https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1hvb3ff/is_reddit_being_readied_for_propaganda/
created by EwwItsABovineEntity on 06/01/2025 at 21:56 UTC*
92 upvotes, 40 top-level comments (showing 25)
Reddit is a moderately good place to discuss things. In comparison, I would say Facebook is horrifically bad and ”X” is a vile black cesspool of tentacles and nightmares.
Anyway, seems like some billionaires and nation states have realized that you can use money to sway political tendencies in various open societies, using social media. You know the kind of content, it’s fairly typical propaganda but often with a lacuna that various audiences fill in themselves and somehow feel good about themselves for getting. Also, common sense is used to solve complex issues. Apparently very effective to persuade people. My sense is this is done primarily via FB, Instagram and X. In the recent week, I have however noticed similar content on Reddit. I have also noticed a lot of people attacking the ”upvote” and ”downvote” system on here. My sense is that this system is a vital bulwark against the money-to-opinion scheme some millionaires and states are running.
So, my question is; are we seeing a concerted effort to open Reddit up for the kind of constant propagandistic content we are seeing elsewhere online?
EDIT: the responses below give me paus. People reporting specific problems with Reddit I think are legit. But the many ”you’re naive if you think Reddit isn’t the worst propaganda channel in existence” - no, it clearly isn’t. There are many subreddits that are well-managed, interesting and intelligent. I don’t see any of that on X, FB or IG any more. And ”you’re stupid and naive” is the worst argument in any discussion - you use it, you loose it.
Comment by stop_shdwbning_me at 06/01/2025 at 21:58 UTC
313 upvotes, 5 direct replies
You're about a decade late here man.
Comment by Tsuketsu at 07/01/2025 at 00:22 UTC
29 upvotes, 4 direct replies
They just recently 'banned' r/Random which means they are definitely trying to redirect users away from smaller/newer communities and into isolated communities with people they already agree with.
Comment by Al1_1040 at 06/01/2025 at 22:09 UTC
70 upvotes, 2 direct replies
A lot of the main subs are unusable. In the run up to the U.S. Election it was none stop very unfunny propaganda. Look at the pics subreddit, it’s just bot posts about Trump
Comment by BlazeAlt at 06/01/2025 at 23:12 UTC
19 upvotes, 0 direct replies
/r/RedditAlternatives for people interested
Comment by Cordogg30 at 07/01/2025 at 01:07 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How many times can bots in music subs ask us for the best sad songs? That’s just algorithm building and it has infected so much of this platform that used to be such a prosperous place of substance and ideas for the user. Quite sad really.
Comment by 3544022304 at 06/01/2025 at 22:25 UTC
43 upvotes, 2 direct replies
In the recent week, I have however noticed similar content on Reddit.
were you in a coma?
reddit is very obviously astroturfed, you could see it before the us election with non stop posts about trump from random non political subreddits, and now with posts about elon/trump
Comment by Alansalot at 07/01/2025 at 08:05 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This has to he bait 🎣
Comment by I_Just_Varted at 07/01/2025 at 11:14 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is why I usually avoid the mainstream subs here, it's all fake comments, bots, fake upvotes, peppered with a few genuine comments. Anything popular or trending on any major platform is usually gonna be propaganda because it can be spoon fed to the public not because it went viral.
Comment by Galaxy_Ranger_Bob at 07/01/2025 at 01:14 UTC
12 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Reddit has been propaganda for as long as it has existed.
Comment by poptart2nd at 07/01/2025 at 00:24 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
are we seeing a concerted effort to open Reddit up for the kind of constant propagandistic content we are seeing elsewhere online?
no. reddit is just as susceptible to propaganda and its effects as other social media sites, the attack vectors are just different. the rise of users like Apostolate 12 years ago showed that to get a high-ranking comment on a thread, you don't have to say anything particularly insightful, you just have to comment on rising threads early. A propagandist can, with relative ease, scale this across multiple accounts to inject whatever talking points they like into the zeitgeist.
That said, Americans are the most propagandized group of people on the planet and it's not a close race. It's near impossible to not be exposed to a constant deluge of propaganda from multiple sources, so probably the best you can hope for is to isolate yourself into media you know aligns with your moral outlook.
Comment by durpuhderp at 07/01/2025 at 03:32 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Criticism of Israeli policy will get you insta-banned in /r/worldnews. I think that ship has sailed.
Comment by _haha_oh_wow_ at 07/01/2025 at 13:51 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How have you not noticed this?????
We have been there for a long time now and the admins have completely abandoned any premise of combatting disinformation or doing anything other than seeking short term profit for themselves, consequences and outcomes be damned.
