The accounts are believed to have been used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) – an organisation linked to many different web-based campaigns.

Tumblr said it had uncovered the fake accounts while helping an official investigation into the IRA’s influence.

Last month, 13 Russians linked with the IRA were indicted by the US government.

The individuals were charged with trying to manipulate American voters via social media.

‘Incendiary claims’

Tumblr said after discovering the accounts’ Russian connections, it had:

• shut them down
• deleted all the posts they had made
• notified US law enforcement agencies

But the continuing official investigation into the activities of the IRA had prevented it releasing details before now.

Tumblr said it would also let anyone who had interacted with the fake accounts know what had happened.

“We’re committed to transparency and want you to know everything that we know,” it said in a statement.

Tumblr said it would let individual users decide whether they wanted to delete the chains of links and comments they had added to the Russian posts, which were “often challenging or debunking the false and incendiary claims in the IRA-linked original post”.

And it would step up monitoring of its own service in an attempt to stop future abuse by state-backed trolls and propaganda units.

Other social media services have purged themselves of allegedly IRA-backed accounts in recent months.

Last year, Facebook said 120 Russian-backed pages had created 80,000 posts received by more than 29 million Americans directly.

The information reached many more as those initial viewers passed them on to others.

In December, Facebook introduced a tool that it said would let users know if they had interacted with the IRA-backed accounts.

Earlier this month, social-news network Reddit said it had removed “hundreds” of accounts it suspected of being used by the IRA.

In February, Twitter removed many thousands of so-called “‘bot” accounts it said were being used to artificially inflate the importance of messages sent by Russian social-media workers.

–

Source: BBC

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Yet these days, SXSW’s focus is less about developing apps, and more about developing society. A society that, thanks to technology which some of these attendees created, feels in need of repair.

One of the most interesting products being discussed this year isn’t new at all.

Reddit somehow seems to fly under the radar for the average person, despite being the sixth most popular website in the world.

But while its ugly aesthetic – and often, ugly content – is alienating to many, there is much to admire.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say Reddit provides a model for how to create a more interesting, fairer web. A model that doesn’t drag down other publishers in the process.

Reddit’s system – where users upvote things they like, and downvote things they don’t – is about as transparent as it gets on today’s algorithm-dominated web.

You can see how many votes each item has attracted, with a few exceptions. You know which user posted it and when, and what the source of the information is. You can choose to rank your own page accordingly – adding and subtracting topic pages, known as subreddits, to your pleasing.

Contrast this to the black box of Facebook, an impenetrable tangle of calculations which are a mystery to everyone outside its HQ, and I’d wager to most inside too.

Gaming the system

Facebook recently polled its users on which news organisations they found most trustworthy. It has shared neither the results nor which content is being boosted or demoted as a result.

Yet companies are destroyed and created as a consequence.

With Reddit, though, it’s right there on the homepage. As I write this, the top item on the site – about a person conquering drug addiction – is there because 49,600 people felt it worth my attention.

This voting system has its downsides. Putting Reddit’s mechanics out in the open makes it easier to game the system.

Steve Huffman, Reddit’s co-founder and current chief executive, remarked at length at SXSW about r/The_Donald, a subreddit used by President Trump’s supporters and Trump himself during his 2016 campaign.

Despite calls from some users that the section be taken down for flouting rules on hate speech, Mr Huffman has stood firm on keeping it up, with a few measures to limit its spread.

“It’s crass and offensive and that is part of their identity,” he said.

“[But] there’s a difference between conflicting with our values and conflicting with our content policy.”

Most troubling to observers is The_Donald’s role as a thriving hub for conspiracy theories. It may not be the origin of vicious content – such as suggesting school children involved in shootings are actors – but it is the leading amplifier.

So, it was no surprise to many that Reddit was – like Facebook and Twitter – a target for state-backed Russian trolls.

“We’ve had a handful of conversations with Congress,” Mr Huffman said. “They’re asking what’s going on. We’re on the same team.”

Middle man

Reddit’s problems with propaganda – and other unsavoury content – shouldn’t mask the positive effect this site has on the internet at large.

While Facebook tries to keep users inside its walls, Reddit actively encourages visitors to go elsewhere.

