Manic News: Reddit

Showing posts with label Reddit. Show all posts

Saturday, September 12, 2020

PeaceData.net on Reddit

Graphika published a report on the PeaceData.net network, which was attributed to Russia's Internet Research Agency. The website never reached a wide audience, but it's still interesting to look at the IRA's activity.

In addition to the main website (PeaceData.net), the network also consisted of social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. One of the Twitter profiles was "Alice Schultz" (@AliceSc14113509), which was created on June 3, 2020. I looked on Reddit and a found a user named /u/AliceSchultz25, which is just about the fakest-sounding username you could come up with. Alice's account was created on June 1, 2020. She shared two links to PeaceData.net in /r/History and made another self-post in /r/PoliticalDiscussion (which likely contained a link to PeaceData.net). All three links were removed by the automod and none of them got any upvotes.

I went onto RedditSearch.io, and found 10 other submission to PeaceData.net. The most successful of these posts received 6 upvotes.

One post came from /u/Thisisntthespace, which is a shadowbanned account, so I can't see when the account was created.

So I assume /u/AliceSchultz25 is a sockpuppet, and perhaps /u/Thisisntthespace was a sockpuppet, too. None of the other submissions came from accounts that I would say are sockpuppets, but I'll give a summary for the sake of completeness.

Three posts came from /u/gregorjamessmith40, which is a four-month old account with a lot of posts about Turkey and Syria and the Middle East. He shares a lot of links to sites I haven't heard of, such as LibyaPolicy.com and TheArabWeekly.com.

Two posts came from /u/kavabean2, which is a 12-year-old account with 112,000 karma points. KavaBean2 is a moderator of /r/Labour and he shares links to a lot of left-wing sites such as PeoplesWorld.org and PeoplesDispatch.com.

One post came from /u/IntnsRed, which is a 14-year-old account with 400,000 karma points. IntnsRed is a moderator of /r/WorldPolitics2, and he shares links to a ton of websites, including The Guardian, Newsweek, and CounterPunch.

Two posts came from /u/captainwaffles, which is a 10-year-old account. CaptainWaffles also shares links to videos from Jimmy Dore and articles by Aaron Maté.

One post came from /u/human-no560, and he was sharing the link in order to highlight an example of Russian propaganda, so that doesn't really count.

Below are all the links:

AliceSchultz25:
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gugch5/war_crimes_committed_by_british_troops_peacedata/
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gugpx0/western_special_services_role_in_the/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/gugynt/brazils_ailing_welfare_state_clashes_against/

Thisisntthespace:
https://www.reddit.com/r/inthenews/comments/h9h4my/indian_government_is_abusing_the_covid19_lockdown/

Gregorjamessmith40:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews2/comments/hi1sxx/how_erdogans_government_is_hiring_mercenaries_for/
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/hi1rjz/how_erdogans_government_is_hiring_mercenaries_for/
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedianews/comments/hi1sls/how_erdogans_government_is_hiring_mercenaries_for/

KavaBean2:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Labour/comments/i7r06n/housing_how_coronavirus_has_exposed_this/
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/i7r2f9/housing_how_coronavirus_has_exposed_this/

CaptainWaffles:
https://www.reddit.com/r/InformedTankie/comments/igr827/svetlana_tikhanovskayas_deleted_webpages_show/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageImperialism/comments/igr7tf/svetlana_tikhanovskayas_deleted_webpages_show/

IntnsRed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics2/comments/i4lb98/does_the_us_military_assassinate_journalists_the/

Human-no560:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/comments/ikzshh/this_is_the_website_the_russians_were_using_to/

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

People on Reddit think /u/MaxwellHill is Ghislaine Maxwell

Here's a weird conspiracy theory which sprang out of nowhere. /u/MaxwellHill is a long-time moderator on Reddit. He's the #2 moderator on /r/WorldNews and a prolific submitter, having accumulated over 14 million karma points.

However, he hasn't posted anything in the last seven days. This led people to speculate that /u/MaxwellHill is the online alter ego of Ghislaine Maxwell. The reasoning is that Ghislaine was arrested this past week, and the two of them have "Maxwell" in their names, so...maybe they're the same person?!

