
Reddit Dragged into Russian Propaganda Row - IntronExon
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43255285
======
yalogin
If Facebook is used then reddit could have been used too, no big deal there.
Facebook at least would take money to show ads, I don’t think they would have
taken out ads on reddit though. I wouldn’t be surprised if r/the_donald is
full of Russian trolls riling people up.

~~~
tdb7893
I always hoped r/the_Donald had a lot of Russian trolls. The racsism and
misogyny there can be crazy and it would make me feel better if it was trolls
instead of sincere people

~~~
Cthulhu_
A lot of trolls are sincere though, or at least are indistinguishable from
them. I mean I've used nazi symbolism and whatnot ironically / "for teh lulz"
in the past, but if you looked at that shit if you didn't know it you'd be
sure I was serious.

~~~
bmm6o
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to
be."

― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

------
thisisit
As this article references another article heavily, wouldn't it be better to
use that one?

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-used-reddit-and-
tumbl...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-used-reddit-and-tumblr-to-
troll-the-2016-election)

That said, I don't really see how Reddit was "dragged" into this whole mess.
Out of all the social media sites, Reddit is the least protected and filled
with most of the opinionated folks, if not outright trolls. But it seems not
being a "mainstream" social media site has helped.

~~~
pohl
The notion that Reddit is not "mainstream" expired a while ago.

~~~
naravara
Even if Reddit isn't mainstream publications like Buzzfeed, Slate, etc. pretty
obviously trawl reddit to find fodder for trend pieces and ideas for columns.

It's also basically responsible for the death of BBSes and community forums
all around the internet. It's eaten up tons of niche online subcultures.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> It's eaten up tons of niche online subcultures.

In favor of much higher discoverability (I'd argue); having a common UI and
platform helps. Similar to how in a previous age, having vBulletin like a lot
of the other online communities helps with familiarity. Reddit adds that you
don't need a separate account to interact with a community.

~~~
naravara
>In favor of much higher discoverability (I'd argue)

That is the trade-off isn't it? The downside, though, is that Reddit's
interaction design privileges low-effort, easily digestible, and sharable
content at the expense of everything else. Especially the kind of off-topic
personal discussion that builds durable "communities" that go deeper than just
sharing content about a particular topic.

~~~
mcphage
> Reddit's interaction design privileges low-effort, easily digestible, and
> sharable content at the expense of everything else

Along those lines, Reddit's format (and indeed, HN's format, because it's
nearly identical) makes holding conversations very cumbersome. It's like the
difference between a directory holding a bunch of files, and directory holding
a single file & another directory, which holds the next file & another
directory, etc, etc.

~~~
naravara
Yeah. This has been my frustration with the development of social media in
general (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

The old conversational style on Usenet/IRC/BBS felt like a group of people
talking together. Possibly having parallel conversations with multiple groups
of people at a time.

The social media model feels more like having a bunch of individual one-on-one
conversations in parallel. It's good for broadcasting a thought or idea, but
terrible for actually having a discussion.

There are pros and cons to both, but the latter is a lot more cognitively
intensive and makes it really hard to have the kind of conversation/discussion
where you learn something new. If you have a controversial opinion it feels
like you get dogpiled by 1,000 people all saying the same thing. It's hard to
even know where to start and it doesn't feel like people are giving you
feedback on your point, it just feels like everyone is trying to attack you.
When you're speaking with a group people usually let one or two people make
the points and just add on as they feel is needed.

It's a way more manageable conversational flow, and one that's more likely to
encourage people to actually talk to each other rather than talking to the
caricature of whatever they imagine someone who would say something like that
to be. Instead you just get long discussion threads that inevitably devolve
into 2 people slinging downvotes and variations on "You're a doodyhead" at
each other. In an IRC chat, even if the moderator doesn't shut that down, the
rest of the group will tell you to STFU and move on.

------
rebelde
I visited the worldnews subreddit at times. The pro-Russian tilt with plenty
of links to RT.com was fairly obvious. I thought about writing the moderators,
but with it so obvious, I personally assumed that there was somebody on the
moderation team protecting the Russian submissions.

~~~
TorKlingberg
There was definitely something going on in 2006. Reddit has always been rather
left-leaning, but for a ~6 month period the top of /r/worldnews was nothing
but "Immigrant commits <crime>" and similar. I'm sure some real people got
drawn into it, but there was definitely some funny business.

~~~
archagon
That stuff is in /r/news now, although the controlling faction changes on
occasion.

------
bufferoverflow
> _The US government has already charged 13 Russians, linked to the agency,
> with attempting to manipulate American voters using social media._

Is that illegal now?

