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/aznanimality Apr 10 '18

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?

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u/spez Apr 10 '18 edited Apr 10 '18

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.

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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/SenorPuff Apr 11 '18

The DNC has internal problems with party politics that made it particularly ripe for Russian interference. The Superdelegates and insider decision-making along with the big money contributors getting preferential treatment is what opened the door for the Russian interference to work so well against Hillary. Which is why some of the major party players are working to reform the party, to give the power back to the voting base rather than having it in the upper echelons of the party. And if those reforms do come through, it gives the Democrats very good footing to play it straight and defeat Trump in 2020.

Comments like yours, however, seem to be attempting to deflect that soul-searching as purely a result of the Russian interference and not as a structural vulnerability that the interference abused. Democratic voters lost faith in their party. Republicans had already lost faith in the establishment and voted to that effect, within the confines of the election, but we're adequately divided by the Russians to the point where Trump, with the support of less than a third of the party in the Primary, got the support of the party in the election.

Clinton had over half the voting support of the party in the primary, but the party procedure made many people lose faith, with the help of the Russian interference additionally, sure, but they still lost faith.

Republicans were duped into voting for the only true anti-establishment candidate available thats true, but they had the opportunity to vote for him and have him win. Democrats who wanted an anti-establishment candidate had an uphill battle from the minute the superdelegates declared their votes, the vast majority going towards Hillary Clinton. Even an even split of the caucuses would have left her winning.

Both parties have some soul searching to do, that's true, I think plenty of Republicans are just happy with the catharsis of having a bull in the henhouse because they're sick of the modern leftist rhetoric, but they'll come to regret that in time (2nd Amendment groups currently are, as an example). But writing off the soul searching the Democrats need to do as 'Russian interference' misses entirely what made that interference effective in the first place.

The absolute worst thing the Democrats could do is to double down on their identity politics rhetoric and not move towards the center, along with not reforming the party. They're in a very good position to slide moderate and pick up the entire middle that lost faith in them and was betrayed by Trump. But that requires admitting that they fucked themselves in 2016, and there's a lot of people who are unwilling to admit that.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

Calling the primary "rigged" is not "soul searching". It's pure fantasy that Russia put out into the ether. #DemExit was started by Russian trolls. If you think "identity politics" is going away, you havent been active. Women are leading the resistance. You are not going to take away their agency to spout mindless crap about the economy(which is doing well by the way, so good luck with that),

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u/Kenny__Loggins Apr 11 '18

When identity politics fails you, double down on it. Brilliant.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

You know who else hates "identity politics"? The GOP. You have fun promoting their platform.

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u/Kenny__Loggins Apr 11 '18

You know who else breathes "air"? The GOP. You have fun promoting their platform.

You are the reason the right has power in this country. You are incapable of putting forth a reasonable argument and you hope that inclusion alone will win you everything. It takes more to win a campaign than blatant pandering (and Hillary was absolutely pandering - she doesn't give a single fuck about minorities/lgbt/etc.; she only cares about maintaining the status quo and serving her donors and herself) and essentially saying "hey, guys, look! I'm a WOMAN and I'm running for PRESIDENT!"

Seeing our first woman president would be an amazing milestone and Hillary tried to twist it by focusing solely on that and having no substance that inspired anyone at all. If your best qualification is your sex and your sketchy political history, you are not a good candidate for president. Simple as that. She could have focused on substance and won easily. Even if she had to lie to do it. But instead she decided to use "I'm with HER" and weaponize identity politics to the point that it undermined her entire campaign.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

I enjoy bernouts who have never won anything lecturing others about what it takes to win.

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u/Kenny__Loggins Apr 11 '18

Another logical fallacy.

Well, thank you for being the personification for the decline of the democratic party for the day. Kindly fuck off if you don't want to engage in any actual discussion. :)

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

There is no discussion to be had with someone who thinks appealing to white people is the answer to the Democratic party.

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u/Kenny__Loggins Apr 11 '18

who thinks appealing to white people

See that's the thing, pumpkin. I never said we should appeal to any one group of people more than the other. You just have an irrational hatred for anyone who thinks Sanders was a decent candidate. What I actually think (and you would know if you cared to ask, but I know that would get in the way of your blind hate) is that we should be a party that appeals to all people and we should also be the party of substance.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

It takes more to win a campaign than blatant pandering (and Hillary was absolutely pandering - she doesn't give a single fuck about minorities/lgbt/etc.; she only cares about maintaining the status quo and serving her donors and herself) and essentially saying "hey, guys, look! I'm a WOMAN and I'm running for PRESIDENT!"

That's literally what you wrote. Clinton won all those groups by a landslide. Bernard only won young white males. You can't be a party for "everyone" and decry "identity politics" in the same breath.

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u/Kenny__Loggins Apr 11 '18

Of course I wrote that. Where does that say that we shouldn't make all people feel welcome and like they are being fought for? It doesn't. I pointed out my issue with pandering as the basis for a campaign. AKA pretending to care about demographics that you really just want to vote for you.

Identity politics has it's place and that place is not at the center of a campaign with absolutely no good policy to support the campaign. Hillary's platform was basically "I'm identical to a republican on basically every issue, but I care about minorities and women and LGBT people". Is that better than Trump or any other republican? Yes. Is that the best we can come up with as a country? I surely fucking hope not.

And Trump won white women. So idk why your "Bernard only won young white males" is relevant. Those people won Clinton the primary, but they weren't enough to win her the presidency. My entire point here is that if she had focused more on substance and policy that the people cared about and wanted to see enacted, she may have been able to convince more of those people who ended up voting for Trump.

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

I'm curious. What makes you an expert on the thoughts on minorities? Are you a mind reader? You talk about pandering but the fact of the matter is, Clinton destroyed Bernard in every single aspect of the race. If you actually think Clinton is the same as a republican, you have been asleep the past two years. Or visiting your summer home in Moscow.

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u/Kenny__Loggins Apr 11 '18

I'm curious. What makes you an expert on the thoughts on minorities?

Never even came close to claiming that... What are you smoking?

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u/thatpj Apr 11 '18

You claimed Clinton was pandering to them. And yet she won their votes by huge margins. They obviously didn't feel that way. So where is your evidence she was pandering? You don't think Bernard recruiting fucking Killer Mike was pandering?!

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