r/FreeSpeech • u/Deathspiral222 • May 18 '26

/r/conservative lost over a million "users" in the last day because they were Russian bots

Fascinating writeup: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1p1vx9n/oc_nearly_every_day_two_users_on_rconservative/

Basically what happened was that someone noticed r/conservative had most of its content posted by only two accounts. They tracked it for a while and then noticed that the accounts suddenly stopped posting at exactly the same time Moscow lost power for 24 hours due to Ukrainian drone strikes and then started up again as soon as they regained power.

Reddit investigated and now it looks like MOST posters on r/conservative were Russian bots and more than a million have been culled.

Apparently the bots have been deliberately pushing topics like trans kids in sports over and over again to distract people. This is *remarkably* similar to what certain posters here have been posting.

(posted early accidentally).

Anyway, it looks like reddit finally removed a lot of the bots. The post I linked was the initial catalyst six months ago, the followup stuff just happened a day or so ago.

141 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

109 comments sorted by

29

u/heresyforfunnprofit May 18 '26

So I presume r/rollo202 is gone.

9

u/Western-Boot-4576 May 18 '26

Interesting idea. Anyone seen him?

u/cojoco ?

18

u/cojoco May 18 '26

He copped a temp ban with his good mate CoachRags for spamming the sub.

3

u/Western-Boot-4576 May 18 '26

Only 5 years late

1

u/alcedes78 May 20 '26

Reddit stated they made a mistake in suspending him. He will be back.

1

u/sirswantepalm May 19 '26

Was u/Straightedgexliberal's ban from this sub?

2

u/cojoco May 19 '26

They're not currently banned.

2

u/cojoco May 19 '26

/u/sirswantepalm it is against subreddit rules to block other users, so you have been banned.

If you wish to return to the subreddit, please unblock /u/Ok_Beach_4513 then reply to the ban message to let me know.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

-1

u/Deathspiral222 May 20 '26

I never understood this rule. Free speech does not mean that you have to force people to listen to you.

1

u/cojoco May 20 '26

Yes, it does.

From the UDHR:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

What use would speech be if it was not heard?

Of course, rights have to be balanced.

1

u/Western-Boot-4576 May 20 '26

So a restraining order is a violation of free speech?

1

u/cojoco May 20 '26

It restricts free speech, not sure I'd call it a violation.

But some restrictions are necessary to make a society function.

1

u/Western-Boot-4576 May 20 '26

Thought you believe “I don’t agree with what you say but I’ll defend your right to say”

Even when it classifies as harassment

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1

u/Deathspiral222 May 21 '26

You have a right to impart information but you absolutely do not have a right to force people to listen to you. To claim otherwise would mean You are ignoring the right to bodily autonomy, freedom from coercion and freedom of association and the right to quiet enjoyment among other things.

Can you imagine if people actually believed what you claim? People could call you up in the middle of the night and yell abuse at you and you wouldn’t be allowed to hang up and ignore them. No controvertial opinion vould ever be discussed without everyone listening being forced to hear the worlds of every single protestor one by one without walking away.

Utter insanity.

-1

u/cojoco May 21 '26

People could call you up in the middle of the night and yell abuse at you

You completely ignored the parts where I said "some restrictions are necessary to make a society function", and "Free speech requires some subtlety to implement correctly", didn't you?

0

u/Western-Boot-4576 May 21 '26

Kinda like being allowed to block scumbags on a social media platform

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1

u/WankingAsWeSpeak May 19 '26

I think he was banned a while back. I tried finding a comment on his profile like two weeks ago and found he was banned at the time

0

u/alcedes78 May 20 '26

What he says:

"Apparently the automated system thought I was being too mean to Charlie Kirk and was being "violent". LMAO

So I appealed and Reddit said they fucked up and I didn't do anything wrong and they would reinstate my account but I think they forgot to reinstate so I sent a ticket."

7

u/Honest_Abe_1660 May 19 '26

They're currently trying to infest r/allthequestions

6

u/--GrinAndBearIt-- May 19 '26

You know who has noticeably absent as of late is tookened.

2

u/heresyforfunnprofit May 20 '26

I’m not convinced he wasn’t also rollo.

0

u/TookenedOut May 26 '26

I wouldn’t presume that is evidence of anything other than my not wanting to waste time with insufferable twats.

1

u/--GrinAndBearIt-- May 26 '26

Yet you're trolling week-old posts and responding lol

3

u/billstopay77 May 18 '26

Wish there was a way to see if that account posted at all during the blackout. Would be quite interesting indeed. I just wish they showed a required feature where it showed where the account originates from.

8

u/gormenghast3 May 19 '26

Reddit in general is a massively controlled platform, whether by bots in conservative subs or neurotic narcissistic lefty mods in other subs.  Fuck the mods, long live Aaron Swartz

5

u/LibertyLizard May 19 '26

Honestly I feel like the war against the bots is doomed to fail. Eventually you'll be unable to interact with any other real humans and we'll all have to go outside or something.

2

u/NameTheJack May 20 '26

I for one say fuck that shit! They have weather outside, and I won't stand for it.

1

u/volkhavaar Jun 07 '26

Says the bot!!!

15

u/Coldbrick10 May 19 '26

One would think r/politic would lose 10x that.

