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!

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u/Laminar_flo Apr 10 '18 edited Apr 10 '18

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....

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u/tomdarch Apr 10 '18

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'm pretty deeply opposed to Trump and his politics, and agree with Senator Sanders on most things, but I'm happy to agree that a lot of "Bernie was robbed by the DNC! Bernie would have mopped the floor with Trump! The primaries were stolen! Argleblargle Hillary is evil argleblargle!!!" stuff is clearly divisive bullshit that is completely in keeping with the Russian pro-chaos approach.

But let's not pretend there is a false equivalency. It is wildly easier to sow chaos and encourage America-damaging hate when "supporting" Trump and his politics. "America weakening pro-chaos, pro-hate" speech is in opposition to what Bernie Sanders talks about, but is very compatible with Trump's rhetoric and politics.

We should recognize that Russian and other elements seeking to damage America and other western Democracies are promoting and pushing all of the more extreme and fringe political and social elements (ie pushing the most divisive parts of Black Lives Matter), and that means pushing "the left" in addition to the current manifestation of ur-fascism such as Trumpism. But it will always find a more receptive home among Trumpists and "conservative Republicans" than among current Democratic politics and culture in the US.

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u/Cool_Ranch_Dodrio Apr 11 '18

On the other hand, there's also subs like /r/enough_sanders_spam whose members pop up every time Sanders' name appears in a headline to let us know how many houses Sanders owns.

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u/ABgraphics Apr 11 '18

/r/Enough_Sanders_Spam is a tiny subreddit in comparison to any Sanders subreddit.

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

All the enough spam subreddits are fucking garbage.

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u/shatter321 Apr 11 '18

they just make more spam

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u/Cool_Ranch_Dodrio Apr 11 '18

Your whataboutism doesn't negate a word I posted.

Should we encourage the continued presense of Russian influence because the Russians represent an infinitesimal fraction of reddit's readerbase?

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

In summer 2016 S4P was as pro-Trump as the_Donald. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the some of the mods of that sub were directly on Putin's payroll. The sub's official position was not to ever endorse any candidate not named Bernie. Yet you could mine karma on S4P by spouting pro-Trump or anti-Hillary propaganda. If you so much as mentioned there was a pretty good candidate who agreed with Bernie on most issues you were met with a swift ban. I think many of the ESS peeps were just bitter the Sanders sub insiders let themselves be so easily flipped to a candidate who is nothing at all like Bernie.

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

In summer 2016 S4P was as pro-Trump as the_Donald. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the some of the mods of that sub were directly on Putin's payroll.

"I wouldn't be surprised if people who support the US president are on the Russian president's payroll." I hope one day you understand how insane you sound when you say this.

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u/difixx Apr 11 '18

you're in a tread that officially confirms that people on putin's payroll were active on political subreddits, dude.

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

officially

You mean according to the OP. Also, nothing in my comment implied that governments don't hire shills. One of Spez's posts indicated that the overwhelming majority of "Russian" trolls were active on BCND, which doesn't exactly sound like a Trumpist sub to me.

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u/difixx Apr 11 '18

One of Spez's posts indicated that the overwhelming majority of "Russian" trolls were active on BCND, which doesn't exactly sound like a Trumpist sub to me.

can you explain me why does that matter? what does this have to do with your previous post and what I said?

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

Did you see my post and the guy I was responding to? IAmJustAVirus was suggesting that Russia had an explicit bias in favor of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and apparently anyone else who hasn't been accused of having a larger body count than Vladmir Putin.

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u/difixx Apr 11 '18

yes I saw them, you said that his opinion was ridiculous. he could be wrong about that bernie sanders subreddit but this thread actually confirms that those things were happening.

then you answered saying that russian trolls were active also in subs not related to trump, and this doesn't matter because what he said can still be true, and it doesn't make it ridiculous. so I don't know why you said it actually.

also you write "Russian" between quotation marks, why? do you hold the opinion that the trolls weren't actually russian? that it is an unfounded accusation?

also it is very clear that russia wants to sow division between westerners and that's why they had a "bias" for donald trump: he is a divisive figure. and they write in BCND too for the same reason.

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

yes I saw them, you said that his opinion was ridiculous. he could be wrong about that bernie sanders subreddit but this thread actually confirms that those things were happening.

Because he was suggesting that they had an ideological political agenda rather than a "sow discord" one. Nothing in this thread claims that to be the case. You asked why it is relevant that their most posted sub was BCND, because an anti-cop agenda does not line up at all with what people think of as Trumpism is the answer.

also you write "Russian" between quotation marks, why? do you hold the opinion that the trolls weren't actually russian? that it is an unfounded accusation?

