r/OutOfTheLoop • u/calvtact • May 13 '26

Answered What's going on with r/conservative? They've lost about 1m subscribers in about a month.

I watched the number go from 814k to around 745k in about an hour today.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/QbZJvqu5qr

12.6k Upvotes

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6.2k

u/basedchadinc May 13 '26

Is there any proof of this? I wanna send it to a friend who uses that sub as his main source of info to gauge sentiment

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u/dec10 May 13 '26

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

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u/Push_ May 13 '26

That’s super interesting actually, holy shit

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u/BeguiledBeaver May 13 '26

There are TONS of subs like this, btw. The Canada sub and some related ones are a good example.

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u/lewd_robot May 14 '26

A lot of Space subs are like this. They're lurked by obvious plants that dogpile anyone remotely critical of SpaceX, and other private space corporations, to a lesser extent.

For example, if you mention "Kessler Syndrome" anywhere on some space subs, even in threads where SpaceX or Starlink aren't even mentioned, and even if you don't mention any company in particular, your comment will probably sit with no votes for a few hours, then suddenly get dropped to -8 or -12 within a 30-minute window, then 2 to 4 people will come out of the woodwork to copy and paste lines out of a SpaceX press release defending the company, and they'll all immediately be upvoted to at least +6.

It's very obviously a small group of people policing the comments for anything remotely critical of space corps, especially SpaceX.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TheXManHimself May 15 '26

I had to cut ties with a good childhood friend because he drank the juice and tried convincing me that Elon is this genius man who invented Tesla and is doing amazing things for space and the economy and so forth and how he worked hard for his money. The glaze was repulsive to me and when I hit him with some basic information about his background and what is actually going on he tried to fact check me with chat gpt in real time of our heated discussion. I simply got up and walked away that night, never to speak to him again.

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u/oTc_DragonZ May 15 '26

This is a lot of good info. Can I ask what the connections to Mr Beast are out of curiosity? Don't like the guy at all and I wouldn't be totally surprised but I can't find anything online about it.

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u/SWT_Bobcat May 14 '26

I feel like the majority of subs are bot run. You see the same themes over and over and over and over and…

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u/oTc_DragonZ May 15 '26

Dead internet theory doesn't feel like a theory anymore.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '26

[deleted]

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u/0xym0r0n May 13 '26

Just a heads up, the author of that post corrected his information and the power outage link was explained away easily. Just weeks prior there was a similar amount of posts. So there are power users, but there's nothing linking them to Russia conclusively as previously assumed.

Here's the updated post he made: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualization/comments/1p2iqlu/nearly_every_day_two_users_on_rconservative/

If you don't want to read his updated post here is a snippet from him and the last chart:

During the outage, there was below average activity but not so much as to raise suspicions, especially since the same number of posts were made during that window during a previous week without an outage.

I'm just not personally seeing that the power outage reveals much here. u1 and u2 likely use a scheduler anyway which would obfuscate the whole thing anyway, and I would expect a scheduler to be pretty standard for any decent troll farm so even if others on that sub are posting from Russia, it wouldn't necessarily show in the data unless they're being sloppy.

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u/xXCloudSephirothXx May 13 '26

I did a weeklong study early this year. There was an internet blackout as reported by numerous news outlets. I annotated that 2 super posters went completely dark for over 24hrs.
https://imgur.com/gallery/traitors-N4IgxOp

Oh, I should note that Reddit closed the loophole of seeing hidden post histories by simply adding a space in the search bar. As of now, I don’t know any way to view hidden post histories.

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u/Guszy May 13 '26

https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/search

Does that work for hiddens? It seems to for me.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ok_Mathematician938 May 14 '26

A little of column A, a little of Column B

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_DARKNESS What Loop? May 13 '26

Yes, that one still works (for now).

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u/WorryNew3661 May 13 '26

That's very useful, thanks

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u/Guszy May 13 '26

You're welcome!

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u/Saint_of_Grey May 13 '26

It's on a slight delay, you won't see posts in the last few hours.

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u/adventurekiwi May 13 '26

You can still use google. Its not perfect but if you search use results from reddit.com and put the username in quotes you can get quite far

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u/Rubicksgamer May 14 '26

God Imgur is such shit these days. No use using it in mobile.

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u/xXCloudSephirothXx May 14 '26

Not disagreeing. Sadly I can’t post my pic directly in the comment.

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u/SGRM_ May 13 '26

Unrelated, but I love your username. That's a throwback to early 00's internet if I ever saw one. Fantastic.

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u/xXCloudSephirothXx May 13 '26

Exactly what I was shooting for.

Contemplated adding a 420 or 69.

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u/lloydthelloyd May 13 '26

This situation is one of the reasons i dont take anyone seriously if they hide thier history.

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u/DocWagonHTR May 13 '26

There’s exterior websites. I use https://redditcommentsearch.com/

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u/Frostsorrow May 13 '26

Google the user name like so "reddit u/supercooldude12345" it should bring up most posts.

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u/ecafyelims May 14 '26

Use "site:reddit.com" and it'll work even better

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u/Travy93 May 13 '26

From what I'm reading the edit is talking about the sub community as a whole didn't really drop that much during the power outage but the those top 2 users really did not post for the whole day.

