/r/AskBrits banned me for pointing out that there are several threads each day about immigration, each tailor made rage bait. Sometimes they’re not even a question.
I’ve personally caught a couple of Iranians and Russians brazenly posting such threads at 4am British time (working hours in Tehran) and the moderators did nothing. They simply allow such threads while deleting any thread that goes “is anyone sick of the constant threads about immigration?”
These threads generate so much engagement from people of all opinions that it makes the sub appear in people’s feeds as recommended content even if they’re not subscribed to the sub. It gives people the impression that there is only one political subject in the UK that gets any discussion.
I don’t know why the moderators of this sub do this, but the effects of their moderation are clear.
I've often posted on the internet at 4am local time before. How did you establish the posters were Russian or Iranian, other than by time zone? (4am London is working hours for around half the world population.)
Not denying that there are people in these countries who want to cause trouble on the internet. But there are many such people in all countries...
Fair question. The answer is that they didn’t bother hiding it. They literally posted in a whole bunch of Iranian subReddits and only Iranian subReddits. On this thread they were claiming they were British. Literally the first post of that kind, completely different to everything they had posted previously.
The clincher was that they deleted their account as soon as I pointed they were Iranian.
I’m going to guess they bought a Reddit account from someone without looking at the past history on the account.
Please tell us why an account with a history of posting on Iranian subs was masquerading as a British person, getting British people riled up at 4am BST? And why did they delete the account immediately after this was pointed out?
State sponsored doesn’t necessarily mean they’re highly competent.
People forget there are certain special interest groups and even individuals that have more resources to back such a campaign than many nation states. One such individual regularly promises his followers to change the results of his own LLM to match their beliefs, regardless of original training data.
It means there are people with personal wealth larger than the GDP of many nation states. Some of those people like Musk, Murdoch, Thiel, Putin, bin Salman, Gates, Koch brothers, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Turner, Bloomberg, Adelson, Hoffman, and more who fund campaigns, media blitzes, and activism for various issues and candidates in various parties. Some of them do that worldwide. Some of them own their own media companies. Some of them also control countries, but have enough personal wealth to fund things themselves rather than tying their government personnel to it.
As one of several people, yes. In-kind contributions to causes and now (with Citizens United) candidates are not limited. You don’t have to be a nation state to hire human influencers, bot farms, coders to create new bot farms, or to influence search results and LLM outputs. You just have to have the cash or control to do it.
Years before he was President, in 1989, Trump himself took out four full-page newspaper ads in all four major NYC newspapers of the time calling for the deaths of the Central Park Five and broader use of the death penalty in general. The railroaded teenagers were later exonerated, thankfully without first being killed by the government. That’s just a small example of the kind of influence money can have on public discourse, well before everyone had a smartphone in their pocket.
Very good example, thanks for sharing. Too early do people jump to conclusions online, calling out other commenters as state bots and so on. Influence, and people, look differently than they imagine. Manipulators come in multiple shapes and sizes, and also, commenters often voice their own opinion, without any direct association with any other entity.
There are huge influence operations basically on every national sub.
I found one on r/portugal, clearly coordinated network spreading political news of a certain persuasion.
R/donald became famous because the admins turned on national flags for users there revealing a significant percentage was Russian IPs without even a VPN. The Russian users called it “the mark of David” and compared it to Nazism.
Have you got a source for the national flags claim? I'm not sure that is a feature on Reddit. Most subreddits have custom flairs and some will let you choose a flair for your country, but afaik Reddit mods can't autodetect a poster's country of origin.
Unfortunately I seem to have conflated facts. 4chan pol has flags, and spez had a bit of a tiff with The Donald users where he changed their posts without consent (removing his name I think) that led to some consternation.
There were also investigations showing Russian activity in The Donald. But somehow the flag story is something I seem to have dreamed into this story. Doesn’t seem have happened (even though I have oddly specific memories about it).
Unfortunately I seem to have conflated facts. 4chan pol has flags, and spez had a bit of a tiff with The Donald users where he changed their posts without consent (removing his name I think) that led to some consternation.
There were also investigations showing Russian activity in The Donald. But somehow the flag story is something I seem to have dreamed into this story. Doesn’t seem have happened (even though I have oddly specific memories about it).
It's crazy for me that it's not a well-known thing that Russia, Iran, China, North Korea and other countries are fueling the polarization of western politics using bots on EVERY RELEVANT social media. The right wing bots are kind of known, but a lot of people aren't aware of other things (e.g., TENET Media [1]), or that they are fueling left wing circles as well [2].
