Is anyone else noticing an uptick in far-right content and Russian propaganda on reddit lately?

To me it almost seems like reddit has started pushing it.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        it actually accelerated after trump won, from there we saw ban wave after ban wave that was barely targetting misinformation trolls. when i went on another forum after my early FEBURARY BAN, people recorded 3 ban waves by that time, and the midst of a 4th one, i think the luigi, upvoting is the 5th one so far.

        there was nother user on the forum that recorded the statistics, there was massive surge of shadowbannings on the week i was permabanned. it is statistically relevant since theses users are the ones have 100s too thousands of accts getting shadowbanned.(yes they use it to promote advertisements)

    • aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 days ago

      There is plenty of coordinated inauthentic behavior here. You’ll notice it when the first few comments of every post somewhere like /c/politics consistently reinforce the “talking point of the month” to sow division among groups not aligned with Russian success.

      • Machinist@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I call it getting the heebs. Seeing a weird turn of phrase will set it off for me. This is my first time experiencing it from a leftist slant.

        Used to watch the Russians clock in and go to work on TheDonald back in the day. They were really obvious.

        The AstroTurf here is pretty nice, smells so much like grass you about can’t smell the bullshit. Better than Reddit, or Digg, or Slashdot, for now.

        Maybe it’s time to take a trip down the Mother Road and try Usenet for actual discussion.

    • Stache_@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      When I first joined Lemmy over a year ago after the Reddit API changes, I unknowingly joined a server that had a large right wing community. So I’ve been seeing a bunch of that stuff on Lemmy for a while now

    • SkavarSharraddas@gehirneimer.de
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      7 days ago

      It’s a big site where left-ish content is still reasonably popular. It may be a commercial shithole, but it’s still better than some other popular sites at bringing visibility to anti-nazi pushback (for now at least).

  • imvii@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    Maybe also has something to do with the uptick of banning left leaning people talking about the damage Trump and Musk are doing? There have been a TON of people here saying their 10+ year old accounts have been banned.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      yes i had several of my 5+ get a sitewide banned, but it only gave the “multiple violations of several accounts, but not the actual incident of the ban itself” you can assume its ban evasion, but they dint ban you for that, just a very vague AI message and ban. even if you did ban evade you usually get a message of “the previous account you are attempting to evade on this account”. also i believe vaguness is intentional so it gives reddit legitamcy.

      ALso what triggered all those ban for many people, at least for my i believe when i was temp banned from r/technology for report abused i got an instant ban on all my throwaways and old accts, plus a backup main account i created last year.

  • quack@lemmy.zip
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    5 days ago

    I don’t know about Reddit as a whole but the subreddit for my country has not only been flooded with far right content, there has been a hostile takeover of the mod team. All of the sensible and balanced mods were forced out and replaced by fascist lunatics.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      5 days ago

      The r/Unitedkingdom subreddit seems to be in the process of being taken over. Constant posts about crimes that brown immigrants commit with the same type of comments. It seems like one half of the sub notice and keep calling it out but another cohort keep posting and commenting anti immigration rhetoric. Said posts get upvoted very quickly too.

      It’s a stark contrast to how it was 5 or 10 years ago.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      same in the west coast, hint hint, 2 of the subs have been replaced by conservatives, or good two shoe shills. thier defending things like jury duty and fare citations.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Reddit didn’t start pushing it, it just stopped fighting it.

    They lost a lot of human users and moderators over the last few years (during the API changes, for example) and their place was filled with “power mods” who run multiple large subreddits.

    The moderator:user ratio has gone way down and so the people who game social media to push their messaging (nation states interested in disrupting the US) are essentially unchecked.

    Now, instead of dumb bots that just copy/paste comments we have LLM-enabled ‘users’ (or even entire subreddits) that only exist to amplify these messages and manipulate the karma system to suppress opposition.

    You don’t need to be a moderator if you can just use your network of hundreds of thousands of bots to downvote people out of the conversation or to boost articles to the front page.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      6 days ago

      And yet as short staffed as they are, these mods always manage to suppress pro Luigi and anti musk content

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Remember the government saying that they were going to treat anti-musk vandalism as terrorism?

        They’re not doing that by issuing press releases.

        They’re looking for “terrorists” on social media and their subpoenas to social media sites let the site know the kind of content that the government is labeling terrorism and then the site starts banning that content.

        Meanwhile they’re using that terrorism declaration to do things like charge protesters with crimes. For the ones who are on visas (like students, professors, etc) they are using those crimes as an excuse to revoke their visas and deport them.

        Reddit is censoring things that are being pursued by law enforcement because their is no safe harbor laws that protect sites from things the government declares as illegal.

        Reddit censorship is reflecting federal law enforcement priorities.

        I would be less worried about deleted posts and more worried about who’s houses are being raided due to “terrorism” charges because they’re too vocal about healthcare reform or protested in the vicinity of property damage to Musk properties

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        its easy when they have AI/bot to filter out that, dont need much people to monitor those comments.

        AI has been banning people left and right as of recently.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      from what ive gathered, its 92 mods controlling over 500+subs, i think these are the powermods. and additionally some of these are admins themselves? or mods that are in cahoots with reddit admins.

    • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I just wish there was some way to educate the Redditors on this. Let them know what their Admins allow, and what they support. But I’m pretty sure if you just make a post on Reddit saying something like “Reddit is bad go somewhere else” it will be removed.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        For the average person, the effort that it would require far outweighs any morality issues. Even if they knew the whole story.

        We should still educate people, but that isn’t going to move the needle by itself.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        questioning any reddit habits will get removed, if your not a mod yourself.

  • Xanthobilly@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    It’s been going on since 2016, and getting worse each day. The main change I’ve noticed post November 2024 is r/conservative keeps making it to the front page of popular despite having a much lower upvote tally.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      yup, ive been saying that too, r/conservative was there so often i blocked it from my feed. then you have wierd right wing subs that try to pretend its both sides, like trueunpopularopion, or trueoffmychest, even askreddit wierdly becomes a rightwing sub sometimes.

      i have a hunch the mods is either in cahoots with the admins themselves(many mods are known to have direct line of contact/relations with them)

    • El_Scapacabra@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      Yeah this one was really noticeable for me too! I just blocked it for a while but then I unblocked it again and made it a point to downvote any of their posts whenever I saw them.

    • mutual_ayed@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      My sentiments exactly. Been an increasing problem over there since 2016 that I noticed but I’m sure there was this bullshittery there before and I just wasn’t in the subreddits where it festered.

  • leonprimrose@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    They’re getting a lot of pressure from the Trump administration to clamp down on leftist content and ease regulations on right wing stuff

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Yeah, I don’t think it’s an uptick of Russians and right wingers so much as a downtick in sane and leftist comments.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      this is one part, but i think its mostly because of ad revenue, right wing content drives traffic to the site, it works for Youtube/facebook.

      • leonprimrose@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Crazy that that’s the case considering how bad it tends to be for advertisers. But I don’t doubt that’s involved too. Especially when the cultural focus of the country now is to rid itself of all forms of equity

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          4 days ago

          as long as people against right wingers respond to them, its a never ending cycle

  • EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 days ago

    At the risk of going against the flow here…no?

    I keep seeing Lemmy posts talking about how Reddit is going hard fascist…but half the posts on /r/all are about Trump being a rapist, or celebrating CyberTruck arson, or Luigi memes, etc.

    I deleted my Reddit account during the third-party app bullshit and exclusively view it from the old site or OpenArtemis, so I’m not exactly going to defend them, but it isn’t nearly as bad as people on here claim it is.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      its not because of the anti-trump posts, but its most the fact that resemble what MSMs has been doing, reporting everything trump does give him free press and legitimacy to the gop. additionally alot of comments get removed in those same posts for very little reason too. and also adding as adistraction from the actual things they couldve been posting. its called sanewashing. also some posters have been traced back to right wing bots and trolls too. too add, subs you never thought would see on the fornt page, such as conservative have become a constant prescence, also ragebaiting posts too.

  • vxx@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Reddit has been protecting russian bot farms for almost a decade now.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      they pretend to a sweep on occasion, only to have them come back even worst than before. how do we know? we know political posts suddenly becomes super quiet of any “both sides ranting” temporarily. and resemble more like lemmy posts of politics.

      and now Israel has a vested interest with reddit, because of the gaza conflict.

  • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Sure I have. I’ve also noticed an uptick in far-right users reporting accounts to get them suspended and banned. For people who jump so readily to calling their ideological opponents snowflakes, they’re remarkably quick to run to Mods, who’re disappointingly happy to accommodate fasch rhetoric.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      thats because the mods are right wingers themselves or in cahoots with reddit admins. at least 92 mods control 500+subs, and you can guess where they have thier hands in. these power/supermods, are probably right wing themselves and speak with reddit admins on the regular.

  • Tempus Fugit@midwest.social
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    5 days ago

    I’m one week reddit free after 2 bans. I honestly don’t miss it. Recently it’s been all right-wing propaganda and conspiracies, getting banned for innocuous things, and general hate towards other users. That platform is dying fast. Here’s to Lemmy supremacy! 🥂

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    The same thing happened to TikTok on inauguration day

    The rich are all currently working together to transition the US to a dictatorship ran by an oligarchy.

    They are taking over all social media they can buy and trying to control the narrative through chatbots.

    • Basic Glitch@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      It’s every major platform. Even Substack is just so ridiculous at this point. Idk if it’s even necessarily Russians, but just the ability of wealthy people to buy algorithm control and push an agenda.

      I tried to use Substack for a min but just kept getting frustrated with the inability to sort feed content of any accounts unless you follow them already. Like something would happen and I would want to discuss it with a large group of people and learn information while it’s still relevant, but there’s no way to do that.

      For some reason I kept seeing the same messaging over and over pushed on my feed trying to convince me that Pete Buttigeg is somehow the same as AOC or Bernie Sanders (which logic should tell you wtf no he’s not) then yesterday I see the same account announcing he’s gearing up to run for 2028 and suddenly it all made sense. Typical establishment bullshit but modernized for the Broligarchy takeover.

      Paying for social media algorithm control like advertising so that what people get to experience is nothing social, just media pushing a wealthy agenda but tweaked to their individual feed.