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
Great question. It'll be interesting to look and see what law the charges are
files under. . .

[https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download](https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download)

Charges 1.Conspiracy to defraud (being unregistered foreign agents acting in
politics and stealing SSNs to bring money in), 2. Conspiracy to Commit Wire
Fraud and Bank Fraud (laundering money to pay for ads and using stolen SSNs)
3\. Identity theft (SSNs)

So the answer is yes it's illegal to be a state actor propagandizing if you
aren't registered under the Foreign Agent Restriction Act (which I'll have to
read and chuckle over) and based on a quick scan of the primary document the
indictments are for the way they tried to work around it.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Looks the charges have nothing to do with manipulation. Not directly at least.

------
davzie
/r/politics is just as much the other way.

EDIT: Not sure if the downvotes are because you feel I support Trump (I'm a
Brit, I have no allegiances) or something else. But you can't deny that
/r/politics and the other subreddits like esist etc cause just as much drama.
There's no nuanced debate anymore. Just pick a a team and fight to the death.

~~~
zzzeek
"the other way" would imply /r/politics is filled with liberal false
propaganda planted by a foreign enemy. Feel free to show any such examples.

~~~
insickness
[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7szc5h/announceme...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7szc5h/announcement_shareblue_has_been_removed_from_the/)

r/politics is just as tilted left and used by propaganda groups as r/donald is
tilted right. If you think either side has a monopoly on rationality and pure
intentions, you are deceiving yourself.

~~~
zzzeek
moving the goalposts. r/poltitics is certainly tilted left, but is not filled
with false left-wing propaganda illegally created by a foreign enemy.

ShareBlue is not a propaganda arm of a foreign enemy, it is a US-based
partisan blog, and additionally the accusation here is that they commented
without disclosure of their affiliation. that is nothing like the coordinated
propaganda, false/stolen US identities, wire fraud, and other scam operations
sponsored by the Russian government. There is no criminal indictment against
ShareBlue.

~~~
insickness
These supposed foreign entities helped just as many people on the left, like
Bernie and impersonated left-leaning entities like Black Lives Matter. And
their involvement was minimial (100k) compared to what the major political
parties were spending on the election. Hillary spent 1.5 billion dollars.

~~~
zzzeek
> like Bernie and impersonated left-leaning entities like Black Lives Matter.

yes but not within anything generally viewable on /r/politics

~~~
insickness
Reddit had to tune its algorithm to make the_donald stop appearing on the
front page. And it wasn't Russian bots upvoting Trump stuff. It was people who
actually liked and voted for Trump. However you want to slice it, a good
portion of this country voted for Trump on their own accord. Not because of
Russians, but because they actually liked Trump. No one disputes this. So stop
with the Russian bullshit. It just makes the left look like idiots, like
they're trying to come up with a reason Hillary lost when in reality people
just disagreed with what Hillary had to say. People are tired of this Russian
stupidity. Everyone knows it doesn't pass the smell test. It's been years
investigating this and the world's premier spy apparatus can't dig the dirt up
on Trump. Think about what that tells you.

------
campuscodi
Oh, so that's why Reddit started restricting what sites can be shared on large
subreddits. Anything you share on Reddit these days must be from BBC, CNN,
NBC, and so on. Only large sites allowed... which is just as bad as Russian
propaganda. Instead of the Russian side of events, now you only hear the pro-
Western side only.

~~~
learc83
That's not even remotely true. If you look at the subreddits with whitelists,
the whitelists almost always include Al Jazeera, RT, and plenty of other non-
western media.

------
xienze
> Instead it seems Russia's aim was to provoke and divide Americans on the
> internet and, as a result, in the physical world too.

What I really don't understand about the "Russia wants to divide us!" talk is,
if this is such a grave concern, why do we give a free pass to identical
speech originating from domestic actors? Isn't that also dividing us as a
country? BLM, #NotMyPresident, pro/anti-gun rhetoric, etc. -- we have plenty
of this kind of stuff floating around already, and in the case of BLM, "the
resistance", etc. it's all seen as a good thing, or at worst, "starting a
dialogue on X." If spreading these kind of messages online is sowing discord
in our country, why aren't we going after domestic organizations as well?