People believe that these countries would love to do that, but for some reason, they think they are not doing as much as possible.
I suspect the scope and scale of these operations are at least 1-2 orders of magnitude larger than most people think. I also strongly suspect such operations are not limited only to the governments you listed here. If the public was able to quantify the scope then maybe they would be more outraged.
Part of me hopes that some amount of resources are being invested by someone in our government to analyze and assess this, but maybe that is overly optimistic.
No one wants to look into it because everybody is doing it. After Trump lost to Biden in 2020 there was a chance to analyse mass use of Big Data, targeting and psychometrics to influence the electorate. They didn’t do it because that’s how they won 2020.
They're using messaging all across the spectrum, including extreme viewpoints on both sides. There's a ton of discourse in leftist spaces online about the futility of voting, trying to paint people who believe in political engagement as naive, unsophisticated, or simply uncool.
> There are huge influence operations basically on every national sub.
I believe you. But I've also often been accused of being a bot or working for an intelligence service when posting my own opinion in political discussions, not in coordination with anyone at all, and not pretending to be anything I'm not. I think the people accusing me of this did genuinely believe it too.
Typically people with long reddit histories aren't 'bots', though there are some cases.
What I typically saw was accounts that had a decent sized but very generic history, things like gaming or cooking. Then suddenly the accounts became very politically motivated over one particular thing. Then within a few weeks to a months the accounts were gone.
My assumption these were sold/farmed accounts with reused comments/boring posts that were then used to push a political message when needed.
From the perspective of a mod, the only thing they end up having is the content, and the current patterns of interference they are familiar with.
So if your opinion happens to be in line with whatever narrative someone is trying to spin up, it will end up getting quashed.
Frankly there isn’t any solution to this, and you either end up losing ground to mechanised speech while having a low ban load for humans, or you end up acting on likely mechanized speech, and have a higher number of humans you ban.
The way Reddit is set up, people will select the first option over the second.
Unfortunately I seem to have conflated facts. 4chan pol has flags, and spez had a bit of a tiff with The Donald users where he changed their posts without consent (removing his name I think) that led to some consternation.
There were also investigations showing Russian activity in The Donald. But somehow the flag story is something I seem to have dreamed into this story. Doesn’t seem have happened (even though I have oddly specific memories about it).
> How did you establish the posters were Russian or Iranian, other than by time zone?
To a lot of people, Russian is just a state of mind. It simply means that you disagree with them, or the regime that they support. Also, the mods on reddit are overwhelmingly these people, banning all opposing opinions, or banning people for being Russian, or Iranian, or Chinese, etc...
They think this is legitimate: aaah, so you're Chinese. I knew there was something wrong when you insisted that the Chinese weren't evil thieves hellbent on destroying freedom, by nature. You're not allowed to post in the West.
All governance in the western world has become weak as hell. You only need a few bucks to corrupt anything, unless somebody with a few more bucks is already corrupting it. And certain intelligence agencies have the deepest pockets. Maybe little fiefdoms wasn't the best way to structure the internet? Maybe section 230 would be obviated if there were clear, deliberative processes to allow entire groups to both take action and responsibility for what they allow in their discussions?
Take note about how adhering to parliamentary methods protects private organizations: in most places, having proper rules set up (not EULAs and ToCs) actually has the practical effect of creating law because it sets up obligations to the users as well as obligations from the users. There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
To a lot of people, Russian is just a state of mind. It simply means that you disagree with them, or the regime that they support. Also, the mods on reddit are overwhelmingly these people, banning all opposing opinions, or banning people for being Russian, or Iranian, or Chinese, etc...
Pretending that there aren't concerted efforts to exert political influence on Reddit isn't helpful, and comes across as pretty disingenuous.
All governance in the western world has become weak as hell. You only need a few bucks to corrupt anything, unless somebody with a few more bucks is already corrupting it.
Yes, corruption and bribery exist exclusive in "western" governments. Thankfully "eastern" governments are completely immune to these issues.
And I know, "I never said those exact words!" but that at was the obvious intention.
I’ve personally caught a couple of Iranians and Russians brazenly posting such threads at 4am British time (working hours in Tehran) and the moderators did nothing. They simply allow such threads while deleting any thread that goes “is anyone sick of the constant threads about immigration?”
These threads generate so much engagement from people of all opinions that it makes the sub appear in people’s feeds as recommended content even if they’re not subscribed to the sub. It gives people the impression that there is only one political subject in the UK that gets any discussion.
I don’t know why the moderators of this sub do this, but the effects of their moderation are clear.