I assume there's no connection between /u/MaxwellHill and Ghislaine Maxwell. I get why people might fool themselves into thinking there's a connection, but there's no substance here. Nonetheless, users on /r/Conspiracy and /r/Epstein are digging through MaxwellHill's commenting history (Pizzagate style!), looking for any corroboration that he's Ghislaine. For instance, he shared an article seven years ago titled "Three Reasons Possession Of Child Porn Must Be Re-Legalized In The Coming Decade." He also allegedly stopped posting for about three days at the same time when Ghislaine Maxwell's mother passed away.

Here's the thing with MaxwellHill: He's a semi-mysterious fellow, and he carries some weird baggage with him. People have complained before that he pushes his own agenda in /r/WorldNews, and there was a controversy several years ago when he turned /r/Technology into a "total shit-storm" (per the Daily Dot). He's a bit obtuse, and he seems to have no interest in nipping this conspiracy theory in the bud. A fellow moderator from /r/WorldNews named Hasharin says he spoke with MaxwellHill earlier today to give him a heads up about the conspiracy theory. Here was MaxwellHill's response:

Hasharin also mentioned that MaxwellHill is a Malaysian man, and that the username is inspired by a place in Malaysia which is literally called Maxwell Hill:

Maxwellhill is a Malaysian man please stop this nonsense. I mod r/worldnews with him. Maxwell Hill is literally the name of a place in Malaysia it is not a reference to his name.
— J D (@hasharin) July 8, 2020

Several Twitter users—most notably Joe Leonard (@maelfyn)—have shared speculation about MaxwellHill. Joe Leonard's tweet thread has 5,400 re-tweets and 16,400 likes so far. There have also been threads on 4Chan's /pol/ board filled with speculation.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

/u/AwkwardTheTurtle suspended permanently

[UPDATE 8/19: AwkwardTheTurtle's account was later un-suspended.]

Reddit powermod /u/AwkwardTheTurtle has been permanently suspended from Reddit:

Life Pro Tip: Dont be rude to Nazis on reddit. I was suspended permanently for this exchange lmao pic.twitter.com/TmO51tXUSf
— awkward the turtle (@awkwardtheturtl) August 7, 2019

Here's a larger version of the exchange that led to the suspension:

As you can see, a Reddit user named /u/42turds was acting like a sea lion and complaining about the incivility found in one of Turtle's subreddits. Turtle got pissed and called 42turds a "deranged fascist nazi piece of shit." And that led to the suspension.

AwkwardTheTurtle is a moderator for 2,000+ subreddits, including /r/Art, /r/LifeProTips, and /r/TwoXChromosomes. He also moderates /r/AgainstHateSubreddits and /r/StopAdvertising—both of which were created with the goal of eliminating "hate speech" on Reddit. And of course, the AHS crew have had their sights set on /r/The_Donald for a long time.

I once wrote in the DefaultMods Slack that, if the far-right wants to win the 2020 election, they need to drive AwkwardTheTurtle off of Reddit. It was a joke, obviously, but it was one of those jokes with an element of truth. We've all read that Politico article about "The Great Meme War." If Trump's followers want him to win reelection, they need to control the tone of the internet. And how do you control the tone of the internet? With memes, of course! You can find Trump supporters on most social media platforms, but /r/The_Donald is where many of the popular Trump memes are incubated.

THE_DONALD'S MASTER PLAN:

Step 1: Drive /u/AwkwardTheTurtle off of Reddit.

Step 2: Secure the safety of The_Donald.

Step 3: Post spicy memes.

Step 4: Win reelection.

Is this truly the end of AwkwardTheTurtle? There was already one false alarm a few weeks ago, when Reddit administrators accidentally banned AwkwardTheTurtle's account. (Apparently an admin pressed a wrong button.) And the term "suspension" seems to leave open the possibility that the decision could be overturned down the line.

In the meantime, Reddit user /u/Awkward_The_Turtle has already been added as a moderator for /r/AgainstHateSubreddits.

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Why did Engadget think Alt-Right.com is a Russian propaganda site?

Last month, Engadget and Point ran an investigation that found Russian propaganda is still "a big problem for Reddit." The piece highlighted three domains alleged to be Russian propaganda: VeteransToday.com, SouthFront.org, and Alt-Right.com. These sites were supposedly being spammed in dozens of different subreddits:

As I read the Engadget article, I paid close attention to how the author, Benjamin Plackett, concluded that the domains were indeed Russian propaganda.

For SouthFront.org, he cited an academic paper by researcher Jessikka Aro.

For VeteransToday.com, he cited a 2017 report from Politico.

