{"id":406095,"date":"2018-03-04T07:44:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-04T07:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=406095"},"modified":"2018-03-04T07:44:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-04T07:44:21","slug":"reddit-dragged-russian-propaganda-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=406095","title":{"rendered":"Reddit dragged into Russian propaganda row"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian propagandists targeted the popular news-sharing website Reddit to influence American political debate, a US website has claimed.<\/p>\n

It had been widely presumed that Reddit, a hub for campaigning, activism and often extreme views, would be a logical target for any manipulation.<\/p>\n

It has yet to publish its own investigation into Russian activity.<\/p>\n

Now news site the Daily Beast says it has obtained files showing a Russian troll farm was active on Reddit.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Daily Beast says it has obtained leaked documents\u00a0from within Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), the country’s most prominent troll-factory.<\/p>\n

The US government has already charged 13 Russians, linked to the agency, with attempting to manipulate American voters using social media.<\/p>\n

The Russian organisation is alleged to have had a budget of more than a million dollars, which the US claims was used to buy advertising on sites such as Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

So far, Reddit has not been included in the US Senate’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

But some reports have\u00a0suggested that could soon change.<\/p>\n

Influence<\/strong><\/p>\n

The documents discovered by the Daily Beast are said to detail the Internet Research Agency’s efforts on Reddit.<\/p>\n

The site says the agency employed “online agitators” to help posts from its own propaganda websites rise to the top of Reddit.<\/p>\n

It says the organisation used proxy servers to mask the location of its work.<\/p>\n

Also targeted were the Yahoo-owned blogging platform Tumblr, and the viral joke site 9gag.<\/p>\n

\"Heart<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast said the documents – which the BBC has not seen – included the names of US-based activists who the Russians were trying to contact.<\/p>\n

The publication said its reporters contacted several of these people and confirmed online conversations had taken place.<\/p>\n

As has been a pattern with Russian efforts discovered to date, there is no outright support of any particular candidate or viewpoint.<\/p>\n

Instead it seems Russia’s aim was to provoke and divide Americans on the internet and, as a result, in the physical world too.<\/p>\n

‘Not provided evidence’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Daily Beast said it had given Reddit the opportunity to comment on the story, but that repeated requests were ignored.<\/p>\n

Reddit replied on Friday, telling the BBC: “Reddit was not provided evidence of accounts or other data that would enable us to identify misuse or manipulation of the platform by users.”<\/p>\n

Reddit has gained a reputation as being something of a haven for some of the more extreme views that have been pushed off other platforms like YouTube and Twitter.<\/p>\n

The site consists of many user-generated sections, known as subreddits, that focus on a particular topic or place, such as r\/football or r\/SanFrancisco.<\/p>\n

Submissions are up- or down-voted by other users, with the most popular rising to the top of each respective section.<\/p>\n

\"Steve<\/p>\n

Posts that are wildly popular make their way to the front page and thus an audience of several million around the world every day.<\/p>\n

One particular subreddit, r\/The_Donald, is arguably the most powerful and coordinated pro-Donald Trump community on the internet, endorsed by the President himself who, while campaigning, used the forum to answer questions posted by users.<\/p>\n

Reddit has taken several steps to limit r\/The_Donald’s impact, including blocking popular submissions from appearing on Reddit’s front page.<\/p>\n

In a move he later apologised for, Reddit co-founder and chief executive Steve Huffman admitted personally editing comments posted on r\/The_Donald.<\/p>\n

Trump supporters on the site accuse Reddit of censorship and bias, but other users accuse Reddit of doing too little, pointing to many instances in which posts on r\/The_Donald have gone against Reddit’s policies.<\/p>\n

Mr Huffman acknowledged that some users on r\/The_Donald did break the site’s rules, but said the volunteer moderators on the section were proactive in removing such material.<\/p>\n

‘Disturbing’<\/h2>\n

Aside from information involving Reddit, the Daily Beast said the leaked documents included “at least 21” accounts on Tumblr, the blogging site acquired by Yahoo in 2013.<\/p>\n

Oath, the Verizon company that now owns Yahoo, said the findings were “deeply disturbing”.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re committed to creating platforms consumers can trust, and any abuse of our services is deeply concerning to us,” it said.<\/p>\n

Like Reddit, Oath has not been called upon to provide evidence to the various committees looking into the issue of Russian influence online.<\/p>\n

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube-owner Google have all appeared in front of US politicians on several occasions to explain their investigations and subsequent efforts to prevent similar activity from Russia – or other countries – in the future.<\/p>\n

Yet unlike its competitors, which have workforces in the tens of thousands, Reddit is a comparatively tiny company.<\/p>\n

As of July last year, the company had just 230 employees, yet it is ranked the sixth most popular website on the internet by traffic monitoring service Alexa.<\/p>\n

It has a so-called “anti evil” team to combat abuse, described in job postings as “small and scrappy”.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russian propagandists targeted the popular news-sharing website Reddit to influence American political debate, a US website has claimed. It had been widely presumed that Reddit, a hub for campaigning, activism and often extreme views, would be a logical target for any manipulation. It has yet to publish its own investigation into Russian activity. Now news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":406096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[15533,954],"class_list":["post-406095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-reddit","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/406096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}