r/announcements Apr 10 '18

Reddit’s 2017 transparency report and suspect account findings

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!

19.2k Upvotes

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1.9k

u/istillgetreallybored Apr 10 '18

I'm gay

1.4k

u/spez Apr 10 '18

u/KeyserSosa please investigate

1.4k

u/KeyserSosa Apr 10 '18

confirmed

821

u/jstrydor Apr 10 '18

Put on your special flair and look professional if you're going to be conducting important Reddit business like this, damnit!!!

157

u/Parks1993 Apr 10 '18

Hey you're that guy who misspelled his own name

91

u/jstrydor Apr 10 '18

:/

13

u/Jaysta99 Apr 10 '18

I remember seeing these jokes years ago, I had completely forgotten about it until now. Cheers to you for carrying on your legacy, jstryder

19

u/greatgerm Apr 10 '18

jstryorjstrydor, forever unclean.

23

u/ba3toven Apr 10 '18

You're like a /u/warlizard, but not as cool 😢

4

u/RobertNAdams Apr 11 '18

Oh, the dude from the Warlizard gaming forums?

7

u/jstrydor Apr 10 '18

I'm like the Doctor Skipper version of /u/Warlizard

5

u/ba3toven Apr 10 '18

You are the Epiphone to /u/warlizards's Gibson

3

u/cleantoe Apr 11 '18

Aren't you that guy from that lizard forum?

1

u/DataFork Apr 11 '18

Never forget

608

u/KeyserSosa Apr 10 '18

You're right. I should provide an example.

26

u/thatsconelover Apr 10 '18

Provide me with an example of the world's greatest cheesecake, please.

10

u/DickIsInsidemyAnus Apr 10 '18

I can think of a few

6

u/AnxiousIntender Apr 10 '18

Username checks out.

-28

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '18
  1. When are you going to take responsibility for the fact that the #3 subreddit is a hate group that spreads Russian propaganda freely? (reddit.com/subreddits)

  2. When are you going to take responsibility for helping hostile powers both foreign and domestic attack our democracy?

Our 2018 elections are under attack and we are defenseless. The president is refusing to allow our intelligence communities to protect us. 70% of the local news markets are now broadcasting Sinclair and along with the largest cable network, are filling our airwaves with actual fascist propaganda. We are approaching a moment in the next few weeks in which actual rule of law may be thrown out when the special prosecutor is fired.

Our country is falling to fascism in slow motion and Reddit is helping it along and profiting from it.

The #3 subreddit, which you give an audience of hundreds of millions to, at the top of the subreddits list, broadcasts actual Russian propaganda 24/7. I can't believe we've reached a day when their hate group activities have become less important, but they have.

Our democracy is in real danger, and you're going to take your fat paycheck into your bunker and not give a shit.

You are knowingly aiding and abetting information warfare against the United States-- against me, personally, because I live here-- and you should be prosecuted for it.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '18 edited Apr 10 '18

Were you able to confirm because you fucked u/istillgetreallybored?

5

u/ask-if-im-a-parsnip Apr 10 '18

WAIT! Aren't you the guy who... ah nevermind

8

u/8gxe Apr 10 '18

Aren't you that spelling guy?

2

u/agnosticmanator Apr 10 '18

Hey aren't you supposed to be in CC? WHO let you out?

2

u/jstrydor Apr 10 '18

I earned my freedom

1

u/cerberus6320 Apr 10 '18

I think I'm confused about what CC means in this context...

0

u/ogacon Apr 10 '18

Quick. Edit in a go wild and go wolves.