For Alt-Right.com, he cited an article on ThinkProgress by Casey Michel, titled: "Why did Columbus Nova register websites aimed at young white supremacists?" Columbus Nova is a New York-based company with business ties to the Russian conglomerate Renova, which in turn is run by the Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

Here's where things get murky: In his article, Michel noted that Columbus Nova registered several domains with variations of the phrase "alt-right." These included: Alt-Right.co, Altrights.co, and Alt-Right.com. Michel also wrote:

There’s no evidence any material ever existed on the sites, and all of them return an error message.

That line caught my attention, because Alt-Right.com is clearly an active website. Furthermore, the Internet Archive shows Alt-Right.com was active in 2017 and 2018, which is in contradiction with Michel's observation.

So here's what I think happened: Casey Michel made a typo. (He probably meant to type Alt-Right.co or Alt-Rights.com.) And Engadget took the typo at face value.

As far as I can tell, Alt-Right.com is a run-of-the-mill nationalist website. The masthead lists "Brandon Martinez" and "Charlemagne" as the chief editors. You can watch interviews on YouTube with them. Brandon Martinez has an Amazon page, and his author bio says he's Canadian. I don't see any obvious Russian connection. Granted, it's not great if people on Reddit are sharing alt-right material, but that isn't the same thing as promoting Russian propaganda. I think the distinction is important.

Unfortunately I don't have an active subscription on Whoisology right now, so I can't dive into the historical WHOIS records for Alt-Right.com. (I'd want to check if it was ever registered to the e-mail address fintrater@columbusnova.com.) The current WHOIS page for Alt-Right.com shows it's registered with a proxy service, but that record may have changed over time.

I'm going to reach out to Engadget and see if they can fact-check whether Alt-Right.com was ever registered to Columbus Nova. I'll update this post if they respond.

Friday, January 25, 2019

The DFRLab and Reddit

In November, the Digital Forensic Research Lab published a report titled "RT and R/The_Donald." It's an examination of how stories from RT.com perform in the subreddit /r/The_Donald. As I read the report, some of the author's statements struck me as amiss, and I want to take a few minutes to articulate what bothered me.

Nitpick #1:

Early in the article, the authors says:

Over the past year, more than 500 articles from USA Really and the brutalist.press were submitted on Reddit. Only two, however, were upvoted more than 1,000 times, indicating a low uptake of the content shared from the two domains.

That's wrong. I went to RedditSearch.io and found seven articles from Brutalist.press that received more than 1,000 upvotes: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. This is an example of how data can be different depending on where you look.

Nitpick #2:

Later in the report, the author embeds an image from BuzzSumo, showing the six most-popular RT.com articles from the past six months, ranked in terms of total social media engagement. The gist is that none of the top RT articles had any engagement on Reddit:

What I've been trying to figure out is why the same RT.com article is listed five times in a row? It's the one titled: "Going to the gym is a sign of being gay, says Malaysian newspaper."

For what it's worth, that RT story was posted in multiple subreddits, and it spurred user engagements in /r/Malaysia (40 upvotes. 57 comments), /r/Forsen (27 upvotes, 4 comments), and /r/LGBT (25 upvotes, 1 comment). I'm assuming the author didn't count those engagements because they occurred back in February, 2017, and she was only searching for results from the past six months.....but that still leaves a puzzling question: Why does the BuzzSumo image indicate that all of the RT articles about the Malaysian newspaper were printed in October, when a simple Google search shows the article was printed in February?

I created an account on BuzzSumo and tried to replicate the DFRLab's results, to no avail. I searched for the most-popular English-language RT.com articles for the six-month period up to November 6, 2018 (the publication date of the DFRLab's report). My results showed that five of the top six stories had some engagement on Reddit. The Malaysian newspaper story didn't appear in my results:

Nitpick #3:

Near the end of the report, the author explains how "if it was not for The_Donald, RT’s articles would fall on deaf ears on Reddit."

This statement ignores the fact that RT articles have been highly upvoted on /r/WorldNews, which is an active subreddit with 20 million subscribers. If you look at the most upvoted RT articles on Reddit from the past year, the top four submissions were all in /r/WorldNews. In their report, the DFRLab says the top 20 RT links in The_Donald received a combined 132,000 upvotes. By comparison, the top 20 RT links on /r/WorldNews from the past year received over 143,000 upvotes.

Like I said earlier, this type of data depends on where you look. (And I know my time frame isn't the same as the DFRLab's time frame.) My point is: It's wrong to suggest that /r/The_Donald is the only place on Reddit where RT articles gain a foothold.