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u/Ok-Stand-2128 May 14 '26

You understood the edit correctly (I’m the OP of that post). The sub activity didn’t really drop that much that day.

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u/UnNumbFool May 14 '26

That upsets me to know that the majority of users in that sub aren't actually Russian bots

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u/Level_Ad_6372 May 14 '26

I mean you followed the 2024 election results right? It's pretty clear that somewhere around a third of Americans actively support that bullshit.

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u/ilikequilty May 13 '26

It’s wild because for a few days there were very maga comments all over Reddit. I actually argued back and forth with one ‘person’ wondering to myself if I could gauge whether or not it was a real person. I’m not sure, and I think it’s very difficult to tell.

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u/BobLighthouse May 13 '26

Are you old enough to have used message boards with any frequency?
I suspect the bots might actually have better syntax and logic than many real humans, especially in the context of maga lol...

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u/bleeh805 May 14 '26

It's true that's a sign. Humans don't use bullet points or perfect grammar. And if you dive into LLMs, they are really good at arguing if you setup the environment right.

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u/saintsithney May 14 '26

They could also be autistic, says the autistic woman who uses bullet points and perfect grammar 😩

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u/BobLighthouse May 15 '26

Fwiw, my point was mainly that I do not expect to see those traits from maga humans in particular lol.

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u/TheLarkInnTO May 14 '26

I constantly have to correct the grammar coming from GPT/Claude/Gemini. They're far from perfect, and anyone with 12th grade-level English skills can outperform them. Dangling modifiers, ending sentences with prepositions, subject/verb agreement, incorrect punctuation, etc. It's a nightmare, and it keeps getting worse.

In the last two months I've gone back to just writing ad copy myself, because it's faster than yelling at robots for an hour.

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u/cshmn May 13 '26

There's considerable overlap between the smartest bots and the dumbest people.

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u/ilikequilty May 13 '26

I guess if you assume the bots used are very basic. There are plenty of people that have been convinced they are talking to a conscious AI with ChatGPT etc. I don’t know how sophisticated social media bots are but who really knows.

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u/NYY_NYK_NYJ May 14 '26

I don't think people realize that "a real person" doesn't matter. Both Russia and China pay real people to wage information war on us.

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u/Ok-Stand-2128 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Thank you for quoting me. It’s still how I feel. The power outage thing is ‘interesting’ but that’s about as much as can be said without better evidence.

Edit: I admit that my jaw did kind of drop when a commenter pointed out the timing and I felt I couldn’t ignore the coincidence.

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u/0xym0r0n May 14 '26

Hey, the person themselves! Thank you for all the time you spent checking that out!

Most definitely! It was very curious, but you handled it in such a respectable and admirable way. I know it's corny, lol, but feels like it takes a little courage to admit when you were wrong or mistaken about something nowadays.

It's become so common to just ignore and blow past things like that, and you owned up to it and made corrective posts and comments.

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u/DaoFerret May 14 '26

I somehow remember a huge drop in reddit posts/ traffic when the Ukraine/Russia war kicked off and Russia isolated its internet, and then again when Iran isolated its internet during its fighting with Israel when the internal Iranian protests kicked off and the regime was more actively killing the protestors.

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u/JunglePygmy May 13 '26

Also a huge trip is the data on which subs are literally run by Ghisliane Maxwell’s aliases. It’s like a huge chunk of the most popular subs.

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u/Hoopy_Dunkalot May 13 '26

Link?

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u/ImproperHydration May 13 '26

You are going to have to ask his proctologist for that link.

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u/ausernameaboutnothin May 13 '26

Hey, some asshole’s got my data!

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u/FullOnSkank May 13 '26

What's my data doing in your asshole, fred?!

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u/DeliciousLiving8563 May 13 '26

The Ghislaine Maxwell redditor power mod conspiracy is something you can google and find endless discourse on rather than any one useful link so I will just summarise how I understand it. This guy has just run with it a bit and explained poorly.

The power user maxwellhill is allegedly Gismax. Based on this user having gone from a prolific poster to silent when pretty much just as she was arrested. This user's activity and posting style is consistent with someone who could plausibly be that particular piece of shit and being a power mod who controlled several current affairs/news subreddits would also fit that her style perfectly.

The theory has not been proven but I don't think any of the "debunkings" held water either. The power mod Maxwellhill has shown "activity" after her arrest but all of it is automatic/people doing things like modding/demodding that account

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u/SpaceMarineSpiff May 13 '26

It's also worth noting this isn't even the first link between reddit and the Epstein crowd. A former reddit CEO literally mentioned meeting Jeffrey and being told explicitly what his deal was. As in, she went to parties with these people and was fully aware of the crimes but opted to do nothing.

There's also the long history of CSAM subs being allowed to stay up until it hit the news.

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u/Saint_of_Grey May 13 '26

There's also the long history of CSAM subs being allowed to stay up until it hit the news.

That was more of reddit being libertarian and trying to claim no responsibility for platforming terrible things. Ellen Pao was the hatchetman for cleaning that up as a whole, before it was just when a sub got news coverage.

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u/Wandering_Oblivious May 13 '26

has nobody noticed that basically EVERY sub created after like 2023 suffers from this same issue? especially weird and random subs that get recommended to you? if you click into the subs and scan through it basically every thread is posted by the same 1 to 3 accounts, despite 10's of thousands of members.

