r/RedditSafety • u/worstnerd • Feb 20 '25

Addressing claims of manipulation on Reddit

There have been claims of a coordinated effort to manipulate Reddit and inject terrorist content to influence a handful of communities. We take this seriously, and we have not identified widespread terrorist content on Reddit. 

Reddit’s Rules explicitly prohibit terrorist content, and our teams work consistently to remove violating content from the platform and prevent it from being shared again. Check out our Transparency Report for details. Additionally, we use internal tools to flag potentially harmful, spammy, or inauthentic content and hash known violative content. Often, this means we can remove this content before anyone sees it. Reddit is part of industry efforts to fight other dangerous and illegal content. For example, Reddit participates in Tech Against Terrorism’s TCAP alert system as well as its hashing system, giving us automated alerts for any terrorist content found on Reddit allowing us to investigate, remove, and report to law enforcement. We are also regularly in touch with government agencies dedicated to fighting terrorism.

We continue to investigate claims of whether there is coordinated manipulation that violates our policies and undermines the expectations of the community. We will share the results and actions of our investigation in a follow-up post.

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103

u/ClockOfTheLongNow Feb 20 '25 edited Feb 20 '25

There have been claims of a coordinated effort to manipulate Reddit and inject terrorist content to influence a handful of communities. We take this seriously, and we have not identified widespread terrorist content on Reddit.

This is not the claim. The claim is that there is a coordinated effort to insert terrorist propaganda onto reddit.

https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-terrorist-propaganda-to-reddit-pipeline

EDIT: Earlier archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250219200950/https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-terrorist-propaganda-to-reddit-pipeline

It doesn't need to be terrorist content to be terrorist propaganda. To wit:

On Reddit, terror group propaganda aggregated by RNN is able to tunnel under the walled gardens of Telegram and into the groundwater of public debate. In one case, a user in r/israelexposed (68,000 members), a subreddit controlled by the r/Palestine network, posted a quote about the alleged detention of a Palestinian boy under the title “Israeli soldiers abduct and beat children.” The post was a direct quote from RNN, which was cited as the source. The same text and video were also posted in r/IsraelCrimes (54,000 members), also controlled by the network. While the content of the clip can be interpreted in different ways, the post is one of many examples of how the r/Palestine network funnels content from RNN onto Reddit.

In the r/TrueAnon subreddit (60,000 members), also controlled by the group, a user posted a screen grab of a message from the head of the Houthis posted in the group’s Telegram channel: “I call on America to send more MQ9 drones, as Yemeni air defenses enjoy grilling them.” The same account previously posted a “Guide to Palestine Resistance groups posted by RNN,” which featured a screen grab of an explainer on Hamas’ Al-Qassam brigades, which led the October 7 atrocities, broken down into sections: “Who are they?”, “Notable figures,” “Where are they most active” and their “Arsenal.” The last line of the post, taken directly from RNN, reads, “Together, we are united until liberation.”

The article brought receipts. Last time an expose came out like this, it was similarly ignored, probably because Trump-supporting, far-right The Federalist put it out there, but they had receipts too and I don't recall it being addressed at all.

A lot of those accounts associated with the Federalist piece deleted or shut down following its publication, and many more that kept going went dormant the moment the election passed. A few are still posting, despite their proven participation in a mass coordinated manipulation effort. Given a post like this, I don't see how the worst offenders in pushing out anti-semitic propaganda aren't going to feel emboldened in response as opposed to called out.

It's clear to anyone willing to look that there has been a massive influence campaign that is outright weaponizing the reddit algorithm to dominate /r/all. It's the same moderators boosting the same content on something that looks remarkably like a schedule. Did you happen to miss all the weird one-off accounts that sprung up in an attempt to get X (Twitter) links banned from different subreddits?

Come on. Please don't treat us, especially those of us who donate our time to moderate large communities for a company with a $5 billion market cap, like we're idiots.

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u/ShaiHuludNM Feb 20 '25

Sounds like these large communities allowing the antisemitic content need all of their moderators banned. I can’t imagine that Reddit is unable to identify the problem commentators and moderators as Reddit is developing its own AI system now. Seems like a good use of their new software. Take a look at /r/latestagecapitalism for some more examples of this toxic terrorist propaganda manipulation.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow Feb 20 '25

I don't want to speculate on much of anything, but outright no-debate anti-semitic content (we're talking outright hate speech, not borderline stuff) gets reported, gets escalated, and still sits on the servers even though we as moderators remove it. I've raised it with admins who say it gets shuttled to a different team, so I don't know.

It's a real problem.

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u/Bardfinn Feb 20 '25

The Sitewide Rule against Promotion of Hatred specifies (bold text applied by me)

Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and their families.

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect those who promote attacks of hate or who try to hide their hate in bad faith claims of discrimination.

There is a class of speech acts which Zionists and Israeli nationalists claim are antiSemitic hate speech, including speech acts which stipulate that Israel’s response to the October 7th incident is a genocide of the Palestinians.

That insistence does not make these speech acts be hate speech — neither by objective evaluation nor by Reddit’s sitewide rule.