Nitpick #4:

At the end of the report, the author says, "by upvoting RT’s articles thousands of times, The_Donald Redditors made it possible for RT’s content to reach Reddit’s home page, which is the first page users see when they enter the site."

I don't think the DFRLab understands how the "front page" of Reddit works. For years, the front page consisted of 25 default subreddits. Later, this was expanded to 50 default subreddits, and /r/The_Donald was never part of the default group. In February, 2017, the Reddit admins redesigned the front page to display links from a large swathe of "popular" subreddits, and /r/The_Donald was not included as part of the original list, either. It's possible that /r/The_Donald was included on the "popular" list at some point, but my impression is it never happened. Thus, I doubt /r/The_Donald has ever pushed an RT article to the front page of Reddit.

Incidentally, I did find an example of RT making the front page on Reddit in 2018, courtesy of /r/WorldNews:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180103031815/https://www.reddit.com/

Conclusion:

I do agree with the DFRLab's overall thesis: There are lots of RT links being submitted to the /r/The_Donald, and this is concerning in light of the user base's potential susceptibility to Russian propaganda. That said, I felt the DFRLab's efforts to contextualize their data mostly fell flat. The report's conclusion mentions how RT is "seeding" it's content in /r/The_Donald, and I would've preferred if that part received more of an explanation.

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

The RadiationThreats.org spam ring

Last month, I made a chronological list of the 900+ suspected Russian troll accounts on Reddit. One of the outliers was /u/George_BENTLEY. The account was made in 2011, and shows no recent activity.

However, George_BENTLEY did submit links to various spam domains: CitizensInfo.com, City-Fun.info, RadiationThreats.org, TopIndex.com, and UK-Deals.info.

At first glance, RadiationThreats.org is a confusing site. It seems like somebody took a phonebook and cross-referenced the names of people (along with their cities) with a list of nuclear facilities in the U.S. Each name was assigned a "threat level" from 1-100, based on their distance from the nearest nuclear plant. (I wouldn't take the "threat level" seriously.) Each entry also contains a hyperlink to Infopay.com. That, in turn, redirects to Inforegistry.com, which is a site that offers background reports. The reports cost between $9.95 and $29.95.

CitizensInfo.com, City-Fun.info, and UK-Deals.info are all inactive. TopIndex.com is still up, and it appears to be an SEO blog, with hundreds of posts dated between 2010 and 2012.

Starting with /u/George_BENTLEY, I looked for other domains that seemed to be part of the same spam ring. In total, I found 101 domains and 2,139 Reddit accounts. Later, I'll try to figure out who actually operated the spam ring. For now, here's the list (after the jump):

Did Russian trolls host a Reddit AMA on Christmas?

I recently made a chronological list of the suspected Russian troll accounts on Reddit. The final account on that list, /u/TrollsOfficial, was created December 25th, 2017, at 9AM EDT. At 9:04 AM, /u/TrollsOfficial created a thread in /r/CasualIAmA titled:

We are "Russian Trolls", ask us anything!

You can view the thread here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/7m1hht/we_are_russian_trolls_ask_us_anything/

And here is a version showing deleted comments:
https://www.removeddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/7m1hht/we_are_russian_trolls_ask_us_anythin
g/

Earlier in 2017, the administrators of BlackMattersUS.com (a site linked to Russia's Internet Research Agency) created a minor stir by saying they planned to host an AMA on Reddit. Several sites like Business Insider and Think Progress wrote about the announcement, but the idea seemed to have been dropped as quickly as it was formed.

There have been plenty of low-effort AMAs in which a person claimed to be a Russian troll or Russian bot. One piece of evidence which lends credibility to the December 25th AMA is this tweet from Casey Michel of ThnkProgress:

Russian trolls (still using BlackMattersUS email) celebrating Christmas, too. pic.twitter.com/rm6HrH8Tqt
— Casey Michel 🇰🇿 (@cjcmichel) December 25, 2017

Casey received an e-mail on December 24th from the administrator of BlackMattersUS.com, claiming there would be an AMA on Christmas morning at 9 AM—which is exactly what happened. Furthermore, Casey didn't share his image on Twitter until the next afternoon, so it's not as though someone decided to impersonate the Russian trolls after reading his tweet. So I suspect the AMA was legitimate.