This is the healthiest way to maintain the internet economy – it gives content creators the best chance of making the most of these eyeballs.

A front-page Reddit spot typically delivers millions of views – though this can be a mixed blessing: sites unable to handle the load refer to this as the Reddit “hug of death”.

Crucially, Reddit does not currently insert itself as a middle man to skim off advertising dollars. Once you click the link, you’re gone.

By contrast, Facebook and Google have developed faster-loading page formats. These are being used to serve ads to sites that had typically earned revenue independently – though Facebook and Google would argue they’re creating a bigger pie.

And that’s just the beginning. When Facebook ramps up its efforts to sell subscriptions to others’ content, its grip on their financial security will get even tighter.

Quality interactions

At a separate panel at SXSW, Facebook’s head of news, Alex Hardiman, spoke about the company’s attempts to promote “quality” news over untruths or clickbait.

Reddit offers a solution, giving prominence to articles that users feel are important and/or enjoy rather than simply “engage” with.

This is an often overlooked difference between these two networks. As it stands, Facebook doesn’t care if your reaction to something is positive or negative, so long as you react.

In all its efforts to help users flag offensive material, Facebook has failed to a create a tool to let them signal that something isn’t worth their time.

Under Reddit’s upvote/downvote system, clickbait headlines often sink quickly, while long, descriptive titles, leading to genuinely insightful information, thrive.

The Reddit community, more often than not, rewards originality and creativity – and punishes inauthenticity.

Immature

But there are difficult times ahead for Reddit.

Its team of just 300 or so is ill-equipped to tackle some of the issues it faces.

For starters, Mr Huffman’s suggestion that users can competently self-regulate the site is misguided. YouTube once believed the same, and look where that got it.

Mr Huffman himself may be a weakness – his reckless decision in November 2016 to secretly edit the comments of Trump supporters was breathtakingly stupid and only energised those convinced the world was conspiring to silence them.

“I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this,” he said about the incident.

“I will say to our community team, I’m sorry. I ruined their holiday. To The_Donald, they’ll be just fine.”

He should be sorry. The edit infuriated a huge number of Reddit users, not just Trump supporters, and highlighted that the platform’s self-governance was not mature.

On the same day that Mr Huffman appeared at SXSW, the web’s inventor – Sir Tim Berners-Lee – published a letter.

“What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms,” he wrote.

Reddit has the power to help reverse this trend.

–

Source: BBC

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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 site the Daily Beast says it has obtained files showing a Russian troll farm was active on Reddit.

The Daily Beast says it has obtained leaked documents from within Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), the country’s most prominent troll-factory.

The US government has already charged 13 Russians, linked to the agency, with attempting to manipulate American voters using social media.

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.

So far, Reddit has not been included in the US Senate’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

But some reports have suggested that could soon change.

Influence

The documents discovered by the Daily Beast are said to detail the Internet Research Agency’s efforts on Reddit.

The site says the agency employed “online agitators” to help posts from its own propaganda websites rise to the top of Reddit.

It says the organisation used proxy servers to mask the location of its work.

Also targeted were the Yahoo-owned blogging platform Tumblr, and the viral joke site 9gag.

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.

The publication said its reporters contacted several of these people and confirmed online conversations had taken place.

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

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

‘Not provided evidence’

The Daily Beast said it had given Reddit the opportunity to comment on the story, but that repeated requests were ignored.

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.”

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.

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.

Submissions are up- or down-voted by other users, with the most popular rising to the top of each respective section.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

‘Disturbing’

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.

Oath, the Verizon company that now owns Yahoo, said the findings were “deeply disturbing”.

“We’re committed to creating platforms consumers can trust, and any abuse of our services is deeply concerning to us,” it said.

Like Reddit, Oath has not been called upon to provide evidence to the various committees looking into the issue of Russian influence online.

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.

Yet unlike its competitors, which have workforces in the tens of thousands, Reddit is a comparatively tiny company.

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.

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

–

Source: BBC

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The move follows the development of artificial intelligence software that made it relatively easy to create clips featuring computer-generated versions of celebrities’ faces.