It's not being readied, that happened years ago. The ship has long since sailed. This is why we had the API fiasco and why so many people fled to the fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, Kbin, etc.): Reddit Inc. want to control things and harvest your data through their official app. They want to be able to lock down whatever they want and minimize anyone's ability to do anything about it.
Comment by Vinylmaster3000 at 07/01/2025 at 00:34 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's already being used for propaganda, everyone from the U.S, Israel, China, Russia, etc - they all use this site for propaganda.
Reddit's system makes it a prime target, it's easy to form an echo chamber.
Comment by Kaneshadow at 07/01/2025 at 00:46 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
LOL. Youngster
Post App-pocalypse every single progressive politics sub has been captured by DemocratBots and 1 in 10 posts is AI trying to blend in
Comment by [deleted] at 06/01/2025 at 22:19 UTC*
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by parkerm1408 at 07/01/2025 at 04:40 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This has been going on for years, everywhere. Pretty much everything we see at this point is one form of propaganda or another.
Comment by goodgodling at 07/01/2025 at 06:48 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I remember seeing something about two weeks ago about reddit's downvote options, but it looked stupid so I ignored it.
I think Elon's latest desperate attempt at relevance shows that you need to create a social media platform that people want to be on. You can chase engagement, but people only have so much to give.
Downvotes have been weird here (on Reddit) lately, but they provide a way to communicate. And that's cool.
Comment by Jasong222 at 07/01/2025 at 19:42 UTC*
2 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Personally I'm concerned that this bot creation thing that meta got caught doing recently, where there are ai accounts that engage with actual users to drive engagement. I'm afraid Reddit is/is going to be doing that as well.
Comment by ucantharmagoodwoman at 07/01/2025 at 21:22 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
"readied" lol
Comment by creamofbunny at 08/01/2025 at 08:41 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
yes. it became really obvious last yr
Comment by WellWellWellthennow at 08/01/2025 at 19:09 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I agree with you. I think Reddit is still the best platform for real discussion.
I love the up and down votes and miss the ability to down vote on other social media. Not that they really mean anything rather it's an important way for user engagement and in some cases to help the cream to rise to the top for more attention. To the degree that this can be manipulated with bots kind of ruins it.
We also recently saw how Reddit was used against Blake Lively with negative posts and down votes as part of a hired PR campaign against her. And more than one person here should have been surprised to find their opinion towards her was influenced by that. So we would be naïve to realize that doesn't happen.
As Reddit becomes more on the radar of the Chinese and Russian propagandists as potentially influential they will certainly bring their game here.
But because of the individual sub moderation and the nature, our Reddit experience is also highly customizable. There would be little chance or opportunity for much political influence in the subs in in. We all have enough experience from Twitter to smell out bad actors.
I keep Facebook to keep on touch with family and friends and new personal acquaintances. Instagram is great for photos. I found Twitter/blue sky the least engaging and interesting format to me. It's just a bunch of people, shouting out short opinions and arguing. Would much rather have the long format that Reddit offers for real discussion. And all of these platforms except X can be managed easily by what you see in your feed and who you block.
Comment by pit_of_despair666 at 07/01/2025 at 09:33 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Look at my profile in my last post. Also, I haven't seen any evidence that Reddit admins have done anything about Russian propaganda and misinformation since 2019. Some mods will ban suspected accounts but I don't think the admins are doing anything anymore. Maybe part of it is that they are widespread and hard to detect now. Some real people get paid to spread this info and AI has gotten a lot more sophisticated. I didn't care for the censorship that happened with Luigi either. I have been on here for over 10 years and have seen several accounts of people on here who have committed some awful crimes and were not deleted or censored. I can't remember all of them but here is a guy who killed 4 people in a murder-suicide and his account is still up. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/s/sxz7ywXcna[1]. The direction the media and social media are going in general is very concerning to me.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/s/sxz7ywXcna
Comment by springsomnia at 07/01/2025 at 03:42 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If you’re anti Israel it’s impossible to comment on mainstream political subs - heck, even some of the photo of the day subs where Israel is mentioned - without getting downvotes or having hasbara hurled back at you.
Comment by strangway at 06/01/2025 at 22:39 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Most media platforms are beholden to advertisers. It’s where all the money comes from, so they are the real customer. It goes for TV, radio, film, newspapers, magazines…every medium you can think of makes content that gets an audience’s attention and diverts a portion of that attention to ads.
Comment by itsaride at 07/01/2025 at 01:24 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Relatively speaking, Reddit has improved over the last couple of years as other sites like Twitter and Facebook have declined.
Being readied for propaganda... I don't know but there's a few big subreddits where I see active bias happening in relation to comment and post deletion (https://undelete.pullpush.io/[1]) as well as bannings. I'm pretty sure that's always been an issue but maybe I'm noticing it more.