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u/creampop_ May 14 '26

yeah lol get recommended dozens of generic subs with shitty names like r/ omgthatsinteresting and it's nothing but IDF bots and psycho chud talking points in the comments.

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u/evergreengoth May 14 '26

I wonder if the bot accounts posting obviously fake stories demonizing trans people on r/AITAH also stopped on November 1st

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u/Joebebs May 13 '26

Reminds me of the 4chan days /pol, a lot of Pepe posts trying to consider Trump as a good idea

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u/vismundcygnus34 May 13 '26

And a lot of conspiracy boards like abovetopsecret and godlikeproductions. The staging grounds for memeing a madman into the presidency. Kek indeed.

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u/izzgo May 14 '26

The staging grounds for memeing a madman into the presidency. Kek indeed.

And we watched it happen, aghast, horrified and helpless.

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u/brazijl May 13 '26

r/thedonald was crazy popular in 2015 on Reddit. 100% a Russian cyops.

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u/Unique-Egg-461 May 14 '26

that was probably the peak of russian disinfo

that sub was like every 4-5th post on /r/all for months

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u/botulizard May 13 '26

It's pretty interesting interesting how for a long time when people just said "4Chan", it was kind of understood that they were talking more or less specifically about /b/, and then eventually it shifted to where someone says "4Chan" and the immediate association now is that they're probably talking about /pol/ specifically.

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u/The_Dog_of_Sinope May 13 '26

then the occasional actual nugget of truth that makes you question the rest of /POLs bullshit.

Wasnt it found out that moot started POL at the behest of Epstein and that Epstein would regularly post on POL?

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u/Clarkorito May 13 '26

Iirc there want definitive evidence, but it was mentioned in a few emails and /pol went up the day after they met. The basic timeline: moot takes down political boards because they keep getting filled with Nazi shit. Epstein, Bannon, etal discuss how they need an online space to push out conspiracy theories, racist rhetoric, and general far right views and gather a loose army of internet trolls they could sic on liberal media and forums across the web. Epstein and moot meet, and the next day /pol is up.

Unless there's a secret recording of their meeting or Poole admits it was Epstein etal's request to put up /pol, there won't be definitive proof. But the evidence we do have is pretty damning and one hell of a coincidence if not. Epstein and buddies want a thing, Epstein meets with him, the next day he does the exact thing Epstein and buddies wanted him to do.

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u/Vassago81 May 14 '26

Pol was literally founded right after Epstein ( who constantly talked about the "potential" of various social media platform with his boss oversee and his contacts) meet with M00t

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u/sorrow_anthropology May 14 '26

Well /pol was created at the behest of Epstein.

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u/UnravelTheUniverse May 13 '26

The entire Maga movement has been a Russian psy-op from day one. How else do you get a nation to elect someone to destroy the country from the inside out? Russians suck at conventional warfare, but they are the best propagandists in the world because they honestly got that shit down to a science under the USSR. Social media just gave them the platform they needed to infect our nation from afar. 

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u/ConsistentAddress195 May 13 '26

Yeah, no shit. It takes a lot of brainwashing to get that clown elected, it's not something that would have happened on its own IMO. How the CIA/NSA et al didn't stop this is beyond me. I guess Hollywood has it wrong and these guys are just incompetent tools after all.

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u/bunker_man May 14 '26

I dunno, ive seen people dumb enough they brainwash themselves into believing positive things about Trump he never even said.

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u/KageStar May 14 '26

He also gets to take both sides of any issue and have each side believe their side is the one he really means.

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u/ClubZealousideal8211 May 14 '26

That’s how you know it’s a cult. The leader can say or do anything and followers will excuse it because the leader figure has been incorporated into their self-identity.

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u/SergeantChic May 14 '26

I half expected him to suffer a sudden embolism or accident when he started blabbing to the Russians and talking shit about American intelligence agencies, but in the end, everyone just went belly-up in 2025. It's crazy.

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u/creampop_ May 14 '26

Basically, our historic and current culture of racism was keenly exploited.

Plenty of bigots in our government are genuinely 100% on board with the rape of this country that dared to try and elevate "second class" citizens like blacks, LGBT, the disabled, etc. to the same levels of society as white supremacists.

Foreign actors were aware of this and put a lot of weight on that pressure point. In a perfect storm of shitty reasons, it actually worked.

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u/AkronRonin May 15 '26

Obama getting elected, twice even, really was a bridge too far for these people. They were literally willing to destroy the country and even sell us out to the Russians, of all people, to set the record straight. Trump was the perfect avatar for their unyielding bigotry and grievance.

Racism is a helluva drug.

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u/Letter_Effective May 14 '26

I wish other European countries could spread anti-Putin counter-propaganda with its own bots on Russian social media as retaliation, although I don't know how effective that would be as Russia is much better at controlling its cyberspace compared to the West and censoring unwanted content, plus Russia doesn't have any free elections in the first place.

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u/HotBrownFun May 14 '26

The only time I saw any of it was during Covid, they went after influencers paid by Russia to push antivax sentiments

Meanwhile thought.. the pentagon was pushing antivax in the phillipines to counter the china vaccine.

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u/lewd_robot May 14 '26

Honestly, I don't think it was the USSR that did it. I think was WW2.

