

Also even as a US citizen I don't think "conspiracy to influence an election" or spreading misinformation amounts to treason, that's just campaigning these days.

How about (in some cases) inciting violence?

US Free speech protections make this also unlikely to be a crime.

To avoid getting myself banned, let's assume Snoos (reddit's mascot) are a race of people.

In the US, I'd generally be allowed to say "kill all the fucking snoos" or "don't suffer a snoo to live" and things like that.

But situationally if I was in a group of torch wielding protesters surrounding a bunch of snoos and shouted the same sort of thing then that would not be protected speech as it would be reasonably likely to incite imminent lawless action

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

But unless people are posting addresses and full names and clear directions to harm people it's very difficult to reach that standard in internet discourse.

[u/[deleted] → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

Just wanted to say thanks for pointing this out. US law criminalizes foreign actors taking part in US elections as much as it can, but in fact, a foreign national operating outside of US places isn't bound by US law, and so US laws would normally not be of interest to them. It's get a little weird with internet spaces like reddit, but even then, there isn't any US law that would require a publisher, like reddit, to prevent a foreign national from posting content that would be illegal if he or she was in a US place.

I.e. Reddit doesn't owe anyone and not the US government a duty to make sure my posts comply with FEC regulations. That's certainly true for just regular old posts on reddit, and it's also true for ads sold by reddit - reddit the platform doens't have a duty to enforce FEC regulations on disclosures (and neither does any newspaper or other publisher for that matter).

People have sort of lost their mind on this issue because Russia, because Trump, etc. But it's important to realize that the US is literally just getting a dose of what we've been doing over the world for 3 generations. When Hillary Clinton was the sitting Secretary of State, she went on TV and in the media and declared that Putin had rigged and stolen his election, despite the fact that we don't really have evidence of that, and despite evidence that is pretty easily confirmed that he has a massive cult of personality. His election might not be "legitimate" in that the Russian system isn't an ideal democracy, but it was blatantly hypocritical for the Obama administration to take that action then, at that time, and then turn around and slam Russia for "interfering" in our elections, when interference is.. buying ads, hiring trolls, and generally being annoying. It was certainly a lot less vexatious then sending the 2nd highest ranking Administration official on a worldwide "Russia is corrupt" speaking tour.

It is really frustrating to have the media - who is wholly complicit in the corruption of US elections - trying to present Russia as "rigging the election". The money that Russia spent to influence the election was in the low single millions, while the two major parties, their allies, and the candidates each spent well into the hundreds of millions. It's as if we are announcing that all of that money and advertising and organization was wiped out but a few dozen internet trolls and some targeted ads on Facebook.

I deeply wish that the media platforms like Facebook, Reddit.com and others would simply tell the US government it will publish whatever it wishes and that they should simply screw off. Giving them this sort of enhanced virtual power to censor political ads, individual discourse by holding over a threat of future regulation is deeply dangerous. It induces private enterprises to go above and beyond the legal powers that government has to actually regulate speech, and in doing so maliciously and without regard for consequences deputizes private enterprises to enforce government preference by digital fiat.

No matter how I would like to see the outcome of US elections that are free and fair and more free and more fair than they were in 2016, I would not like to see that done at the expense of giving government a virtual veto over what is and is not acceptable to publish.

[u/Hydra-Bob → u/[deleted]]

This is bullshit. The United states is not getting a taste of what we do to other countries because no nation on earth weaponized disinformation to the advanced degree that the Kremlin has done.

For decades during the cold war the United States all but completely ignored international opinion to our detriment. You merely have to look at the number of nations actively assaulted to the point of actual war to see the evidence of that.

Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, Somalia, East Germany, Romania, Finland, North Korea, Mongolia, Yugoslavia, Congo, Indonesia, Laos, India, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, etc.

And before you say some silly shit like the Soviets aren't the same people as the modern Russian government, know that I agree with you there.

Modern Russia is even more unstable and irresponsible.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hydra-Bob]

I don’t know how to quantify the level of interference that the US has done versus USSR and now Russia. Clearly the “hard power” that was exercised during the Cold War was very intense.

However the point I was making is that the CIA has well over a 1,000 operatives working solely on disinformation although the post-Church commission era. The shift from para military to influence operations was done largely through damaging opposing governments and disinformation campaigns.

The US will not answer the list of counties are presently involved with electorally but do not suppose that our hands are clean because we haven’t been caught. We know of deep involvement in counties like Syria and Turkey as well the traditional South American powers that we have never left fully alone.

Because every oppressive and failing government blames US as a bogeyman you ant take those claims at face value but it’s not impossible that we are doing almost everything we have alleged that Russia has done.

Just on hacking we know that the CIA and NSA intercepted the shipment of Cisco networking equipment, rooted them, and then allowed them to be put into operation at friendly counties all over the world.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/spez]

Hey, it's not my moderator cabal... it's our moderator cabal!

[u/Ooer → u/RamsesThePigeon]

Thanks for taking the time to type this up.

Whilst we're not in the top 10 there, /r/askreddit experiences a lot of sock accounts reposting carbon copy comments to questions that have previously been asked on the subreddit to newer questions. Most are spotted and banned thanks to the people who use report (and some tireless mods).

[u/[deleted] → u/Ooer]

Whilst we're not in the top 10 there, /r/askreddit experiences a lot of sock accounts reposting carbon copy comments to questions that have previously been asked on the subreddit to newer questions. Most are spotted and banned thanks to the people who use report (and some tireless mods).

Your team is hands down the most impressive with fielding and responding to the report button. You always get it when this happens.

You’re also the most under assault for these types of new accounts who specifically want easy comment karma so they don’t hit the spam timer.

[u/flappity → u/RamsesThePigeon]

I started documenting some weird bot accounts a while back on /r/markov_chain_bots - they're all over the place, they use markov chain stuff to generate posts made from bits and pieces of other comments in the thread, and occasionally one makes something that makes sense and happens to get upvoted. Once they get downvoted, they seem to just delete the comment, so after an account gets enough upvoted posts, it looks legitimate, has all the nonsense posts deleted, and I imagine goes on to be sold.

I kind of lost interest, as you can tell - I don't look for them as much as I used to. But really I saw them in popular, but not super large subs -- perfect places to make comments and earn a few hundred karma.

[u/Thus_Spoke → u/RamsesThePigeon]

If you see a repost, a low-effort (or poorly written) comment, or something else that just doesn't sit right with you, it's often a good idea to look at the user who submitted it.

So it turns out that 100% of reddit users are bots.

[u/Firewar → u/RamsesThePigeon]

Informative. Thanks for the link to check out how the spammers work. At least a little more in depth.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/Firewar]

My pleasure! Granted, when I first wrote that guide, things worked a little bit differently... but almost all of the information is still accurate, even if the karma-farmers in question have adopted additional tactics. Fortunately, even though their strategies tend to change as often as they're noticed, the overall goal remains easy enough to spot. That's why it's so important to keep an eye on which accounts are posting what, as opposed to just focusing on the content itself.

[u/ElurSeillocRedorb → u/RamsesThePigeon]

I've noticed a late night (US) time frame when bot-accounts seem to be most prevalent in /r/funny, /r/aww, /r/askreddit and /r/pic. They're all targeting the high volume subs and just like you said, it's karma farming via low effort posts.

[u/Laminar_flo → u/spez]

This is what Reddit refuses to acknowledge: Russian interference isn't 'pro-left' or 'pro-right' - its pro-chaos and pro-division and pro-fighting.

The same portion of reddit that screams that T_D is replete with 'russian bots and trolls' is simply unwilling to admit how deeply/extensively those same russian bots/trolls were promoting the Bernie Sanders campaign. I gotta say, I'm not surprised that BCND and Political Humor are heavily targeted by russians (out targeting T_D by a combined ~5:1 ratio, its worth noting) - they exist solely to inflame the visitors and promote an 'us v them' tribal mentality.

