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.
I see it on YouTube too. Go to any video of Mark Carney and all the comments are Russian bots spreading misinformation. Go to a video of him a week ago and the comments are universally positive.
I first noticed Russian bots yahoo news comment section…
It was wierdest shot ever than it became mainstream and a lot more sophisticated
How do you tell that they are Russian?
Russian propaganda talking points although nowadays half of america is doing the same and rjeu are deff not bots or paid shills. Just useful idiots.
Back then it was not like that
What? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
How do you tell that they are Russian?
on reddit its usually framed in a way “western countries, you are the blame for this and that,etc” or they said they are not “native speakers” which is the biggest telltale. also posting certain articles from questionable sources.
also on politic sub ive seen them collapse or filter out comments that arnt even trolly or spamming, it agrees with everyone on that thread, but the “russian trolls are not deleted”
youtube is a different cesspool. ever since they announced they wont deny election deniers, its was game over, and then sudden increase in anti-woke, anti-lgbtq+ shorts pop on your feed if your not logged in. and then you see comments on scifi shows too. and showing trash influencers.
I’ve had success with the “not interested in channel” button
Yeah I have to heavily curate my YouTube but if you do it’s still full of really great stuff. I also have to keep myself on top of it, it’s easy to let yourself slip into trash content now and then.
The comments are pretty universally bad though, even on the good content.
You have to allow it though in the name of free speech… Let the potential idiots expose himself, centering people only potentially creates a Streisand effect
How do you tell they’re Russian bots and not American right wing bots?
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.
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)
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.
Still being on Reddit in 2025 has turned into a real leopards eating my face situation.
I’ve noticed ‘the algorithm’ pushing Russian content through Instagram and Facebook reels. Seemingly unrelated to what I usually browse.
How do you determine if content is “Russian”
Canadian elections coming up, shareholders of Reddit probably have a stake in conservative politics… Yeah, current social media is gross.
No, this time it’s more.
They have the country, now the concern is to keep it, and preferably steer the US further into following conservative leadership, especially when it comes to an aggressive foreign policy to alienate allies.
Basically the tactic worked so well , they’re doubling down and making it their core strategy moving forward.
The Romanian election too
No. I’m using Lemmy.
Besides that, who cares. I’m using Lemmy.
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
i see alot of conservative ones pop up, and any lemmy.ml post is also disengenious and leans heavily to the right.
I’m confused. I thought .ml were left, like far far extreme left.
Not sure about ‘far far extreme’, but firmly left. The front page speaks for itself.
They are, people here just aren’t capable of imagining anyone to the left of Elizabeth Warren
tankies are left in exactly the same way North Korea is democratic
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).
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.
I just replied to one not a half hour 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.
Uh, maybe don’t call it that.
As the other commenter noted, heebie jeebies. In the US South it has been rounded off to “the heebs.” No racial connotation. Similar to being spooked or apprehensive without a known danger. Slang term. Never thought about it being mistaken.
Another slang term I use that is similar and is easily mistaken is, “bad juju.” It means bad magic, bad luck, or a curse. One day, when I build my dream car, I want it on a vanity plate.
I’m guessing they meant this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heebie-jeebies
Correct. US southern English.
You have this phrase all up the East coast into Canada fyi
If it goes that far, it’s probably all over the US.
Lemmy eat Snoo’s face…
Haven’t been on reddit in a while, so, no I haven’t noticed.
Also on YouTube
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.
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.
Yes, and it’s coupled with a significant amount of censorship and increased bot activity pushing right wing and Russian talking points. It’s simply not an open platform at this point.
And this is by design. Now that they’ve spent the last 20 years collecting your content to teach their bots how to write, all they want now is your attention, not your voice.
Of course, cause all the cool kids moved to Lemmy. They are the only ones left over there.
Expect reddit comments to get removed without notice, users to sporadically get banned here and there, while that uptick continues. Reddit has been pretty good at this for years, in the sense of controlling the narrative without raising any obvious flags. The only thing that’s surprising is that they are no longer treating Reddit as damage control, but just another social network to control. I guess when the authoritarianism is as overt as it currently is, there’s no longer any reason to hide the manipulation as it becomes a liability to allow the already controlled narratives to persist.
you just noticed? it has been there for a while, its infested almost all the subs, that talk about politics or ukraine, or any country.
When you ban sensible discussion you’re left with utter nonsense
No? If anything it’s chugging along like normal.