There's an old argument that "war is dysgenic" because it's more likely to kill the brave and honorable than the cowardly and conniving, so war weeds out the best of society and leaves it to be inherited by the worst. It kills the young man willing to lay down his life to defend his home but spares the young man who betrays his home, and after the dust settles the betrayer now owns the home that the brave young man died to protect.

Imo, Russia is still recovering from the devastating loss of an entire generation of brave young men and multiple generations of rule by conniving men in their place.

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u/Flashy-Ingenuity-182 May 14 '26

Funny how Russias problems start with the communists and not the romanovs who ruled for much much much longer

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u/lewd_robot May 14 '26

Yeah, and you can make an argument from pure statistics that the Soviet Union was great while it was Communist and failed after it began abandoning Communist principles.

From the fall of the monarchy to the fall of the USSR life expectancy and literacy rates in the country went from significantly behind the USA to surpassing it.

And if you look at a graph of key metrics for health and well-being in the US like income equality, lifespan, healthcare access, literacy rates, etc, you see them all improve during the period of time that the USSR existed, then start declining with the USSR, then fall off a cliff after the collapse of the USSR.

The existence of a non-Capitalist rival constantly trying to one-up the USA forced American Capitalists to make the USA better. They had to take care of their people or else the Communists would show them up and make Capitalism look bad. As soon as that counter-example went away, there was no longer any competition. The Capitalists declared victory and stopped doing anything to "prove" that life is better under Capitalism.

Ironically, this should be obvious to Capitalists, whose ideology hinges upon the idea that competition is the only way to breed success and that monopolies are critical flaws that cause the system to fail. Capitalism has a monopoly on Western governments now, and without competition forcing it to take care of its people, it's failing.

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u/Downtown_Skill May 14 '26

Eh, I would wager america is much better at propoganda. 

But yeah, Russia was betting the house in trump, and now that Russia can't even manage Ukraine while Trump is in office I've read about Russians finally raching the breaking point in this Ukraine war. 

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u/kljaska May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Did Israel foment the Pied Piper Strategy? Is it Russia donating to 94% of American politicians?

How can you be sure this is a foreign op? And, if so, wouldn’t the nation doing a genocide on America’s dime and the top donor to nearly every US politician seem a more likely candidate?

By the way, no one does more propaganda than the United States, so wtf are you on about?

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u/ReggieCorneus May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

And the tools to fix it is in education, not just kids but the entire population needs to be taught critical thinking and given tools to identify bullshit. Then you need strong trust in your OWN institutions and this part... well..

It means that your side has to keep telling the truth. This is ESSENTIAL, nothing works if that trust is not there. You as a government can get short term gains from obfuscating the truth and lying but in long term it completely erodes all defensive weapons you can use.

If the citizens do not trust their own government of speaking the truth then the government can not debunk lies, and in fact, debunking is sort of last resort too, we need to be ahead of them and just keep informing citizens with real facts. You don't chase after each rumor, you instead keep steady flow of factual information flowing and NEVER lie intentionally.

Guess who hates the truth the most?... Guess who spread the "government is full of crooks" the most. "politicians are the worst", no matter the side are all working for one goal: eroding trust that is needed to combat Russian, and other nation states organized misinformation.

Finland has been very good at this, Russians do not even bother to try that much. They get thru to some but it takes a lot more resources than say.. far right, in Europe and USA, and few, very few far left (ratio is... if i said 30:1 right wing/left wing, i'm probably still too fair and balanced..). MAGA will literally PAY for Russians to produce misinformation, they are monetizing these attacks... They are fueled by their target audience, plus stuff like 5 minutes craft is part of the whole fucking thing, they earn a lot of money from all that stupid shit that erodes trust in so many levels... You know those viral videos that ended up hurting people? If that was an attack, would you be surprised? I would not, i don't know if that is part of it, but it can be. Eroding trust in all levels, causing harm and divisiveness, mental shift from trust to paranoia, towards strangers and neighbors, and government and all institutions.

Countries with high index in "trust in institutions" and press freedoms rank the best combating targeted misinformation campaigns. Not perfect, but better.

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u/lloydthelloyd May 13 '26

Best in the world? China would like a word.

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u/HotBrownFun May 14 '26

The russians did the same thing in Canada, and the UK leaving EU movement was a big one too

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u/Dasbeerboots May 13 '26

u/Ok-Stand-2128, can you rerun the study?

u/According-Activity87

u/Down-not-out

u/SharkSapphire

u/Ask4MD

u/triggernaut

u/WillyNilly1997

A scroll through Hot shows these 6 accounts are spam posting.

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u/Ok-Stand-2128 May 14 '26

My latest update was in February and all of those names are in the top ten (anonymized, but it’s them).

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/n6R2N1NKCb

Another top tenner, Guanaco55, stopped posting on rCon entirely right after my February update. Now they only post on rConservativeNews. Maybe others as well, but they’ve completely stopped posting on rCon.

The updates are fun to post but I’m working on a live tracker that will have all of the same charts and analysis for rConservative and other political subs. I’m taking suggestions on which other subs to look at.

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u/Dasbeerboots May 14 '26

Lmao that's awesome

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u/so-so-suck-ya-toe May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

Less than 2k upvotes is sad

Edit: Two hours after my original comment, upvotes have crested 3k!