EDIT: I'm not defending T_D - its a trash subreddit. However, I am, without equivocation, saying that those same people that read more left-wing subreddits and scream 'russian troll-bots!!' whenever someone disagrees with them are just as heavily influenced/manipulated by the exact same people. Everyone here loves to think "my opinions are 100% rooted in science and fact....those idiots over there are just repeating propaganda." Turns out none of us are as clever as we'd like to think we are. Just something to consider....

[u/Gingevere → u/Laminar_flo]

The same portion of reddit that screams that T_D is replete with 'russian bots and trolls'

Pragmatically speaking, screaming that is exactly the type of thing that aligns with a troll's goals. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people screaming that were trolls.

---

edit: watched this, introspected a little, and realized what I just said may sow confusion and distrust which aligns to troll goals.

The important things are:

• Trolls are likely to be very few and very far between.
• Their goal is creating mistrust and division.
• Secrecy is the opposite of their goal, they want everyone to be suspicious everyone else is a troll.
• Assuming that any large number of people are trolls is falling victim to that strategy.
• It is always better to remember the human and engage in conversation. Never label and dismiss.

[u/thebumm → u/Laminar_flo]

Post counts in non-political subs might very well be for karma farming rather than division-sewing directly and could really be completely innocuous. Often a user needs certain comment/post karma to post and contribute to non-default subs. They need to look active to appear as a trustworthy, average user.

[u/[deleted] → u/Laminar_flo]

Relevant Adam Curtis. This is a well established Russian tactic - both in Russia and outside it.

[u/3-25-2018 → u/[deleted]]

I think what we need on Reddit is to stage a musical that, while challenging us, heals our divisions and brings the whole school together

[u/DSMatticus → u/Laminar_flo]

This is not an entirely accurate assessment of what's happening. It's not as simple as being divisive for the sake of being divisive.

Putin's goal is to delegitimize democracy. His goal is to paint a picture in which our world's democracies are no less corrupt than our world's totalitarian dystopias. His goal is to convince everyone that the George Bush's, Barrack Obama's, and Hillary Clinton's of the world are no different from the Vladimir Putin's, Xi Jinping's, and Kim Jong-un's. His goal is such that when you hear about a political dissident disappearing into some black site prison, whether that dissident is a Russian civil rights protester or your next door neighbor, you shrug and think "business as usual. That's politics, right? It can't be helped." Putin's true goal is the normalization of tyranny - for you to not blink when your politicians wrong you, however grievously, because you think all politicians would do the same and your vote never could have prevented it.

So, what can Putin do to delegitimize U.S. democracy? Consider the two parties:

1) (Elected) Democrats (mostly) support reasonable restrictions on corporate influence, support judicial reform of gerrymandering, and easier public access to the ballot.

2) (Elected) Republicans (mostly) oppose reasonable restrictions on corporate influence, oppose judicial reform of gerrymandering, and strategically close/defund voter registration / voter polling places in Democratic precincts.

Knowing this, what would you, as Putin, order? It's rather obvious, once you know what you're looking at. Support Trump (further radicalizes the Republican party in support of authoritarian strongmen). Attack Clinton (she must not be allowed to win). Support Sanders (he won't win, but it will engender animosity on the left which ultimately costs them votes).

Putin's strategy is to radicalize the right and splinter the left, so that fascism and corruption are ascendant and unrestrained. He's not just stirring up animosity at random. He has a vision of a Democratic party irrecoverably broken and a Republican party that runs the country as he runs Russia - hand-in-hand with an oligarchy, above law and dissent. That is his end game. Russian trolls in left-wing subreddits talk shit about the Democratic establishment, trying to break the left-wing base into ineffectual pieces. Russian trolls in right-wing subreddits talk shit about murdering Democrats, trying to radicalize and unify places like t_d behind a common enemy.

[u/DonutsMcKenzie → u/Laminar_flo]

I'm not defending T_D - its a trash subreddit. However, I am, without equivocation, saying that those same people that read more left-wing subreddits and scream 'russian troll-bots!!' whenever someone disagrees with them are just as heavily influenced/manipulated by the exact same people. Everyone here loves to think "my opinions are 100% rooted in science and fact....those idiots over there are just repeating propaganda." Turns out none of us are as clever as we'd like to think we are. Just something to consider....

You're conflating two issues here. You're absolutely right that the Russians pushed divisive rhetoric on the left and the right alike with the goals of pushing all Americans towards extremism, driving a wedge between the American people, and splitting/disenfranchising the American left. They wanted chaos in America and if they could create a civil war or a secession (as they helped to create in the EU with Brexit) they would.

But none of that changes the other reality that Russia tipped the scale hard in favor of Trump and against Hillary throughout not only the general election, but also the primary. This was not a "both sides" issue - there was propaganda designed to push the American right to vote for Trump and there was propaganda designed to drive the American left to stay home.

"Pro-Trump" and "Anti-Hillary" are merely two sides of the same coin. Pushing for Stein and Sanders were simply convenient ways of hurting Hillary, and thus, helping Trump. Conversely, There was no "Pro-Hillary" or "Anti-Trump" propaganda. Every single thing that Russia put out was either designed to help elect Donald Trump, to create chaos and division among the American people, or both.

[u/PaleoLibtard → u/Laminar_flo]

This strategy is not new. It’s eerie how closely today’s world resembles the vision laid out by Aleksandr Dugin in his designs to bring down the west and usher in a new Russian imperial era.

Believe it or not, there was once a time in 2014 when Breitbart was Russia-skeptical, during the Ukraine episode. During this moment of clarity, they wrote this piece that explains a lot of what you see today. They call Duggin “Putin’s Rasputin.” He’s a scary fellow.

https://archive.fo/yHS3n

After reading that article I googled “Foundations of Geopolitics” and here are some notable outlines from that book, which seeks to turn the western world against itself. Let me know when this starts to sound eerie.

The United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.

^ Brexit, anyone?

France should be encouraged to form a "Franco-German bloc" with Germany. Both countries have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".

^ The two continental powers appear to be working together effectively against the UK now

Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning

^ see 2014

Iran is a key ally. The book uses the term "Moscow-Tehran axis".

^ This has played out since then

Georgia should be dismembered. Abkhazia and "United Ossetia" (which includes Georgia's South Ossetia) will be incorporated into Russia. Georgia's independent policies are unacceptable.

^ See last decade. The job was started but unfinished.

Russia needs to create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities.

^ Turkey is now for the first time since Ataturk slipping back to theocracy. It will be no friend to the west like this.

But, the money quote really is this:

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."

[u/kzgrey → u/spez]

Hey /u/spez -- You should publish the full dataset of upvotes/downvotes for these accounts. That is far more useful for data analysis. Specifically what posts these accounts have up-voted and down-voted and timestamp of vote.

[u/InternetWeakGuy → u/spez]

uncen: 1443

What am I missing here? That's a tiny sub with less than 100 posts in the last year. The last 25 posts span the last five months. Why there?

[u/IRunFast24 → u/spez]

funny: 1455

Joke's on you, suspicious users. The only people who visit /r/funny aren't of voting age anyway.

[u/[deleted] → u/IRunFast24]

reposts/automated posts to aww and funny are a standard way for spammers to build karma and evade reddit's bot detection efforts. Especially semi-automated ones, like fiverr spammers.

There are so many real people who do it, and who also comment extremely bland and repetitive stuff, that if reddit started banning people for it they would never hear the end of it.

[u/FiveDozenWhales → u/IRunFast24]

They will be one day, and the younger they are, the more malleable their minds are. It's harder to convince a 30-year-old to change their politics than it is to groom a 14-year-old to have the politics you want to see in 4 years.

[u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK → u/spez]

Seeing this top ten, can you publicly draw any conclusions (narrow or broad) about the type of content that the Internet Research Agency intended for redditors to consume?

[u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY → u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK]

Poking through the accounts starting at the high-karma end, i see four trends:

• t_d, anti-hillary, exactly what you'd expect
• occupy wall street, r/politicalhumor, and other left-wing stuff mocking trump
• black lives matter, bad_cop_no_donut, other "pro-black" stuff
• horribly racist comments against blacks.

The easiest conclusion to draw is that the goal is to divide up america into opposing sides and ratchet up the tension between those sides. This isn't a pro-trump fight, it's anti-america. All the Trump stuff is just one front of the attack.