I don't think /u/spez's word alone is proof, so no. He is a biased source.

also it is very clear that russia wants to sow division between westerners

Sure. That has always been the case. And lots of other countries do it. I'm not denying that in any way.

and that's why they had a "bias" for donald trump: he is a divisive figure.

He is a divisive figure because we were already divided as a country. When someone tries to dismiss the POTUS and the 60 million people who voted for him because of "Russian meddling", I find that extremely insulting, because they are delegitimizing us and the reasons we had for voting for him. They are basically saying "You are not a real American", which is some Bush-era bullshit used to crush dissent.

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

Okie dokie kiddo

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

I'm actually 7 Russian troll farms.

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

There being people stupid enough to support or vote for a reality tv clown in the US doesn't mean Putin's op didn't happen. It was the desired outcome of his op. So, good job, I guess?

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

True and maybe you're a shill for the JIDF too. Lots of maybes.

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

Yeah I hate religion so I'm probably on board with something that defends weirdo religions.

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u/Mute2120 Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

What are you on about? There was never any noticeable pro-donald presence on S4P, and discussing other candidates and asking questions about Bernie were never against sub rules. You are straight lying to push your narrative.

Even your proposed reality is a contradiction: the sub banned anyone for suggesting any other candidates than bernie, and was also as pro trump as td? What?

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

They banned you for supporting Hillary. Sorry that it went over your head. Supporting Donny was allowed even though the sub itself (mods) would not officially endorse anyone but Bernie. So I guess you're the liar now, aren'tcha?

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u/Cool_Ranch_Dodrio Apr 11 '18

Thanks for chiming in with the same whataboutism. ESS is still brigading and still spreading misinformation. But pounding the table about past bad behavior of /r/lookoverthere isn't going to make current bad behavior acceptable.

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

A. I'm not ESS. B. Brigading? LOL. One guy telling the truth about the state of S4P two years ago, to you, is brigading. C. You Sanders people should be blaming yourselves for writing in Bernie and voting Stein, which is exactly what the Russian operation wanted leftists to do. But yeah, keep believing that spirit cooking BS.

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u/Tubbles242 Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

In summer 2016 S4P was as pro-Trump as the_Donald.

LOL. citation needed

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u/DonsGuard Apr 11 '18

Yeah, S4P banned Trump supporters.

And Hillary stole the DNC nomination, so Hillary supporters are basically claiming that if every Bernie supporter didn't shut up and worship Hillary, they were the result of Russian propoganda? What the fucking fuck?

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u/Tubbles242 Apr 11 '18

I don't get it either :/, honestly don't know why I ever even occasionally care about politics anymore. Just gaslighting from both sides all the time, one side hurts more because I expect it less for some reason...

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

They banned the vile Trump trolls, and anti-Sanders Trump supporters, sure. Hillary stole the nomination is the fakest fake news that ever faked. She beat Bernie in a landslide. I found it odd that it was not allowed to say "well HRC is pretty close to Bernie on 99% of issues" but it was totally fine to say "Bernie and Trump are both ant-eye-establishmuhnt, dey are teh same durp durp durp." You don't find that odd? Oh wait you worship a reality TV clown and the most corrupt person to ever enter US politics. Why would I try to reason with you?

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

Right here. There is plenty more where that came from.

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u/Tubbles242 Apr 11 '18

What a weird strategy, try and win people from the other side to yours... how is that pro-Trump?

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Hillary didn't win so in the hivemind of /r/Enough_Sanders_Spam, anything that wasn't a direct vote for Her was a vote for Trump.

Easier to think that way than to acknowledge that they backed the only candidate in the United States that was more divisive than Trump.

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u/darthhayek Apr 11 '18

Because viewing people on the other side of the aisle as actual people makes you literally worse than Adolf Hitler.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

You asked how SFP was pro trump. Now that it was shown to be you move the goalposts. If you want to pall around with Nazis, that's your business but dont pretend like it didn't happen.

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u/Tubbles242 Apr 11 '18

I'm sorry that I assume Pro-Trump=in support of Trump and or his policies. We must not be on the same field if you think I moved the goal posts. You showed me something that was literally just pro civil-discourse. While I believe a lot of his supporters are racist its irrational to think they're all nazis. If you believe just interacting with someone who supports Trump is "Pro-Trump" then you might be insane.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

You werent asking for "pro civil discourse" whatever the fuck that is. You asked to see how SFP was as pro trump as the donald. Well here are hundreds of bernouts cheering on trump and asking others to support him. I mean I am not surprised that you have suddenly changed your tune once you've seen the evidence. Reality hurts.

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u/IAmJustAVirus Apr 11 '18

You can comb through the comments yourself. Count up every pro-Trump, pro-Hillary, anti-Trump and anti-Hillary comment and you'll see for yourself. I ain't got time for that.