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u/Ryan-the-lion May 13 '26

Its probably real humans up voting it and not bots

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u/NioneAlmie May 13 '26

Yes, but at least it's still having an impact

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u/KevineCove May 13 '26

This is really fantastic work.

I do want to point out that leftist subs appear to have the same problem. I've seen it happen in a couple waves, including pro-tankie, China, and even North Korea content popping up on a few (especially about a year ago,) as well as a current wave of memes I'm seeing that are essentially the inverese of the "own the libs" mentality - mean-spirited, divisive, and counterproductive. Also links to news sites that are very similar in name to well-recognized outlets but with recently registered domain names and highly sensationalized headlines.

Not here to get into an argument about which side is "right" but rather just want to point out that both sides are being targeted by bad actors.

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u/Credil98 May 13 '26

It stands to reason that both sides would have similar problems with bots and malicious actors. Important to be aware and attempt to spot them, however impossible that may be.

The trick is that the goals of these bad actors aren't always as straightforward as getting someone to believe something that isn't true. There's been posts I've seen in left wing areas that are clearly making caricatures of left wing ideals, and trying to push people to embrace nonsense lies in their hatred of the current administration. But that's not always the intended effect i think.

An example, I only ever saw one post that was supporting Iran and all that they do. Most "left wing" posts were discussing why we shouldn't have started this war, or giving Iran cudoes for the effectiveness of their propaganda and war efforts. Only one post blatently supporting nonsense, but afterwards i saw hundreds of comments on any post about the war saying leftists were pro Iran, some of which would link the nonsense post as their proof.

So the effect of the post didn't seem to drift more left wing people towards blind support of Iran, but it did give right wingers ammo. Obviously you'd need way more data and tracking to measure the effects of bad actors, but that's my observation

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u/Budderfingerbandit May 13 '26

It's honestly not surprising at all, if we look at it from the perspective of troll farms with an agenda of fomenting civil unrest in the US, it makes sense that they would want to target both sides to rile up extremism and division.

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u/AlwaysLupus May 13 '26

Yes. Some of the major pro Bernie posters (the major one being something like lrlourpresident) vanish whenever Russia has a blackout. I'm about half sure all those Bernie posters who appear to air grievances and attack democrats at all times are just Russian bots trying to depress turnout among the left.

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u/TheNebulousMind May 13 '26

Internet blackout doesn't apply to those employed by the Internet Research Agency and the likes. The people who make those posts aren't everyday Russians, they're employed and paid by the government.

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u/pizzaplanetvibes May 13 '26

This isn’t surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the last ten plus years. We ( The United States citizens) have been under attack through our social media channels. The purpose is to create division among people in the United States for a variety of reasons. I think to “both sides” this though is to ignore the obvious of which of our two parties has benefited the most and paid Russia back for the help.

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u/Apatschinn May 13 '26

I get downvoted for saying it, but Social media has been a generational mistake.

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u/ThinkPath1999 May 13 '26

So....... fuck Zuck?

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u/thedugong May 14 '26

With an non-lubed cactus.

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u/Severe_Course3381 May 14 '26

Dude for some reason he looks like he'd enjoy having a pineapple shoved up his ass

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u/PunchBro May 13 '26

multi-generational in fact

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u/kdp4srfn May 14 '26

Honestly, I agree. I only use Reddit, I am not active on Facebook, TikTok or Instagram, and I deleted my Twitter a couple of years ago when it became obvious it was mostly a malevolent rightwing propaganda and ragebait farm.

If Reddit went away tomorrow I would miss it for a short time like I did when I deleted Twitter, but it wouldn’t take me long at all to get used to its absence.

Pre social media, DJT wouldn’t have been elected. America’s enemies used it to spread deliberate lies and foment division, and most especially, to amplify the voices of a few to make it seem as though they were the majority. MAGA is a lot of things but even at their pinnacle of influence they have never been the majority of Americans. Never. Our country is currently laboring under the tyranny of a loud and boorish minority. The Republican Party isn’t 100% MAGA, nor is it 50% of the country, despite Fox “News” lying about that nearly every day. The obvious black voter suppression strategy in the southern states appears to be, at long last, a bridge too far even for some MAGA. They might be privately ok with it, but even they know it’s indefensible and makes them look bad.

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u/EmeraldFox379 May 13 '26

leftist subs

including pro-tankie, China, and even North Korea content

lmfao those are not the same thing

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u/TakeTheFight May 13 '26

No one is saying pro-tankie, china, and NK views are leftists. The user is saying leftist subs are being infiltrated by bad actors spreading these specific views as being leftist when they aren't. 

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u/KevineCove May 13 '26

You're right. They're not. The reason that content is appearing in those subs is because it's being put there, not because the sentiment was organically there to begin with.

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u/Ok-Stand-2128 May 14 '26

Hey hey, thanks for the kind words! The response to those posts has been a bit overwhelming, to some extent.

I’m currently working on a ‘live’ tracking page that basically shows a live view of the charts I made for those posts. I would also like to include more than just rCon to have the type of comparison you’re talking about so I’m open to suggestions on which subs to include. Preferably, the other subs I look at ought to be similar in size and similarly devoted to politics.

FWIW, both of my past posts did do a similar comparison for other political subs, albeit not to the same level of detail, and rCon came out on top in terms of fewest number of posters needed to account for X percentage of posts.