Reddit had become one of the most popular places to share and discuss so-called deepfake videos.

It also reworded its policy for minors.

The discussion site had been under growing pressure to act after other platforms – including Twitter, Gfycat and Pornhub – introduced their own deepfake bans.

However, it may cause unease among some Reddit users who already feared the platform was becoming less “open” after its closure of two alt-right forums in 2017.

Deepfakes involve the use of artificial intelligence software to create a computer-generated version of a subject’s face that closely matches the original expressions of another person in a video.

–

Source: BBC

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Some of the features seem inspired by work from other third-party clients.

For example, the new Theater Mode option on iOS lets users browse media in what Reddit calls a “video-first” format. This allows users to open media, like original video, in a full-screen experience. They can also choose to view the content in landscape mode and swipe back and forth between media.

While this is an obvious next step for Reddit on mobile, it’s worth noting that a full-screen media mode is one of the features that made the new third-party Reddit app, Apollo, so well-received earlier this year. (Apollo’s media mode doesn’t let you scroll to the next image, however.)

Similarly, the ability to open links in Safari (via Safari View Controller) on iOS instead of using Reddit’s native in-app browser is another feature you can find in Apollo. This has also been among one of the users’ top requests, Reddit says.

Other features, however, push the Reddit clients into new territory while leveraging their position as the official mobile apps.

For example, Reddit’s iOS app will now support live comments, turning Reddit into a more real-time experience, and making it feel similar to Twitter.

Employees have tested this feature for some time ahead of today’s arrival, but now it’s becoming publicly available. The feature makes sense for a variety of posts, whether that’s real-time comment threads on NFL gameday posts, or updates about natural disasters and aid as on the Hurricane Harvey mega thread.

iOS is also the first official Reddit app to get chat.

This feature has also been in beta testing ahead of today with thousands of Reddit users across the site. Now, as chat becomes available on mobile, users can choose to opt in the beta (but only for 1 to 1 chats for the time being.)

Several other new features are designed to make Reddit’s apps more functional, while others are about building community.

Users and moderators can now add “post flair” on both iOS and Android – a tool to distinguish different types of content. A new comment speed read button on Android lets users jump between the top-level comments in a discussion. Another change ensures that the original poster (OP)’s username is always visible, even from the Home feed.

Meanwhile, both iOS and Android users will enjoy a cake icon by their name on their “Cake Day” – a Reddit tradition that celebrates a user’s anniversary of when they first joined the site. Users’ trophy case – which displays accomplishments like the best comment, beta test participation, length of time on Reddit and more – will also now be displayed on mobile.

Another group of features launching today are designed for Reddit’s moderators.

This includes the ability to switch on “Mod mode” to approve, remove, and flag content from iOS and Android – or even bulk approve, remove, or flag items, for those in charge of larger communities. Moderators can also access the beta and existing Modmail experiences and can update the list of moderators and approved submitters from their phone, across both iOS and Android.

Reddit says it has simplified other moderator tasks, too, like banning, muting and reporting.

The company’s decision to focus more heavily on mobile with the launch of its own native apps -which also replace the app it acquired, Alien Blue – came about because of the increasing influx of mobile users and mobile-first users.

At the time of the launch, Reddit said that half its user base browsed the site on mobile, including both via mobile web and third-party applications. It knew that it needed to better serve those users by staking its own claim on mobile where it could more carefully craft the user experience it wanted to deliver.

Today, Reddit says it has over 330 million monthly active users, who post more than 9 million times per month, and ~370,000 times per day. It also notes that younger users prefer mobile, with 58 percent of those 18 through 34 preferring mobile web and mobile apps only. Pageview growth across Reddit has doubled since early 2016, and mobile engagement is higher than on desktop, the company also notes.

In addition, Reddit generates revenue through advertising, including on mobile. To do so effectively, it needs to have more control over the native app experience in order to offer features for advertisers such as the recently introduced support for mobile app attribution through integrations with partners like Tune, Adjust and Kochava for app install ads, or just to simply better cater to advertisers who want to target mobile in particular.

The new Reddit apps are going live today on the iOS App Store and Google Play.

–

Source: TechCrunch

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