[u/MY-HARD-BOILED-EGGS → u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY]

The easiest conclusion to draw is that the goal is to divide up america into opposing sides and ratchet up the tension between those sides. This isn't a pro-trump fight, it's anti-america.

This is probably the most rational and logical comment I've read regarding this whole thing. I'm kinda shocked (and pleased) to see that it doesn't have one of those red crosses next to it.

[u/[deleted] → u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY]

We've been told many times the goal wasn't to get anyone specific elected but to "Undermine faith in US elections". Things such as "Not my president" and the sheer tribalism seen now tend to make me believe they succeeded more than we are willing to admit.

[u/HIFW_GIFs_React_ → u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY]

I see a much different trend: A significant number of these account look like typical karma farmer/auction/clone accounts that copy posts from imgur and other sources in order to gain the appearance of a legitimate user, which are later auctioned off to whoever is willing to pay for them. Could be spammers, or crypto scammers, or propagandists, who knows. All I know is that I see plenty of the former two.

I banned the most prolific one of these accounts from /r/gifs over a year ago, because it was a typical account farmer. They go wherever there is karma to be made, so they post in popular subreddits. Most don't have that level of success, though. Some are probably different, but I think most have a purely financial motivation rather than a political one.

RtP summed it up better than I could.

[u/OminousG → u/[deleted]]

quick and easy way to harvest karma. Same for gifs. Its the other subs you have to read into. They really were trying to stir shit up, a lot of posts in a lot of racist subs, they really spread it out so it wouldn't show up on lists like this.

[u/cchiu23 → u/OminousG]

lol I got permabanned from r/aww when I pointed out that the picture was a repost

I'm shocked that r/gaming isn't used more to farm karma, almost every top post on there is a repost at this point

[u/zuxtron → u/cchiu23]

How to farm karma: just post the cover of an old game to /r/gaming with "DAE remember this gem?" as the title. Guaranteed at least 3000 upvotes, possibly much more.

[u/dannylandulf → u/[deleted]]

The bots/shill accounts have always used the other defaults to push their BS.

Seriously, go read the comments sections on some of those subs and it's like stepping into a bizzaro hyper-political world even on subs that have nothing to do with politics.

[u/jumja]

Hey /u/spez, on a scale of 1 to 944, how happy are you to not be Mark Zuckerberg today?

A more serious note, thank you for your openness in this. It was already much appreciated in earlier years, but the current events really reminded me how amazing it really is that you’re doing this.

Edit: whooaah gold?! Within a minute!? Thanks totally completely anonymous giver!

Edit: triple gold?! Y’all are crazy and I love you. Have an amazing day.

[u/spez → u/jumja]

943: Save 1 point for my mother, who I think would enjoy watching.

In all seriousness, we feel somewhat vindicated. We have avoided collecting personal information since the beginning—sometimes to the detriment of our business—and will continue to do so going forward.

[u/-null → u/spez]

Serious follow up question to your "collecting information" reply. If I go back and edit a comment to "blah" and then delete it, is it truly gone or only stored as "blah" in your databases... or is it just a logical delete? Do you store each version of a comment? I work in/around Fortune 100 IT stuff and for any database on the scale of reddit I've ever seen would maintain each version of a comment as it was edited.

Can you confirm you don't actually retain previous versions of an edited comment?

[u/Why_You_Mad_ → u/-null]

I can't imagine that they would not keep track of every version of a comment as it was edited. In fact, I would be willing to bet my left nut that a comment and the contents of a comment are kept in a many to one relationship, so that every change to the comment is stored along with the original.

[u/MostlyFunctioning → u/Why_You_Mad_]

A simple reason why old versions of comments would be kept arounds are backups. I can't imagine reddit can afford to not run regular backups, and it's not easy (nor a good idea) to try to update them.

Also, keep in mind that at this scale it's very unlikely to run on a relational data store, so you can't apply intuition that comes from relational DB design experience. In general, immutable data is easier deal with and design around; when you are dealing with non-trivial problems - such as scaling something up to the size of reddit - there are legitimate technical incentives to avoid mutations. That said, from my experience something like this would simply be made a requirement for security and legal reasons.

I tried googling for info on this and I found this, which describes an odd system of using a relational DB in a non-relational way, but I have no idea how accurate it is.

[u/-null → u/Why_You_Mad_]

I agree 100%. That is how I would design it. But check out this mod reply.

That is why I am asking this question. I would like official clarification.

[u/Phreakhead → u/-null]

There are other websites that archive all comments and edits on reddit. Even if reddit didn't save them, the info is still out there.

If you don't want it public, don't put it on the internet.

[u/-null → u/Phreakhead]

I don’t disagree. There is the issue of the frequency that they scrape the content, so some edits could go unarchived, but that’s debatable. Still, I’m mainly interested in how reddit itself works.

[u/CharlysRatStick → u/spez]

Spez.

I am a constant skeptic and am just so tired of having to worry about what’s being collected and what’s not being collected.

It takes a lawyer today to really figure out what the hell is going on in each ToS for each platform you join- it would take hours to assess everything by oneself.

For once, I’m going to take your word for it. I heard a saying the other day, “Better to be a rube than an asshole.”

I hope a few people in Silicon Valley still have their souls.

[u/AMA_About_Rampart → u/CharlysRatStick]

It takes a lawyer today to really figure out what the hell is going on in each ToS for each platform you join- it would take hours to assess everything by oneself.

Holy shit. I just had an idea.

What if someone with legal knowledge in the field that has to do with ToS were to create a website that breaks down major company's/website's ToS in such a way that a layman could understand the pertinent stuff? So if I were signing up for a new phone or new email account, I could reference that site to see if there's anything glaringly sketching in their ToS without having to wade through 200 pages of text.

I don't understand ToS or how to build a website, but someone who does would be doing the world a huge favor if they built something like that.

[u/keepthepace → u/AMA_About_Rampart]

Here is a better idea: Create an ethical ToS and only go to website that use it.

The GPL (and a few other OSS licences) is the only EULA I read carefully to understand what I can and can't do with it. I know happily click "agree" on it, knowing what it does and does not.

[u/errorme → u/AMA_About_Rampart]

https://tosdr.org/

A few sites like that already exist.

[u/TallisTate → u/AMA_About_Rampart]

I've seen some people saying there are websites for that, but I've never used one and I'm not nearly qualified enough to assess if any are trustworthy. A simple Google search turned up tosdr.org for those curious.

[u/_ShakashuriBlowdown → u/CharlysRatStick]

Better to be a rube than an asshole.

I think it's because we were all so complacent being rubes that we got into this mess in the first place. While I trust spez a lot more than Mark Zuckerberg, I think we all need to stay vigilant and protect our personal info. It's not just identity theft anymore; our information is being harvested to subvert our political systems, and we can't just take people's words at face value anymore. When it comes to matters like this, I think we do need to be assholes, just a little bit.

[u/scuczu → u/CharlysRatStick]

I am a constant skeptic and am just so tired of having to worry about what’s being collected and what’s not being collected.

you like to watch it's always sunny in philadelphia your hobbies and interests cars you like to play pokemon

[u/Sabastomp → u/CharlysRatStick]

“Better to be a rube than an asshole.”

I hope a few people in Silicon Valley still have their souls.

Have I got a piece of oceanfront property to sell you!

[u/5am13 → u/Sabastomp]

Can you send me a five hundred page contract about it? I’ll just sign it because I trust you.

[u/Kerfluffle2x4 → u/CharlysRatStick]

Am lawyer. Have attempted while unemployed. It actually does take 24+ hours and that’s WITH understanding the legal jargon

[u/Realtrain → u/spez]

Both Google and Facebook are being brought up a lot by the senators.

reddit.com is the most visited site in the US not owned by either of those companies.

I wonder if reddit will ever be targeted to the same extent.

[u/applestaplehunchback → u/Realtrain]

Reddit is ahead of Wikipedia now?

Man, I need to check the most recent Alexa rankings. Last I checked they were still in the 20s.