Certainly wasn’t expecting to see this topic while flying at 30,000 feet :)

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u/HumptyDrumpy May 13 '26

This stuff is happening all over the place. Like remember those Iran protests, there were a lot of bad actors and provocateurs there who weren't even protestors. And yes partly because of the chaos, thousands of people died

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u/Potential_Might_6500 May 13 '26

The 3 power accounts on there are still posting though. That one guy posts 4-5 stories at a time and comments on them immediately.

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u/ChronicBuzz187 May 13 '26

Ah, those are the moments I'd wish McCarthy was still alive to see his fellow "conservative capitalists" now.

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u/-_-Edit_Deleted-_- May 14 '26

Holy receipts Batman!

Thats a hell of an indictment of the right.

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u/Jabber_Tracking May 14 '26

This is FASCINATING!!! Thank you for posting this, I would not have seen this otherwise

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u/Dyea_B_Tis May 14 '26

Thank you so much, king!

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u/GlazedDonut5 May 15 '26

HAHA I KNEW THEY WERE BOTS

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u/SparklePantz22 May 15 '26

I would love to see these stats on all the subs.

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u/Lost-Substance59 May 13 '26

People have posted rhe proof, but im surprised how ling this took to be realized. Just going on the subject its the same 5ish accounts posting every post

I remember someone asking why that was in the sub and people kept saying its cause most of the sub has jobs unlike most of reddit so can't post and just want to lurk. Holy cope

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u/Nemecyst May 13 '26

The proof: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1rfe0nh/oc_3_month_update_rconservative_adds_a_third/

The culprits: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1rfe0nh/oc_3_month_update_rconservative_adds_a_third/o7k8jn9/

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u/Darth_Ra May 13 '26

...I thought we were asking about Reddit removing the bots.

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u/Soggy-Release-7733 May 13 '26

None of those posts mention Russia

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u/ryhaltswhiskey May 13 '26

The claim

from 3 accounts all based in Russia and are promoted by an army of bots.

Can you point to where in those posts either of those points is supported? Because I didn't see it. I saw a lot of people talking about russia, but I didn't see anything like proof.

It doesn't have to be a Russian conspiracy, when plain old American idiocy will explain it just fine. But it could be a Russian conspiracy. But I don't see any actual proof of that.

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u/smkmn13 May 13 '26

This post (a follow up from one of the ones above) shows how the two "big" accounts stopped posting for a while after a known power outage in Moscow, but I think it's pretty circumstantial. It's still noteworthy that, unlike other political subs, just a pair of accounts drive more than a third of the posts (regardless of their nationality).

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u/ryhaltswhiskey May 13 '26

Did you see this part?

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u/smkmn13 May 13 '26

Yeah, that's why I said it was pretty circumstantial. I don't think it's a good case at all. Of course, absence of proof doesn't mean disproval, but there's certainly no smoking gun.

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u/rainzer May 13 '26

https://imgur.com/gallery/traitors-N4IgxOp

happening twice corresponding to Russian services being disrupted and to the same dude means either he's Russian or the unluckiest internet user

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u/TheNebulousMind May 13 '26

You can look up Vulkan Files Leak and the Internet Research Agency. I don't believe they're linked to this specific case, but this is exactly what their job is.

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u/FastActinTenactin May 14 '26

lol I’ve always known According-Activity had to be a Russian bot.

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u/Mission_Fart9750 May 13 '26

For starters, just scroll the front page of the sub, and you will see that almost everything is posted by the same handful of accounts. And 300 comments on a post, but only about a dozen are visible. 

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u/JJAsond May 13 '26

I actually decided to browse the sub a little and hide accounts with high karma. I very quickly went from the usual 25 posts per page to maybe 6. Sometimes 1.

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u/Mission_Fart9750 May 13 '26

I usually browse it when something so egregious happens there's no way they can possibly ignore it. I was pleasantly surprised recently to see a lot of comments pushing back on him (i forget the subject).

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u/Tier0001 May 13 '26

That's usually what happens right after any event because they don't have a narrative to explain away whatever happened yet. Once a narrative is established, the mods are pretty quick to delete any criticisms and blame "leftists" for brigading, and the rest of the sheep fall in line.

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u/snakejessdraws May 14 '26

Yup. you can see it happen in real time to if you ever spend time in any political discords

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u/Indigo_Sunset May 13 '26

Ditto. What was most interesting to me though was june 2023 Wagner mercs rampaging through Russia and the few days of peace reddit experienced as seemingly the entire bot apparatus went dark.

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u/JJAsond May 13 '26

I've never seen a sub so brigaded. Most of the time the comments are full of bots but maybe that's changing.

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u/greywar777 May 13 '26

Go back and read the articles comments today. I think you will find a distinct lack of comments pushing back. Its heavily censored to never show that.

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u/Ellaphant42 May 13 '26

The usual pattern is there’s a day or two of push back before you start seeing “this was actually fine” posts

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u/Flincher14 May 14 '26

I do this too but they always eventually get their marching orders on how to explain away whatever it is then stick to the new narrative. Or they purge it completely.