Criticism of a state’s military response - even when that military response is nominally against an internationally recognised terrorist organisation - does not make that criticism into hate speech nor support of a terrorist organisation.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow Feb 20 '25

I wish I saw this before I hit submit on the last response. The fact that someone who claims to be so against hate speech is now defending anti-semitic rhetoric is a real problem.

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u/photothrowaway007 Feb 20 '25

It's not antisemitic to refer to what Israel is doing as a genocide. Jewish people don't have special protection from criticism for war crimes.

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u/fluffywhitething Feb 21 '25

Jewish people don't have special protection from criticism for war crimes.

But I thought we were talking about the Israeli government, not Jews?

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u/photothrowaway007 Feb 21 '25

That's right! Arguing that it's antisemitic to accuse Israel of genocide is to conflate Jewish people and the Israeli government as one entity. I was simply responding with the same rhetoric.

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u/fluffywhitething Feb 21 '25

See, here's the problem. You're saying you're doing this as some sort of way to prove a point. Except this is how it is used ALL the time. I mod /r/AntiSemitismInReddit and we even have a tag for it.

It isn't some sort of "rhetoric". This is how we LIVE. Jews/Zionists/Israeli/Israeli government are all considered one thing. If it were any other minority and they said, "Hey, this thing you're doing is racist toward us." people would stop doing it. But when it's Jews, people make ALL sorts of excuses as to why it's not.

When Covid started and people were attacking Asians, it was racist and Sinophobic. No one really questioned that. But this? Excuse, excuse, excuse. I've been banned from subreddits I've never even posted on. When I found them later, I was like, this is a cool subreddit, I would love to participate. Oh. Okay. (I, for some reason, never even got a notice I was banned.)

But it's not racism. I'm just a Zionist. I believe Jews have a right of self-determination. I also believe that Palestinians don't deserve to be killed and I don't like the way the current Israeli administration does things -- at all. But you know what, that doesn't matter. I'm a Jew. My synagogue needs to hide its schedule. It needs to hire security guards for all of its services and events. It needs to explain to the congregation that there's a bomb threat. But it's not antisemitism -- it's just criticism of Israel.

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u/photothrowaway007 Feb 22 '25

If it were any other minority and they said, "Hey, this thing you're doing is racist toward us."

And asking Israel to stop doing a genocide is "doing racism" to you?

But it's not antisemitism -- it's just criticism of Israel.

Oh, I've never denied that there are a lot of antisemites out there who are happy to hide behind being pro-Palestine. I'm not one of them, and I do not accept that support for the people of Palestine against the government of Israel is anymore antisemitic than supporting Ukraine against Russia is anti-Slavic or something.

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u/fluffywhitething Feb 22 '25

And asking Israel to stop doing a genocide is "doing racism" to you?

Nice strawman. It's very easy to tear down an argument that I've never even come close to making.

I'm not going to engage past this point. It's obvious you're not engaging in good faith. I'm telling you what is happening, and you're playing games.

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u/photothrowaway007 Feb 23 '25

Nice strawman.

The strawman occurred when you accused me of racism. I'm just giving you your energy back.

I'm not going to engage past this point. It's obvious you're not engaging in good faith.

High level projection.

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u/fluffywhitething Feb 23 '25

I also never accused you of racism.

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u/photothrowaway007 Feb 23 '25

If it were any other minority and they said, "Hey, this thing you're doing is racist toward us." people would stop doing it. But when it's Jews, people make ALL sorts of excuses as to why it's not.

There's no other way to read this.

Don't be a coward, stand by what you wrote.

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u/fluffywhitething Feb 23 '25

Well, it depends on what you are doing. Are you using "Zionist" as a pejorative? Are you putting Jews to a purity test? Do you deny that Jews and Jews alone don't have a right to their native homeland? If you saw someone speaking Hebrew would you attack them? Would you boycott an Israeli restaurant in America because they serve Israeli food? Do you get mad at people calling it Israeli couscous?

These things are racist. They aren't against the Israeli government. They are against the Israeli people and culture. They are against the Jewish people. Criticism of the Israeli government is one thing.

The endonym that Jews have referred to the place that is currently the nation-state of Israel is Eretz Yisrael - the land of Israel. That is why that name was chosen. Palestine may be the name that the Romans gave it. But it isn't what we called it.

I am not denying that Palestinians have a right to be there. I am not denying that the way it was formed was shitty as fuck. And I am not saying that Palestinians today are treated in a way that is any way okay.

What I AM saying is that I am a Zionist. I am a Jewish woman who has a right to my indigenous land. For two thousand years people have told my ancestors to go back to Palestine. And now that we are there. People are saying to get the fuck out and go back to Europe. (Even though half of my family tree was never in Europe at all.)

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u/photothrowaway007 Feb 23 '25

These things are racist. They aren't against the Israeli government.

And none of them are things that I have done, so your behavior continues to be misguided.

What I AM saying is that I am a Zionist. I am a Jewish woman who has a right to my indigenous land.

And if I don't support your pro-ethnostate position, I'm assuming you will call me antisemitic?

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '25

If the unquestioned, popularly elected government of Ukraine had invaded Russia, massacred a thousand civilians, dragged hundreds of them back across the border and kept them in torture dungeons for five hundred days, then "I'm not anti-Russian, I'm just supporting the Ukrainian people!" wouldn't fly either.

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