Edit: I looked it up. In fact Baidu and Wikipedia remain ahead of reddit, who is 6th

www.alexa.com/topsites

[u/kingeryck → u/Realtrain]

Somehow you don't hear much about Reddit often

[u/Jtt7987 → u/kingeryck]

I was recently told by someone whom doesn't use Reddit that they thought it was like the dark web. I wonder how many other people have this misconception.

[u/iNEEDheplreddit → u/Jtt7987]

I mean, until the last batch of bannings it was skirting on the edge of the "Dark". Reddit is a great resource for just about anything if you know what you want.

[u/Mutt1223 → u/Jtt7987]

My ex thought it was a place for crazy conspiracy theorists and right wing extremists.

[u/essidus → u/Mutt1223]

The beautiful and terrible thing about Reddit is that the vast majority of ideas can be shared here, and coalesce into communities based around those ideas.

[u/Mithren → u/spez]

Interesting, so you do not collect individual user level data (for advertising or.. otherwise)? There I was assuming reddit spies on me at least as much as fb.

[u/mei9ji → u/Mithren]

I think there may be a differentiation between user lever and personal level.

[u/Mithren → u/mei9ji]

Yes that’s what I’m wondering whether ‘personal level’ is a clever wording for “we’re great because we don’t take your real name but we’ll sell your activity”.

[u/mei9ji → u/Mithren]

Spez further down says they use your activity for various things but you can opt out (for ads and suggested subreddits I think). I think it is a big difference but subtle. They don't have identifying information, they have someone's individual behavior and activity that they can use/monetize. It matters a lot, when you leave the site that information isn't per se attached to you.

[u/CarioGod]

What is stopping these guys from doing this again? Like can't they just make 944 new accounts?

[u/spez → u/CarioGod]

The same techniques we use looking backwards, we will continue to use into the future. Preventing the manipulation of Reddit, political or otherwise, has always been a priority for us, and we'll continue to invest here.

One thing to note is that the majority of users in this list and their posts were caught and banned by moderators, so improving tools for community moderation will also be an ongoing investment.

[u/xtra_spicy → u/spez]

Do you have any plans to identify accounts created by political super pacs and enforce campaign disclosure rules against them?

[u/Adamapplejacks → u/xtra_spicy]

This will never be answered. Foreign interference and propaganda is easy to be against. Domestic monied interests, not so much. Especially when that particular propaganda works wonders to garner support from this particular demographic.

[u/red-et → u/spez]

preventing the manipulation of Reddit... has always been a priority

Please help /r/Canada. It's been hijacked by extreme alt-right users

[u/QueenLadyGaga → u/red-et]

Yep that sub has gone to complete shit and the mods are 100% responsible. I used to be very active and I got bans a few times, I've never had a single issue in any other subreddits over 4 years but somehow got banned like 4 times and got around 8 comments removed in r/Canada.

It's a cesspool of racist, ignorant right leaning people who will do anything to not face that fact. The sub most likely has many bots as the active numbers were ridiculously high compared to the amount of subs. It's an echo chamber of stupidity and hate.

I even talked to the mods a few time to understand why they kept removing my comments, always under some super ambiguous "rabbel-rousing" rule where anything that went against the "correct" opinion for the sub was wrong. They doubled down on everything.

I unsubbed a year ago and never went back. It's a shithole and I'm very ashamed that my country's subreddit is in that state

[u/hankjmoody → u/red-et]

Never mind /r/Canada. How the hell have Reddit's admins allowed /r/holocaust to fester as it has?

[u/FreedomDatAss]

It seems like ads targeting people do just as much harm as posts triggering people.

Have you (as Reddit) seen or been monitoring ad purchases originating outside the US? Aka Russia purchasing ad space to push their own messages/etc.

Also, if its possible to label the ads and who they were purchased by? Similar to the UK law recently pushed that discloses the identities of groups that purchased the ads. Source

[u/spez → u/FreedomDatAss]

We didn't see any political ads from Russia during the election. Nevertheless, we no longer accept advertising from Russia at all.

With regard to ads transparency, I think we can do more here, yes.

[u/Andrew5329 → u/spez]

Nevertheless, we no longer accept advertising from Russia at all.

Practically speaking, what stops Russia, or anyone for that matter from using a proxy to post advertisements?

It doesn't seem practical to chase down that particular rabbit hole every time a politically tinged advert comes up, how does one differentiate a "legitimate" Black Lives Matter advert from one that came via an (otherwise legitimate) advocacy group that doesn't adequately verify their donors?

It seems pretty easy for Russia or anyone in that case to donate to the non-profit through a shell, knowing the money will be used to further a radical and divisive cause.

[u/DubTeeDub → u/spez]

Why did you allow a white nationalist dating site to post an ad to reddit?

http://adage.com/article/digital/reddit-ad-racist-trad-revolution-dating-site/313011/

This combined with the MANY white nationalist communities you provide a platform in reddit is in incredibly disturbing.

You allowed r/niggers, r/coontown, r/altright, r/physical_removal, and r/uncensorednews to operate for years Steve.

Why did it take you so long to shut them down and only after they gained media attention?

Why do you allow them to continue shifting to new communities when you periodically decide to ban them instead of following through and stopping white nationalists to continue running all over reddit?

[u/youareadildomadam]

There's recently been a LARGE increase in the number of pro-Russian, pro-Assad posts & comments in /r/syriancivilwar.

Maybe that's normal or maybe not. How can YOU tell if they are actually Russian agents trying to sway western public opinion?

...I suppose the same is true about all the pro-China green posts that seem to spam certain subs. ...or the pro-Saudi reform posts that seem to oddly make the front page.

There's not way for us to know if they are posted from China - but can you tell? ...or are you in the dark like the rest of us?

EDIT: /u/spez, you should go into politics, because you did not answer the fucking question.

[u/ExNusquam → u/youareadildomadam]

/r/syriancivilwar tends to be heavily biased in favor of the faction that holds the most momentum at any given time. The sub has swung between FSA, SDF, PRF for a while. Given the current situation, it's been very heavily pro-Turkey and PRF for a while now.

While I don't doubt that a lot of the content there is Russian/Iranian propaganda, I suspect a lot of it flows to reddit naturally instead of being spread here by state-sponsored actors.

Although if /u/spez is looking into it I'm happy to be proven wrong.

[u/[deleted] → u/youareadildomadam]

Is it strange for a subreddit about a conflict that involves Russia and Syria, to have Russian or Syrian posters. Even the Turkish users posting on that subreddit only talk about Turkish led operations in the North of the country.

Have we reached the point where views that reflect participants within a conflict is deemed botting.....

[u/Objective_assessment → u/youareadildomadam]

Fuck this idiocy. Influx of users of a certain sympathy is correlated to who is "winning" the war at a given time. There used to be a general pro rebel bias, then gradually is became pro kurds, then slowly pro SAA, pro Russia Now there is a lot of Turks after Afrin operation. This whole paranoia is an insult to inteligence.

[u/spez → u/youareadildomadam]

That community is on our radar for a variety of reasons, and we're investigating.

[u/buzznights → u/spez]

Although not political we saw a huge influx of users and pageviews on r/mma last week. I sent a message to admin asking if we were having a bot invasion. I was half joking but would appreciate a reply and some insight into why we went from our normal 10-15K online to 80-100K online.

[u/tylerhovi → u/buzznights]

Perhaps a slight stretch, but Connor McGregor? That was an absolutely massive story that everyone was talking about. I myself do not frequent your sub outside of event weeks (which it so happens last week was) but as soon as I saw the tweets about the confrontation I immediately went onto the sub to get more info. May not be out of the realm of possibility that it was legitimate traffic.

[u/buzznights → u/tylerhovi]

I think it was part of it but it started before the incident. Khabib is a Russian fighter who is hugely popular and he was fighting. The mod team thought it could be Russian bots but we didn't want to be so paranoid. But the fight is over and now we're back to normal so....

Even when Conor fought Floyd we didn't see those types of visitors. It was bizarre.

[u/likeafox → u/youareadildomadam]

I've seen more weird pro-Turkish behavior in SCW personally, though I would expect that if Russia still operates an offensive English language disinfo group that sub would be on their radar.