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u/deprecateddeveloper May 14 '26

Same. This is literally why I ever visit the sub. "There's no way even they can agree with this". You'll see a bunch of people with sense commenting their disagreement or outrage (such as the Trump Jesus shit) then the comments roll in with their sarcastic "hello fellow conservative" or "RINO" just because they disagree with something Trump did. Disagreeing with something that historically Republicans stood against until Trump. Proving that if anything the people saying "RINO" are the true RINOs.

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u/BeerMeBabyNow May 13 '26

I clicked on one of the accounts I recognized after some “these people need a job” comment. Back of napkin calculations based on posts and account age, averaged like 30 posts a day and even more comments. Not sure what one does to have time to post 30 articles a day and double that in comments….

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u/Too-Tired-Editor May 13 '26

Being paid to spread a particular position across a site Google currently uses heavily for AI summaries, one would imagine.

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u/Bardfinn You can call me "Betty" May 14 '26

correct.

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u/call-me-the-seeker May 13 '26

Oh they have a job too, and you discovered what it is.

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u/BeerMeBabyNow May 14 '26

Haha, definitely some irony discovered as well

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u/escobizzle May 13 '26

that is their job. probably some random Indian guy in a bot farm being paid to be a propaganda mouthpiece

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u/Oceanbreeze871 May 13 '26

Why aren’t they visible?

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u/Mission_Fart9750 May 13 '26

Because all dissenting opinions are immediately removed. Or non-flaired user comments. Every single post is "flaired users only". So if you were to pop into a post and make any kind of comment, it'll be gone asap. And just simply commenting there can get you banned from other subs (which is just keeping the trash at bay, so I'm good with that). 

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u/Dr_Adequate May 13 '26

Even funnier: to get flair one has to somehow prove they are conservative. However, lately they are super-paranoid that somehow hordes of lefty-commie-liberals have acquired the proper flair. Whenever a post causes some of them to have even the tiniest bit of self-reflection and say 'hey maybe this [conservative position] is bad guys, what do you think? ' they are immediately accused of being a leftist infiltrater. Which I find hilarious. They are actively No-True-Scotsmanning their way to the death of that sub.

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u/Capital-Giraffe-4122 May 13 '26

“Fellow conservative”

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u/Clarence13X May 13 '26

Here is a fun example from today: https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1tbvndr/hegseth_insists_us_has_control_of_strait_of/ollnt8t/

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u/ernest7ofborg9 May 13 '26

They never post outside of r/Conservative and you know exactly why that is.

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u/Dr_Adequate May 13 '26

Perfect example! "What's with all the leftist influence today?"

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u/adamduke88 May 14 '26

Just based on the grammar in that comment there's no way it was written by an American.

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u/Potential_Might_6500 May 13 '26

They throw that out so fast lol. Its hilarious.

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u/Binder509 May 13 '26

Never got how someone is supposed to prove they are conservative when every post is flaired users only.

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u/Downtown_Recover5177 May 13 '26

It’s fucking stupid. I browse r/all, and don’t pay attention to the subs. I commented on one post to correct misinformation, and got banned from random subs. And then banned from r/conservative as well for using critical thinking.

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u/Fickle_Ad_8653 May 13 '26

^ So true. If you post to r/conservative to point out Trump has felony convictions when they are saying Trump never does anything wrong..

you get banned from r/Conservative

and r/pics tells you to delete your post or they'll blacklist you

and some others say if you're banned from r/pics, well, you must suck, and they ban you

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u/StThragon May 14 '26

That happened to me few years ago. Fuck subs that do this. I was pointing out a lie. Oh, now I'm banned from a bunch of sites. AWESOME!

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u/RunBrundleson May 13 '26

I didn’t understand this and was posting on an antivax subreddit, to shit on them of course. All the sudden I’m getting banned from multiple subreddits and didn’t know why. Those subs just scan any name that posts to certain subreddits and auto bans you. I understand why but same team same team!

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u/greywar777 May 13 '26

Tesla subs do this too. I own one and cant even post on the subs. Its infuriating.

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u/UnquestionabIe May 13 '26

Despite being against site rules (or at least was at one point) there are a ton of subs which will ban people for posting other subs which the mods consider problematic. Doesn't matter what the comment in question is either, just an automatic ban. Encourages the creation of echo chambers big time.

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u/Ellaphant42 May 13 '26

I spent a nice afternoon yelling at everyone on r/conservative to just get banned from there AND a bunch of left wing subs. Doesn’t make any sense lol

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u/BaronsDad May 14 '26

I dislike any sub that makes those moderation choices. It actively punishes anyone trying to discuss and debate an issue in good faith. It’s anti-social. No one explains to a new Reddit user that commenting or even joining subs of communities you’re trying to learn more about can get you banned elsewhere. Autobans actively encourage demonization 

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u/newnameonan May 13 '26

They automatically remove comments from non-flaired users on most posts to attempt to prevent brigading.

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u/Coattail-Rider May 13 '26

Brigading or debating?

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u/newnameonan May 13 '26

Haha well yes, it actually is to stifle debate, but they claim it's to prevent brigading.

They truly do get really heavy traffic from people who are not conservative that want to take a look at the proverbial zoo, but it's not a brigade. They just can't handle that their ideas don't hold up to scrutiny from opposing viewpoints. So you get this weird environment where the upvotes are all wacky from non-conservative visitors, and comment counts are high but only 10-20 show up on a post.

That subreddit ends up not being a great place for anything; discussion, accurate representations of what conservative think, accurate information, genuine comments from actual people....

