Reddit infiltrated by Russian propaganda in run-up to US election

[workinclasszero]

Reddit infiltrated by Russian propaganda in run-up to US election
The social news site says it has removed a few hundred accounts linked to Russian misinformation efforts
Alex Hern Tue 6 Mar 2018 05.13 EST Last modified on Tue 6 Mar 2018 05.45 EST

Reddit has become the latest social network to admit that it was infiltrated by Russian misinformation actors in the run-up to the 2016 US election.

In a post on the social news site, Reddit’s chief executive Steve Huffman said that the company has “found and removed a few hundred accounts” which it suspects are of Russian origin, or which were linking directly to “known propaganda domains”.

“The vast majority of suspicious accounts we have found in the past months were banned back in 2015–2016 through our enhanced efforts to prevent abuse of the site generally,” Huffman added.

Reddit has been silent on Russian misinformation efforts on its site for months, despite being viewed as a likely target as far back as September 2017, when the US senator Mark Warner suggested that an investigation into Russian misinformation should expand beyond the initial focus on Twitter and Facebook.

The company appears to have been prompted to speak by a leak from the Internet Research Agency, a notorious “troll farm” which was behind many of the misinformation efforts to date. The documents, seen by the Daily Beast, showed that the agency was sharing “American proxies” for accessing Reddit, and that content from websites it created were receiving “hundreds – and sometimes thousands – [of] upvotes on” Trump-supporting subreddits.


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/06/reddit-russian-propaganda-us-election

[bettyellen]

1. It was obvious to everyone there at the time- widely noted by users

[poboy2]

2. 'Reddit has been silent on Russian misinformation efforts on its site for months'

At some point we should think about seizing assets of a hostile actor (company) complicit in the plot against America.

[workinclasszero]

4. Lets not let YouTube and Facebook off the hook either

They are just as guilty and it's ongoing as well.

[Downtown Hound]

3. Known to pretty much everyone for some time now.

Except, of course, a number of Reddit users.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. The school shooting in Florida has made them aware of the consequences of

knowingly allowing Russians to post online as pretend American agitators. None of them cared that they helped steal an election but they are all scared that they will be implicated in a shooting in which the shooter was encouraged to turn violent by Russian agents.

[Awsi Dooger]

6. I'm sure

I'm only recently on reddit but as soon as I got there I could see the potential for manipulation of this type

[boston bean]

7. This is why the members of these sites who report trolls should be taken seriously!!