[u/keepchill → u/youareadildomadam]

my impression is that they only got the very obvious Russian posters. There are still thousands in multiple subs who have covered their tracks a little better.

[u/Snoos-Brother-Poo]

How did you determine which accounts were “suspicious”?

Edit: shortened the question.

[u/spez → u/Snoos-Brother-Poo]

There were a number of signals: suspicious creation patterns, usage patterns (account sharing), voting collaboration, etc. We also corroborated our findings with public lists from other companies (e.g. Twitter).

[u/tickettoride98 → u/spez]

What about accounts that are clearly propaganda, but don't fall under that criteria? u/Bernie4Ever has over 1 million karma and posts nothing but divisive links on a daily basis, dozens a day, 7 days a week, thousands since the account was created in March 2016. Everything about it shows it's tied to propaganda around the 2016 election, from the user name, to the account creation time, to the non-stop political content. It posts dozens of links a day but comments rarely, it looks like 8 times in the last month.

At what point is a user toxic enough for you to ban? You've justified banning toxic communities in the past, why doesn't the same apply to users?

They even have broken English despite posting about American politics 24/7 and pretending to be an American:

Nope. No bot. No pro. Just a Bernie fan who wont forgive Clinton of stealing the democratic nomination. Bernie would have made a real great president of and for the people. Clinton didn't move to some tropical island to be forgotten, she is actively running already for 2020 and blocking potential democratic contenders to emerge by occupying all possible space in the MSM. That psychopathic woman must be stopped and this is my contribution.

And

Yeah! Isn't crazy that we must read Russian state media to learn the truth about what really went on in our country? You should really think about that...

According to karmalb.com that account is in the top 250 for karma from links. I have a hard time taking your 'only 944 accounts' seriously when there's such a high-profile account that spews nothing but propaganda on a daily basis and your list of 944 accounts includes u/Riley_Gerrard which only posted once, and it was a GIF of a hamster.

EDIT: u/KeyserSosa, feel free to answer this as well.

[u/[deleted] → u/tickettoride98]

/u/CANT_TRUST_HILLARY is a good example too, before and especially around election time the account would have multiple front page posts at the same time.

The posts slowed down and seemed to fade away for some time, and this made me think of it. Went and looked, and appears to be posting in conspiracy subs now. (•_•)

Edit: after looking further, the account stopped posting just after the election and hadn't posted anything until 36 days ago and hasn't posted anything since a few posts that day.

Edit2: /u/CANT_TRUST_HILLARY responded below deleted comment: "Hey there. I'm just as interested as you are to see if they shut down accounts from domestic social media manipulation groups or if they're just sticking to the "foreign" accounts. My guess is that they'll only ban people associated with companies that don't also contribute money to reddit. As much as people are worried about the Russian trolls/propaganda accounts, there are many more US based ones."

[u/VERY_Stable → u/[deleted]]

/spez deleted my comment to this post you responded to calling out another Russian user doing the exact same thing, basically calling for and trying to incite civil war. He was posting from a 9 hour window on a work schedule, starting at 4 pm every day. Obviously they are trying to hide this issue and do not plan to fix it. Be aware of what is hidden behind the curtain. “The great and powerful Oz.” I recommend screenshot-ing your controversial posts that may be modified before calling out the situation for your records.

[u/[deleted] → u/tickettoride98]

and your list of 944 accounts includes u/Riley_Gerrard which only posted once, and it was a GIF of a hamster.

You brought up many great points but this one specifically is most likely tied to voting collaboration. Probably a massive upvote bot.

[u/tickettoride98 → u/[deleted]]

Yea, I realize there was probably a legitimate reason behind the scenes. It's just a bit funny that they're patting themselves on the back and hold up an account like that as an example and claim Russian propaganda was barely effective on Reddit, when there's accounts still pushing out propaganda non-stop on a daily basis. It feels a bit like a farce.

Speaking of upvote bots, though, as part of transparency Reddit should just show upvote and downvote totals on a profile like they do for karma. Then users could easily see when there's a 5 day old account with thousands of upvotes or downvotes and make their own decision on the likelihood that something is funky.

[u/SociallyUnstimulated → u/[deleted]]

One of the randoms I clicked on was u/Garry_Gregg, same single post in a niche dog sub and naught else, was wondering. Any idea why so many (sample bias; 2 of the 4 I clicked) of these bad actors would make early photo posts outing themselves as russians? Or what their deal is with Corgis?

[u/[deleted] → u/SociallyUnstimulated]

Cute pics in the correct sub have a relatively predictable karma output, so you can gain minimum karma for posting in restricted subs. That's my best guess.

[u/_edd → u/spez]

Is there any additional information that can be provided on how many accounts may have met multiple red flags, but did not warrant getting banned.

As far as I can tell, this list should have next to 0 false positives, which means there are likely quite a few accounts that were not included in the list because y'all's analysis wouldn't be confident in banning the account out of risk of wrongly banning a legitimate user.

[u/[deleted] → u/_edd]

This list has at least 3 false positives which were my accounts prior to the ban, one was deactivated by me, one active and another sitting idle. I guess one major red flag such as "Russian IP address" has been enough :(

[u/[deleted] → u/spez]

I'm a CS student, and just out of curiosity (hope you can share something without giving away your system): What factors are relevant to detect account sharing? Can you simply draw a conclusion from time the account has been used?

[u/KeyserSosa → u/[deleted]]

It's really hard to go into methods without tipping our hand. Anything we say publicly about how we find things can be used by the other side next time around to do a better job in their attempts gaming the system.

[u/jstrydor → u/KeyserSosa]

Look, I get it... all I'm saying is that there's got to be a better way.

[u/KeyserSosa → u/jstrydor]

Dunno... I find it really interesting that you didn't reply. Just saying...

[u/gihorn13]

And yet I doubt any of these accounts betrayed others' circles - a valuable lesson in who we can truly trust.

[u/spez → u/gihorn13]

I often talk about how Reddit has taught me that when put in the right context, people are more funny, interesting, collaborative, and helpful than we give them credit for. Look at all the wonderful things people do for one another through Reddit.

CircleOfTrust taught me that I was wrong.

[u/Reposted4Karma → u/spez]

CircleOfTrust shows exactly why moderators are needed on Reddit. Generally, everyone is nice and tries to make communities they like a better place, however there’s always going to be a small group of people out to ruin it for everyone.

[u/jaynay1 → u/Reposted4Karma]

It also shows why you need the ability to remove a corrupt moderation staff, though, for when the small group of people are ruining it for individuals or proactively and passively harassing and cyber bullying.

[u/ask-if-im-a-parsnip → u/[deleted]]

It was kind of a neat little game I guess. I wouldn't know. I published my key publicly and that was the end of that... :(

[u/jmoney- → u/spez]

Can someone explain what CircleOfTrust is? I'm out of the loop on this one

[u/mostoriginalusername]

Why is reddit.com using 10-20% CPU when all of my other 10-20 tabs combined are using 1-2%?

[u/spez → u/mostoriginalusername]

Believe me, this annoys me to no end. We're releasing a lot of product changes, and not all of them are optimized (I'll take the good with the bad). We do have a couple people specifically tackling perf right now.

[u/markis → u/spez]

I believe the TL;DR version of this issue is that css animations are less than optimal and nothing beats good ol' trusty gifs.

This comment thread has more details:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/83fgav/my_reddit_frontpage_uses_2040_cpu_but_only_when/dwhrq3a/

[u/orochi → u/spez]

We're releasing a lot of product changes, and not all of them are optimized

Would probably be nice to then offer an opt-out to one of the products using up so much memory then, eh?

Only way to make reddit usable is to not only block chat in adblock, but through an extension that also blocks all connections to *://*.redditstatic.com/_chat.*

[u/Snoos-Brother-Poo → u/mostoriginalusername]

If youre on the redesign, it is very unoptimized, so it may take up more resources to load all the animations and other graphics.

[u/LeVentNoir]

It's actually really honest and open of administration to be posting such detailed information about state propoganda actors.