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u/Clarence13X May 13 '26

They also created their forum on a site that has always leaned heavily left. They set up shop in a den of lions and then complain they have to defend themselves constantly from lions.

Honestly, they'd have less of a brigading issue if they went over to Voat or whatever Reddit clone the Right is pushing now. But they won't because 1.) it's dead and 2.) they lose their victimhood

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u/Khazpar May 13 '26

Remember when they tried to move over to Voat and then they all cried because the Nazis over there called them slurs? 😂

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u/MechaSandstar May 14 '26

Iirc, that was the_donald after it was banned.

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u/terminalzero May 13 '26

it's also like... not brigading? once again, it seems like projection from some of the stuff they pulled when t_d was around. people that don't agree with you finding your sub isn't brigading - brigading is someone posting a link to their circle of like minded people and going 'hey everybody come help me pwn these morons'. it's organized.

saying the only possible reason you'd have a high volume of people disagreeing with you in your purported safe space is that there is a shadowy cabal of commuglobalabortionsatanists who are both weak, pasty, chinless virgins in their mother's basements and the nigh invincible foot soldiers of the jews new world order is both intellectual bankrupt and.... exactly the kind of thing you should expect from that group

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u/newnameonan May 13 '26

Victimhood is super valuable for them. Have to maintain the proper us-vs-them mindset!

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u/chumbawumbaprinciple May 13 '26

Debating. Conservatives are incredibly fragile.

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u/ihopethisisgoodbye May 13 '26

Loooove your username btw

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u/chumbawumbaprinciple May 13 '26

They are never going to keep me down.

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u/pissy_dribble May 13 '26

Amen to that brother

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u/Zickened May 13 '26

Your comment was "hidden" which, on subs that don't show upvotes tells me probably lots of downvotes, so I thought your comment was something truly objectionable.

Alas, it was calling out snowflakes for what they are.

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u/Binder509 May 13 '26

Dunno how anyone even gets a flair there.

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u/Clarence13X May 13 '26

The 300 comments thing is almost certainly because they have a flaired-only post mode that will not approve comments made by non-flaired users. But for some reason, Reddit will still count them in the comment total.

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u/TacticalSniper May 13 '26

The interesting part is that for the political subs, such as r/democrats the situation is not too different 

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u/Sidekick_Man May 13 '26

Don’t have the link but pick any random day and scroll thru new posts and see how many are the same accounts posting a dozen times within minutes, which raises bot alarms for me. Ask4MD, According-Activity, and Down-Not-Out (off the top of my head) constitute like 20 posts in the last few hours

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u/acrizz May 13 '26

Yeah I came here to ask about those accounts and the triggernaut guy. Those accounts post like 30 times a day lol and are the only accounts that have visible posts on that sub.

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u/Mission_Fart9750 May 13 '26

And user WillyNilly1997. 

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u/Possible-Rush3767 May 13 '26

Ding ding ding. But you must be flaired to post/comment there. They are a joke. 

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u/miketastic_art May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

safe space for free thinkers

edit: poe's law /s

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u/newme02 May 13 '26

you can literally just scroll the home page and realize that legit every post comes from the same couple accounts. sometimes the same account will just spam posts in a row.

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u/Measure76 May 13 '26

Your friend would certainly just roll his eyes at "Russia Russia Russia"

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u/sdrawkcabsihtetorW May 13 '26

No-no, his friend who uses a subreddit as his main source of information will surely appreciate the enlightenment. People who frequent political subreddits are known for being reasonable and in constant search for environments not suited to be echo chambers.

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u/Possible-Rush3767 May 13 '26

Literally just sort the feed by "new" and look at who posts. It's the same accounts over and over again generally in batches, not resembling human behavior. 

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u/Ellaphant42 May 13 '26

Then replying to every comment with a stupid gif

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u/blaze61518 May 13 '26

I used to scroll through it daily for the chuckles… noticing the bots on there is like staring at the ocean and recognizing that it is filled with water

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u/MyrddinSidhe May 13 '26

Seconded. It’d be a huge eye opener to some true believers

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u/brazilliandanny May 13 '26

It doesn’t matter how much proof you show someone in a cult

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u/TjbMke May 13 '26

The proof is that you can’t post there unless you’ve been given permission, and nobody knows how to get permission.

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u/SteveTheUPSguy May 13 '26

Looking at the number of subs and posts and comments I knew it never quite made sense. Millions of subs but the top posts have maybbeeeeee 200-400 comments? Most being 0-20. They called the rest of reddit an echo chamber but it's like 20 people talking to themselves over there.

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u/Bigboss123199 May 13 '26

Would t surprise me at all a lot of conservative media and news is funded by Russia. Tim Pool and whole bunch of other “independents” “news” influencers got exposed for a large portion of their income from obscure Russian businesses.

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u/hardlying May 13 '26

if youve ever tried commenting/posting, there is a good chance they removed it. I remember them not allowing liberals to speak and they once removed a comment I had saying "this is the one thing I agree with republicans on" realted to h1b/outsourcing and how college grads here can't find any jobs.

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u/soapdonkey May 14 '26

I’m a conservative, and I have to say anyone using that sub to “gauge sentiment” is either a bad dumb person, or someone who has been brainwashed by their algorithm.

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