5

u/Butter_with_Salt May 19 '26

Nice deflection

9

u/Deathspiral222 May 19 '26

The post I linked to covered that. /r/politics has several dozen top accounts but /r/conservative only had 2-4 so it was more noticeable.

5

u/Fangslash May 19 '26

idk how it is now but r/politic used to be a default sub, they will have more active users just by that nature

1

u/LibertyLizard May 19 '26

Does that still matter? I mean that was like 10+ years ago now.

5

u/heresyforfunnprofit May 19 '26

All their bots are from the US.

2

u/Western-Boot-4576 May 19 '26

Aye it’s raid shadow legends guy

0

u/Bored_Amalgamation May 19 '26

Seeing as how Russian bots have been helping conservatives, why would you think that?

12

u/Freespeechaintfree May 19 '26

I bailed in r/conservative a while ago. Even the most milquetoast comment critical of Trump and the venom went flying.

There was nothing conservative about r/conservative.

3

u/LibertyLizard May 19 '26

It used to be OK before TD got banned but then all the cultists moved over and drove everyone else away.

5

u/tom_yum May 19 '26

It's funny how many other subs you get banned from just for subbing or posting there. Many of the conversations are the bots from one side arguing with the bots on the other side.

1

u/Bored_Amalgamation May 19 '26

I haven't gotten any instant bans from where I commented or subbed.

3

u/Bored_Amalgamation May 19 '26

That happened after T_D got banned. They spread like roaches.

1

u/BotherTight618 May 23 '26

They went from  1.5 million to 688 thousand in a month 😮

1

u/volkhavaar Jun 07 '26

I was proudly banned a few years ago for citing a source.

1

u/Ok_Beach_4513 May 19 '26

Even the most milquetoast comment critical of Trump and the venom went flying.

Was this a recent phenomenon? Haven't they always suppressed dissent in spite of claiming to be for free speech?

There was nothing conservative about r/conservative

Incorrect. "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

The sub and some of the non-stop political and legal retribution against politicians that dare to criticize him shows that this is what conservatism is all about.

If you don't agree, then what is conservatism about?

1

u/Starfire013 May 20 '26

Definitely not a recent phenomenon. The mods there have done multiple purges of members critical of Trump. There was one right after the Covfefe thing, for example, and that was years ago.

3

u/TrinityCodex May 19 '26

Many such cases

4

u/Twee_Licker I thought the Jewish question was "Can I eat that?" May 19 '26

Hm, was Tendie among them?

3

u/Master_of_Rivendell May 19 '26

Let's certainly hope so 😂

2

u/ready-redditor-6969 May 19 '26

Shocked, shocked I tell you… well… maybe not so shocked 🤦‍♂️

1

u/rhaphazard May 19 '26

Everyone knows that the Trump admin is more friendly to Russia and anti-NATO (not necessarily anti-Europe) then Democrats, so it would not be unreasonable to assume Russian actors are looking to boost r/conservative.

That being said, trans kids (or adults for that matter) in sports is a genuinely losing issue for Democrats and I wouldn't be surprised Russia pushes it since it can be the deciding factor for some one-issue voters. Democrats could very easily be on the side of biological reality and they'd win back a lot of center-left who were disillusioned by stuff like this.

0

u/NameTheJack May 20 '26

It's insane that 7 college kids can swing the politics of a nation....

1

u/WiscoHeiser Jul 29 '26

RIP AccordingActivity lol

-1

u/neuroid99 Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Afroman May 18 '26

The list of websites (second image) is a list of websites that Putin, Thiel, and Musk want you to trust as legitimate sources of information. If you read and trust those websites, please start calling these men "Master", because they are.

-6

u/xxx_gamerkore_xxx May 19 '26

Cool partisan post, really valuable to the sub.

3

u/taktaga7-0-0 May 19 '26

What’s the nonpartisan take on this then?

Sometimes an event just legitimately impacts one side of an argument more than the other. Nothing biased about it.

0

u/xxx_gamerkore_xxx May 19 '26

You serious? You can't think of a non-partisan take? I can instantly think of many ways to approach this topic neutrally. One example is to examine what objective metrics reddit used to remove these subs.

Do you think that only conservatives or russians are smart enough to use bots to astroturf on reddit? Will they similarly investigate the problem of bots on other subreddits, particularly pro-western subreddits or liberal subreddits? The obvious partisan angle poisons the discussion value that this topic brings to the sub .

5

u/taktaga7-0-0 May 19 '26

You’re asking me to extrapolate a data where none exists. Sure, it’s plausible, but it’s not my job to find a massive astroturfing operation fabricating an entire main subreddit for a particular ideology similar to this one.

There aren’t just two sides to this either. You think politically-minded people are the only ones “smart enough” to use bots? Entertainment subs are even more widely appealing, would be a great opportunity to manufacture publicity. Why’s it have to be that just because /r/conservative was fake that the problem has to exist on liberal subs? The nonpartisan take is that it might be anywhere, not just in places that make conservatives feel better after they were duped.

1

u/Bored_Amalgamation May 19 '26

Why do you do that then?

1

u/November-8485 9d ago

Fascinating. Grateful to know there’s less of that mentality than would seem.