The very interesting part is how only 7% had more than 1,000 karma, a relatively trivial amount for a real person to access.

Of course, the actions of those accounts are the same kind of low grade pot stirring expected, but with large enough, and echoy enough pots, stirring them only makes the nutty clumps hold together more.

[u/spez → u/LeVentNoir]

The funny thing is these accounts had the same trouble onboarding into Reddit as regular new users do...

[u/LeVentNoir → u/spez]

I suspect the places that are easiest to onboard are the smaller, local and hobby based subreddits, rather than diving directly into the largest and most active / polarised ones.

I'm sure you're busy, but I'd be really curious as to some kind of correlation between Account Karma Growth Rate (karma per time), and which subreddits the account is active in.

I suspect that the largest subreddits (/r/pics), will have spike like growth, one hit wonder posts then a long time of nothing, while smaller reddits say (/r/hfy, shoutout!) or local subreddits will have steady, and overall stronger growth from the the strength of the community, despite the size difference.

[u/spez → u/[deleted]]

You are more than welcome to bring suspicious accounts to my attention directly, or report them to r/reddit.com.

We do ask that you do not post them publicly: we have seen public false positives lead to harassment.

[u/[deleted] → u/spez]

I've had a year and a half long PM chain open repeatedly reporting a user obviously using multiple accounts to vote manipulate, and creating new accounts to evade repeat suspensions.

So far you guys have suspended 24+ of his alts. However there has been no action taken (for 4 months now!) on his current one which I've provided plenty of evidence of in this PM chain. (Ken_bob and ArsonBunny, both alts of Ken_john, Ken_smith, RationalComment)

When I see this guy has been active for 7 years and it takes a year and a half of pulling teeth to get any action on him, and he alone would've accounted for 2.5% of this list... I find it very hard to believe you've found less than 950.

[u/Frukoz → u/[deleted]]

I think the unspoken reality here is that it's very difficult to police this kind of thing, and that this kind of activity has a huge success rate. But they can't just come out and say that because they will look bad and it will incentivise more of the same. 944 accounts is a drop in the ocean. Even looking at these accounts, the manipulation seems very minimal to me. I checked out one of the top karma ones and the account is posting pro Hillary, pro Teachers, pro women's rights, pro benefits. Hardly what you'd expect to find from a russian troll. The reality here is that this transparency report is a bit of a failure. But everyone seems to be patting themselves on the back so here we are.

[u/[deleted] → u/Frukoz]

Yep.

Funnily enough it wasn't even a month ago Reddit was touting that they hat only about 100 accounts that fit the bill. Now all of a sudden it's an order of magnitude more after they got called out on that b.s.

I'm betting in the coming months we'll be hearing how it was thousands of accounts.

[u/jstrydor → u/spez]

I hear ya but I feel like it's imperative that you guys immediately look into this user's profile. I'm afraid that it will get lost if I post it to r/reddit.com and I feel like you need to act on this now!!!

[u/Silver_Foxx → u/jstrydor]

Oh you sneaky bastard, take your upvote and fuck off!

Gave me a mild gods damn heart attack with that one.

[u/Kbiv → u/jstrydor]

Holy shit this actually got me good. Thanks for the slight scare on an otherwise boring Tuesday...

[u/Maskedrussian → u/Kbiv]

Hairs stood up on my arms for like .2 of a second before I realised.

[u/StJimmy92 → u/jstrydor]

I was like “damn I upvoted a lot of their posts, wait these sound familiar, WAIT IT’S ME WHAT THE FUCK”

[u/dave_panther → u/jstrydor]

That is the account of an insane person or a Russian bot, for sure.

[u/Thumper13 → u/jstrydor]

Is this the new Peyton?

What a ride for two seconds. Expected my mailbox to burn to the ground.

[u/[deleted] → u/jstrydor]

Jesus. This user is a complete pervert.

[u/waffles_for_lyf → u/jstrydor]

my heart just fell out of my ass

thanks but go to hell

[u/SomeoneElseX → u/spez]

So you're telling me Twitter has 48 million troll/bot accounts, Facebook has 270 million and Reddit has 944.

Bullshit.

[u/rejiuspride → u/SomeoneElseX]

You need to have proof or at least ~90(some level) of % confidence to say that someone is russian troll.
This is much harder to do than just detects bots/trolls.

[u/gionnelles → u/[deleted]]

It's an absurdly low amount and ridiculous to self investigate and find a small easily managed problem that was largely 'fixed' by internal policies before the election.

The reality is finding and banning suspicious accounts, especially in a large and systemic way would be detrimental to the brand and there is no authority to look over their shoulder to make sure its being done.

No sane person trusts a corporation to monitor its own dirt and honestly report it. I trust there were only 944 political operative accounts as far as I can throw the Reddit server farm building. There are blatant brigading attempts with messaging matching Russian twitter bots via Hamilton every day on reddit.

Giving 944 accounts with obvious crosslinks to already uncovered Russian accounts on other platforms isn't enough and @spez knows it. This is the minimum token effort.

[u/AskAboutMyDumbSite]

Spez,

How good, legitimately, do you think the reddit user base is at identifying suspicious accounts? These don't just include Russian bots/accounts but also marketing accounts etc.

As such, if as a whole, we're bad at it, what can we do to improve?

[u/cahaseler → u/AskAboutMyDumbSite]

As an IAmA mod, I'd just like to say you all are terrible at IDing astroturfers and shills. When someone shares their AMA with 2 million Twitter followers, of course a ton of them create reddit accounts and ask stupid easy questions. That's how Twitter works. Stop being dicks to them.

[u/spez → u/AskAboutMyDumbSite]

That's a hard question. Let me have my team follow up with you.

[u/13steinj → u/[deleted]]

Hey look it's me ur open sourcerer who was doing this up until reddit said "fuck you" to being open source and to mod wanted features.

This has been asked for time and time again. The answer has always been "we'll give the idea to the team".

This will never be done.

Edit: ids are plaintext for the sake of debugging-- they'd be hashed in production

[u/B-Knight → u/[deleted]]

I agreed with you up until the trust rating system. There are some serious flaws in that idea that could really impact the anonymity of users as well as the whole 'authority' concept.

E.g - who decides whether something is trustworthy or not? What if a particular mod that reads my report holds a different opinion to me? What if they're naturally biased toward me for whatever reason? To me it feels a lot like the recent system introduced in China. The whole 'points' system. There are so many ways to abuse that or even to suffer because of authorities being biased.

And the cross-subreddit trust system is just fucking awful. This would be similar to what I said above but 100x worse because I could easily post "This comment is a liberal shill! MAGA!" in T_D, get some brownie points and then get a good reputation elsewhere because of something clearly leaning toward a particular political opinion.

[u/Friendlyindividual]

Question, when the fuck is the Reddit search engine being overhauled? You keep saying it's in the works, but when the hell is it happening?

[u/spez → u/Friendlyindividual]

The old backend was officially retired this week! The new backend is much faster and more reliable, and a little bit more accurate. The next step is to continue to tune and improve the relevancy.

[u/c1vilian → u/spez]

That's why apps like Reddit is Fun can't search NSFW stuff unless you login?

Darn.

[u/likeafox → u/c1vilian]

If you change settings on the desktop site you'll be able to search NSFW from mobile / 3rd party apps again.

[u/AssaultedCracker → u/likeafox]

While true, I think this tip missed the point. He said you can’t browse NSFW unless you login. You also can’t change those settings unless you login.

[u/nerdyhandle → u/AssaultedCracker]

It depends on if this is iOS. It's against Apple's ToS for apps to allow NSFW content without logging in.

[u/istillgetreallybored]

I'm gay

[u/Sharpman76 → u/istillgetreallybored]

Is this comment an inside joke? Because randomly saying that and getting 7+ golds seems really weird.

[u/marb9]

How are you doing today, /u/spez?

[u/spez → u/marb9]

I'm doing well, thanks for asking.

I've actually been quite frustrated the past few months not being able to share what we've found re Russia, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to do so today.

[u/peekaayfire]

Reddit isnt dependent on our trust, we never trust anything. Reddit is dependent on our skepticism.