Below is a full transcript of the AMA, complete with photos. I also put some notes at the end:

9:05:21

Mohato: What are your political agenda and goals in general?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/mrOwdXe

9:12:48

Malefane: What's your current campaign is about?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/Gl7uMlI

9:19:11

Researchbeggar: Of your many US troll personas and organizations, which do you consider your greatest success so far?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/6T027dq

9:23:40

JoJouel: What is your practice when someone accuses one of your accounts of being a troll? Do you ignore the accusation, deny it, attack back, or something else?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/GuoJ9qV

9:25:58

Caterpillarclass: Do you actually believe in anything?

TrollsOfficial: They are among us. Blood-drinking, flesh-eating, shape-shifting extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids with only one objective in their cold-blooded little heads: to enslave the human race. They are our leaders, our corporate executives, our beloved Oscar-winning actors and Grammy-winning singers, and they're responsible for the Holocaust, the Oklahoma City bombings and the 9/11 attacks ...

https://imgur.com/0qQp0kD

9:36:13

Caterpillarclass: Does your mother know that you are a troll?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/ugnwWVA

9:39:24

DroppingTheOppressor: Did you coordinate your efforts, in any way, with anyone affiliated with Trump during or after the 2016 election?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/jkbYtFW

9:48:39

Solodoto666: Are you finding Facebook’s and Twitter’s tightened security an obstacle? How are your replacement accounts performing?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/GNqoFQx

10:01:34

Solodoto666: Do you use hacking against your political enemies?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/IwP4ccj

10:06:00

-NorthKorea-: Best program to learn Russian?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/7fbhAZS

10:11:36

Mohato: Could you proof that you are the Russian Trolls?

TrollsOfficial: https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/russian-troll-factory-created-hillary-clinton-s-tape-with-impersonator-and-black-actor-ex-employee/

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/3Cjepdx [NOTE: This leads to a NSFW image]

Silent_xfer: I'm confused about how an article and a Screenshot are proof? I could post those two things, too.....

TrollsOfficial: This screenshot wasn't in the final cut, so it is proof, cause only we have it.

Silent_xfer: Are you familiar with the concept of offering context?

10:19:14

Malefane: Where did you shoot that "Hillary Clinton" sex video, and why is the man wearing slippers?

TrollsOfficial: https://imgur.com/gxPJvhh

Silent_xfer: This doesn't even make sense and has virtually no humorous impact. This whole thread is like 2/10 at best.

TrollsOfficial: So, make it better, comrade, ask questions, drink vodka!

Silent_xfer: 1/10

11:44:35

Jisoosana: Rocky IV is the best American film because we kicked a Russians ass. :)

TrollsOfficial: Hans "Dolph" Lundgren is a Swedish. Even Russian kid can kick your ass

Jisoosana: Except when it comes to basic human rights. Because well.....

13:27:06

Deidara141: No question, just wanted to say that you draw pretty good drawings for a troll.

________________________________________________________________

It's possible that many of the accounts asking questions in the AMA were also Russian trolls. The Reddit accounts /u/Caterpillarclass, /u/JoJouel, /u/Malefane, /u/Mohato, /u/Researchbeggar, and /u/Solodoto666 were all suspended and added to the list of the suspected troll accounts. I discussed the issue with fellow spam-hunter /u/abrownn, and he advised a bit of caution in leaping to assumptions. We don't know the reason why Reddit's administrators flagged certain accounts, and it's possible some non-troll accounts got swept in with the rest.

Also, if you look at the exchange starting at 10:11:36, you'll see that /u/TrollsOfficial shared an unreleased image from the infamous Hillary Clinton porn parody. (NBC News wrote about the video in April.) /u/TrollsOfficial offered the image as proof of their status as a real Russian troll, but that screenshot might have been floating around the internet for months before the AMA took place.

I sent an e-mail to admin@blackmattersus.com and asked if they were responsible for the AMA. I haven't gotten a reply yet.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Another "USAReally" spammer on Reddit: /u/dukethelord

Saturday, September 15, 2018

Suspected Russian Reddit accounts, in chronological order

I took the information from here: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/suspiciousaccounts. I tried to keep my mistakes to a minimum, but there may still be some minor errors.

That being said, the main purpose of this exercise was to highlight any patterns or outliers. (All accounts listed after the jump.)

Reddit spammer: /u/USA_Really

I noticed a spammer on Reddit, named u/USA_Really. He's been spamming links to USAReally.com.

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