~~~
noer
I think the idea is that domestic organizations operated (for lack of a better
word) by US Citizens have an end goal of making the country better for
themselves. Russia seemingly didn't care about the end goals, just sowing
general discord. Their endgame isn't a better United States, it's a divided
United States.

~~~
xienze
> Their endgame isn't a better United States, it's a divided United States.

But again, if we're concerned about a divided United States, why is there no
concern over divisive speech generated within the United States? I mean one of
the things the Russians did was organize a resistance march. So... Russian-
organized resistance march = bad. American-organized resistance march = good
(we had one of those too, unless those dastardly Russians were behind it as
well). Huh? How does a resisting a legitimately-elected president do anything
good for this country? How does that NOT sow discord? That was the whole
point! And yet, we don't see a problem with the domestic actors taking these
actions.

~~~
JamesLeonis
Disagreements about issues is what politics is all about. I would be more
concerned if we all were in lock-step agreement! Ultimately those
disagreements and differing views are from a desire to make this country
better. Unchecked foreign influence undermines these debates.

The Russian case was deliberate stoking of issues until their advocates could
no longer talk civilly and rationally. They played up caricatures of each side
to destroy any common ground. It's the deliberate stoking of discord to our
people, which bleeds into our politics, and hampers our nation's actions
globally. A disrupted US politic gives Russia more room to maneuver globally
without rousing our attention. None of these things serve to advance the
original issues raised by the people that were targeted.

Even if the discord didn't emerge, the taint of Russian influence diminishes
legitimacy and trust in an issue and its advocates by sowing doubt in the
movement's motivations. This undermines all kinds of debates and freezes
movement on all sorts of issues.

Lets put concrete into an abstract idea.

Putting aside everything else about Trump, during the campaign Trump insisted
"Wouldn't it be nice if we got along with Russia?" Was this a legitimate call
for undoing decades of demonization that is a product of the Cold War? Or does
he want to score lucrative quid-pro-quo deals and access to Putin? The
campaign meetings with Russian contacts doesn't inspire benefit of the doubt.

Finally all other things being equal, the protesters here have skin in the
game. Foreign influencers, outside of what they want to influence, do not.
Foreign powers can cause all kinds of harm while spared the consequences. Us
locals have to live with those consequences.

------
montyf
The presidential election showed conclusively who the real propagandists in
America are, and it’s not Russia. I’ll admit that I didn’t read the article,
and this comment may not even be relevant, but I can’t take the Russian
propaganda meme at all seriously, either in this lifetime or the next or the
one after that. This meme is just more deflection and misdirection by the
American media.

Feel free to downvote/remove this comment.

~~~
zzzeek
Here is a 37 page federal indictment of employees of the Internet Research
Agency who were deeply involved in Russian-produced propaganda in the 2016
election. This is neither a "meme" nor is it a creation of any "media" source.
Worth a read:

[https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download](https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download)

~~~
PeterMikhailov
Mueller directly states the he doesn't believe any of this affected the
election.

I have read that IRA spent about $500 each in ad buys in the 3 borderline
blue/red 'purple' states that went to Trump in the Nov 2016 election.

Even if we assume the 100k they spent on ad buys went directly to the 3 purple
states, and generated a million CPM... ads paid for by the RNC and DNC and the
PACs generated several trillion impressions.

~~~
zzzeek
> Mueller directly states the he doesn't believe any of this affected the
> election.

please cite this because that sounds like an extraordinary claim.

~~~
PeterMikhailov
You know what, I'm Fake News. I was not reading Mueller's remarks. I was
reading Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice
Rod Rosenstein's prepared remarks about the indictment.

Rosenstein said there was no proof anything covered by the indictment affected
the Nov 2016 election.

Here is C-SPAN video of Rosenstein announcing the indicment

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE)

at 5m 28s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE&t=5m28s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoAf_I3ULwE&t=5m28s)

Rosenstein, reading from his prepared remarks, says:

"There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the
outcome of the 2016 election."

I loathe linking to "real clear politics" but they put up a transcript:

[https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/16/watch_liv...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/16/watch_live_deputy_ag_rod_rosenstein_announcement.html)

~~~
root_axis
"There is no allegation in the indictment" has nothing to do with what anyone
believes and even less to do with what is actually true. Further, anyone
definitively claiming that the outcome of the election was or wasn't affected
by Russian interference is peddling partisanship and not facts because it is
impossible to know.

~~~
PeterMikhailov
> Further, anyone definitively claiming that the outcome of the election was
> or wasn't affected by Russian interference is peddling partisanship and not
> facts because it is impossible to know.

I realize this isn't math, but I've studied the ads that IRA paid for, I am
pretty familiar with what the employees of IRA did, I've read about how much
money was spent on Facebook ads (100k, and almost half of that was spent after
the Nov 2016 election ), I've read about how many CPMs were generated vs how
many ads American facebook viewers saw ( a few million vs 16 trillion), I'm
pretty sure I know!