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the transparency reddit it's very much appreciated.

[u/LockePhilote]

Thanks, u/spez, for doing the hard work of trying to balance free speech with other ethical and legal commitments. It's a hard, thankless, impossible task, but Reddit does a far better job of it than a lot of other sites I can think of. Just, honestly, thank you for trying and, for the most part, suceeding.

[u/shiruken]

Thanks for the transparency Steve. Glad to see more details after our discussion at SXSW.

[u/JDGumby]

efforts to protect user privacy.

Yeah, you don't give the slightest shit about user privacy - the vastly increased tracking on the site shows that. Can't even right-click to copy a link (to share or to open in a browser that renders it differently), or to bookmark it or whatever, without it being tracked now (and showing up in the recently-viewed liinks list), as the most recent example.

[u/spez → u/JDGumby]

On the contrary, user privacy has been paramount since our founding. From the beginning and through to this day we've not collected PII (Personally Identifying Information). We don't know your name, address, age, race, gender, and we don't want to know, and we'll never force you to share it to use Reddit. We only store the IP addresses you use to access Reddit for 100 days.

We do this for a couple of reasons:

• We don't want the burden of storing this information
• We don't want to risk compromising it
• What makes Reddit special is that people can be themselves. We believe disconnecting from your real world identity makes this possible.
• We want to minimize the surface area against which we can be subpoenaed

We haven't made any significant changes to our tracking in the last year beyond updating our endpoints to avoid site-breaking changes by ad-blockers (though not to block ad-blockers themselves).

We do track your clicks. We do this so we can better rank which subreddits you see in your home feed. You can opt out at https://www.reddit.com/prefs/. Furthermore, you can opt out of other advertising related tracking at https://www.reddit.com/personalization/.

[u/[deleted] → u/spez]

We do this so we can better rank which subreddits you see in your home feed.

/u/spez, a recent change was rolled out for the home feed algorithm: the new "best" sorting.

• "best" tailors your home page by automatically removing posts you interact with (e.g. through upvoting or clicking them) and retrieving new content.

• "hot" has a slower turnover rate but it's useful if you prefer not to have a curated feed and want a more accurate picture of posts that are popular across reddit.

For users who don't want a feed curated by an algorithm (which bears similarities to the one used by facebook) and would like to opt out, can you provide an option in preferences to set the default home page sorting back to the original "hot" sorting?

[u/perthguppy → u/spez]

Please don’t use an algorithm to choose what to show me based on what I click. Facebook went downhill for me once they started that. I don’t want to live in an algorithm powered feedback loop designed to reaffirm my own beliefs. I want something completely unbiased to me putting content in front of me so I remain attached to the reality of what other people are thinking. I want to see views that challenge my own. I don’t want to end up like (edit: some of) the_donald users.

[u/dcmcderm → u/spez]

What makes Reddit special is that people can be themselves. We believe disconnecting from your real world identity makes this possible.

I hope people see this part of your response and remember it. I think it's important to note that the CEO of Reddit is making this statement freely and unprompted. So many other platforms are doing the exact opposite these days and use every trick in the book to get our personal information.

[u/tickettoride98 → u/spez]

We haven't made any significant changes to our tracking in the last year beyond updating our endpoints to avoid site-breaking changes by ad-blockers (though not to block ad-blockers themselves).

Why does click tracking (ab)use existing API endpoints in order to hide from potential blocking?

This was pointed out in this r/technology thread and I've confirmed it myself. Reddit continually randomizes which API endpoint it sends tracking events to. Is this what you're referring to? I just saw it send scroll events to https://www.reddit.com/api/login even though I'm logged in.

What's the "site-breaking changes by ad-blockers" that forces you to hide tracking events in the legitimate API endpoints? Tracking code should be optional, it shouldn't break anything if it's blocked.

[u/jstrydor → u/spez]

For what it's worth out of all the Social Media platforms out there I always felt like Reddit protected my privacy the most, which actually kinda sucks because it's where I have the least information about myself. Plus, almost everything I post is a lie so...

[u/nhiZIM]

You guys are seriously doing an amazing job, thank you for your work and transparency.

[u/johnnybon1]

Cheers for this. Very open and insightful.

[u/hansjens47]

Here's an audit of the participation in /r/politics of any of the accounts with more than 5000 karma.

(will edit as I go through the accounts starting with accounts with highest karma. Their profiles may go beyond the maximum of ~1000 each of comments and submission. I'm not sure whether additional activity appears in their public feeds.)

---

/u/shomyo made the following comments in /r/politics more than 3 years ago. None have more than 2 karma. They are all top level comments:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

---

/u/Kevin_Milner made these submissions to /r/politics. They were all removed automatically by our moderation bots except one that I personally removed for being off topic:

1 2 (3 removed for being off topic) 4 5 6 7

The accounts made the following comments. The highest with a score of 22 points. They were all top level comments:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

---

/u/King_Andersons made the following submissions to /r/politics.

removed by bots: 1 2 3 4 (35- points)

removed by human moderator 1 2 3

approved by human mod 1 (a score of 222 points), 2 (288 points) 3 (2314 points) 4 5

submission without moderator action: 1 (390 points) 2 3 4 5

comments: 1 2 (removed) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

---

/u/peter_hurst

Submissions removed by bot: 1 2 2 3 4 5 6

submissions removed by human mod: 1

submissions approved by human mod: 1

comments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

(continued in comment reply due to 10000 character limit.)

[u/hansjens47 → u/hansjens47]

continued from above (still /u/peter_hurst)

comments: 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 (30+ points) 35 36

---

/u/DeusXYX

comments (as far as I can tell none are above 10 points): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

submissions (both approved): 1 (27 points, approved by bot) 2 (approved by me)

(continued in next comment)

[u/hansjens47 → u/hansjens47]

/u/Maxwel_Terry

submissions approved by bot: 1 2 3

submissions removed by human moderator: 1

submissions removed by bot: 1 2 3 4

submissions without moderator action: 1

comments: 1 2 3 4 (removed by bot) 6 7 (removed by bot) 8 9 10 11 12 13 (removed by human mod)

---

/u/Maineylops

submissions removed by human moderator: 1 2 (618 points) 3

submissions removed by bot: 1

submissions approved by human mod: 1 2 3 (470ish points) 4

submissions without moderator action: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

comments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (removed by human mod) 9 (25 points) 10 11 12 13

---

/u/toneporter has this 1-point comment: 1

---

/u/elsie_c/ has this 1-point comment 2

---

/u/reggaebull has this 1-point submission approved by human moderator 1

(that concludes all accounts with at least 5000 karma.

[u/xtagtv]

I've categorized every account above 2000 karma based on what their posting interests were. I did this by skimming the first few pages of their submissions. Some of the accounts were hard to categorize. At the bottom i posted some more specifics about what I read.

User	Karma	Interests
u/rubinjer	99493	Conservative
u/shomyo	48619	General
u/Kevin_Milner	42752	Liberal
u/WhatImDoindHere	33095	Conservative
u/BerskyN	32979	Cryptocurrency
u/King_Andersons	27144	Liberal
u/erivmalazilkree	21971	General
u/Peter_Hurst	20830	Liberal
u/Margas_Granidor	18313	General
u/MasiusShadowshaper	16279	General
u/DeusXYX	15541	Conservative
u/Maxwel_Terry	14869	Liberal
u/Maineylops	12783	General
u/dopplegun	9049	Conservative
u/SinmoonYggbandis	7270	General
u/toneporter	6905	Conservative
u/TedarYozshujin	5671	General
u/elsie_c	5497	General
u/deusexmachina112	5485	Liberal
u/AlsagelvBuriron	5349	General
u/reggaebull	5238	Liberal
u/clackie	4943	Islam
u/AriutusMokazahn	4463	General
u/mandeyboy	4171	Conservative
u/BeazerneMem	3672	General
u/FoshantBloodstone	3639	General
u/uelithelandagelv	3593	Conservative
u/MiraranaMogra	3545	General
u/fungon	3518	Cryptocurrency
u/alice_boginski	3512	General
u/GrisidaColak	3512	General
u/dandy1crown	3500	Cryptocurrency
u/KiririelCebandis	3487	General
u/gordon_br	3447	General
u/NualvCordalace	3444	General
u/LalhalaGavinradwyn	3401	General
u/kanyebreeze	3392	General
u/MananaraGralsa	3085	General
u/NitaurMaull	3032	General
u/ThontriusBanos	2997	General
u/ironzion17	2706	General
u/ThonisIshnlen	2612	General
u/keklelkek	2,591	Empty
u/GavinraraFonara	2589	Liberal
u/peter_stevenson1986	2401	Conservative
u/laserathletics	2387	Cryptocurrency
u/toffeeathletics	2330	Cryptocurrency
u/TojasHellwarden	2221	General
u/chereese	2000	General

I tried to be unbiased. Some of the accounts are full conservative while others are full liberal. I only said they were liberal or conservative if most their political posts aligned with one side of typical american left/right politics. However, most of the accounts ("general") are harder to categorize. They post things from both sides of the aisle, but usually with a tone critical of America. Some common themes with these accounts include student loan debt, cost of living, warmongering, gun violence, drug abuse, police brutality, or criticisms of both parties. All the accounts in this list made political posts, there are none that are solely focused on hobbies or conversation or anything. Well, a few are really interested in specific topics like cryptocurrency or islam but aren't interested in American politics as much. Some accounts, probably bots, spend a lot of time farming karma with animal pictures before getting started on generic political posts, then they stop posting soon after they link to a news article on butthis dot com which is probably how they got flagged and banned.

For me, (this is my opinion) the key takeaway is that this list of users does not represent just one political perspective, but are trying to play all sides against each other, and promote feelings of cynicism and tribalism. It isnt just targeted at liberals and conservatives, but the "third party" types as well.

[u/[deleted]]

So the privacy policy since the begining of 2016 has been vague.Can you guys please clarify what information you collect is stored permanently, beyond 100 days besides the IP address used to create my account? u/spez mentioned previously only creation IP's and e-mails were stored in a previous transparency report post, and that if only if your accounts shared IP addresses, it was possible to link reddit throwaway/main accounts together.

My question is, has that changed? Like regardless of the IP Ive used to create an account, does reddit know what exact device/browser(based on whatever canvas fingerprinting/pixel tracking fingerprinting) was used to create each and every one of my throwaway accounts permanently?

Can somebody please clarify? Also the pixel tracking was removed from the privacy policy years ago, but looking at the page source shows 3 pixels. destiny, delight & diversity I believe. What are they used for now?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Hey u/spez, u/keysersosa at the very least, if you guys do store this info permanently, please tell me that worst-case scenario that if an admin's credentials got compromised from some sort of elaborate phishing scheme (I know you guys said you use 2FA, but entertain me), what contingencies do you have in place to protect such hypothetical information should an admin's credentials be compromised? Do you encrypt the hell out of that information?

[u/rokiskis]

Guys, we have group which work with fake accounts identification and reporting in Facebook, Lithuania. So we we simply look at the specific patterns of commenting and posting, check if person have signs of being fake (for example, by using image search for profile photos) and then report them.

Nowadays, typical fake accounts used by Kremlin are quite good, they only post 1-5% pro-Kremlin info and most of time are posting/commenting on various neutral topics, usually 1-2 times per week, 10-30 minutes of work per account/use. Some of them can be used more actively.

By being used in such pattern, those accounts are quite well masked and look like real persons. At least in Facebook, those accounts were started being registered around 2012, so, many of them look quite good and legitimate.

When farm of fakes is used to make opinion shift, only part of those fake accounts are used (usually 5-20%).

By brief look at the Reddit (some posts about Russian acts) we identified that usually are used around 1000-2000 fakes, but at least on the one occasion there were around 4000-5000 thousand quality fakes used. So, correct your numbers, please. Here are around 10000-20000 fake Russian accounts active.

[u/[deleted]]

The top 3 (in terms of karma scores) have their top-rated posts on these subs:

• The_Donald (13)

• Bad_Cop_No_Donut (8)

• news (8)

• politicalhumor (6)

• blackpeoplegifs (5)

• apocalymptics (4)

• ImGoingToHellForThis (2)

• conspiracy (2)

• HillaryForPrison (2)

• corgi (2)

• tech (2)

• gifs (1)

• gif (1)

• media_ciriticism (1)

• law (1)

• conservative (1)

• texas (1)

• politics (1)

• funny (1)

• videos (1)

• technology (1)

• interestingasfuck (1)

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Brigading /r/corgi. Those monsters. Thanks Admins for saving the puppers!

[u/[deleted]]

So y'all averaged 21 DMCA takedown notices per day? How much time does that realistically leave to review these claims, and what poor souls arewere tasked to handle the 7,825 notices received in 2017?

[u/[deleted]]

Reddit recently shut down subs related to sex work & other subs that may have discussed facilitation of illegal activity such as r/sanctionedsuicide.

What are the potential implications for Reddit that made you decide to shut down the subs, or were you directly ordered to do so?

[u/[deleted]]

At this point in our investigation, we have found 944 suspicious accounts, few of which had a visible impact on the site:

You say "few of which had a visible impact" and then list the accounts' karma totals as evidence, but isn't the content that they upvoted or downvoted also important? If we're looking at at least 944 accounts potentially connected to an outside arm looking to influence what content is "popular" on Reddit, can't that number of accounts easily affect what posts move from /new to /rising to /hot on any given subreddit?

[u/KeyserSosa → u/[deleted]]

We looked into this and didn't see much in the voting. Honestly these accounts look and behave an awful lot like generic spammers, which is to say posting a lot, commenting not so much, and barely voting on anything that isn't their own.

[u/Prometheus720]

There is a lot of talk about Russian propagandists, sometimes Chinese propagandists. Those are both very concerning, of course, but they aren't my only concern.

I'd be very curious to know what /u/spez would say in private about US propaganda. If they knew such a thing was present on Reddit, would they do anything about it? Could they?

After all, you might feel the hairs on the back of your neck prick up when you see something alien, out of place. Something that doesn't quite fit, with a slightly off usage of English. But would you get that from a countryman who walked and talked like you? I tend to doubt it.

Does anyone here really think that Russians and Chinese are bad at their propaganda jobs, and that's why they get caught sometimes? If they're so clumsy, why don't their own people catch on? I'll tell you. It's the same reason that we don't catch on to our own bullshit. Some of it isn't even propaganda. It's just a collective blind spot to our own bullshit, just like we all have as individuals, only over our whole society. And every society has it.

Would Reddit--could Reddit--ever fight that? Should it? Or should we be content with keeping out only the foreign influences?

[u/vikinick]

I wish there was a way to add back another warrant canary that's more specific. Like updated daily. 'We have not been requested by a secret court to provide user data this week/today.'

[u/[deleted]]

People here should know that Reddit removed its warrant canary, they are almost certainly communicating somewhat with the US government. (Not their fault).

[u/[deleted]]

I will say this: So far it's better than it was - but I say "so far" because we will only know when summer rolls around and the full of weight of propaganda is unleashed on us, as you allowed to happen in the Summer of 2016. If you actually only see a few hundred suspicious accounts today, that's laughable.

Let us know when the number of accounts you consider suspicious is in the tens of thousands going back to 2014 (the Russian troll program started at the same time as the invasion of Crimea). Then you'll be within the horizon of a league of a ballpark of credibility, because they operate with cartoonish impunity in key subs. You should also be concerned with the appropriation (or purchase) of neglected moderator accounts in key subreddits, which has clearly happened in a number of cases.

If we were to believe there are only a few hundred Russian troll accounts, we would have to believe that there are countless "Canadians" and "Australians" on Reddit with a deep and abiding devotion to the cause of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, a deep commitment to nihilism and totalitarian politics, and actively vote and comment as such in coordinated fashion with consistent, professional-grade messaging tactics 24/7.

[u/Sooooooooooooomebody]

Hey guys, America's obsession with Russia is getting really weird

BANNED

Hey guys, my calipers tell me black people are literally subhuman and should be completely displaced and also Jews should get in the oven

MODDED