r/askanything • u/newtoaster • 11h ago
General Question Is the Russian Bot defeat impacting what you see on Reddit?
Up to 50% fewer Russian bots are up and running. Are you seeing a substantial difference in political subreddits? How so?
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u/mattormateo 11h ago
I have been holding onto hope that idiots that still are die hard Trump supporters are bots but sadly I think they are just real people who are incredibly stupid and/or racist.
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u/Fat-cat-Charlie 10h ago
it's both. there are people stupid enough to believe MAGA bullshit, but they're too stupid to form their own opinions. so without the Russian bots telling MAGA what to think, MAGAts don't know what to say.
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u/Financial_Rice_4807 10h ago
There are people like that in real life. And there are bots. Who is to know which is which? Best not to care.
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u/Lurker_Zee 9h ago
Considering I have been repeatedly accused of being die-hard Trump supporter because I am against city burning and exporting US anarchy to my continent of Europe, what defines one is suspect in my eyes.
Also, blueys always need to depict themselves as the victims, even when they had it all at one time (reddit, twitter, billionaires like Musk on their side, most US mainstream news etc.) and thus manufacture enemies of people who are 99% on their side (Rawling, Gadot, Ethan Klein, Joe Rogan etc).
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u/StarrySkye3 7h ago
What you mean about Musk ever supporting leftism? In 2020 he was claiming Canada was fascist for having COVID lockdowns; this is not a very leftist position.
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u/Lurker_Zee 6h ago
Prior to the 2016 United States presidential election, Musk donated to Hillary Clinton[20] and later said he voted for her.[21] In November 2016, Musk criticized Donald Trump as "not the right guy" in an interview with CNBC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_Elon_Musk
Although being a lefty looney bin, the Wikipedia article is biased towards who Musk supported after 2022, because science forbid we talk more than one tenth of the article on how he was the Democrats' golden boy before they chemically castrated his son.
Also this https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/05/buttigieg-biden-mistake-elon-musk-electric-vehichle-summit/
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u/Ok_Theory_1323 10h ago
Sadly you can still see footage each day/week of Trump cult gatherings waving Trump flags and wearing Trump merch; they haven't learned a damn thing. Or if they have, they're in too deep to just admit it and apologize to their sane family and friends who have probably cut off contact with them by now.
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u/Package_Objective 11h ago
R/conservative is seeing a lot less traffic and the few comments are much more objective and the shit comments are actually seeing negative ratios.
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u/Embarrassed-Wafer667 11h ago
There are actually troll farms , people sitting in cubicles creating fake personas who invade Reddit and all other social media for the purposes of creating chaos confusion and misinformation.
Whether you call them, bots , soc puppets or trolls. They do exist
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u/Kerensky97 9h ago
Reddit doesn't like people posting about how much of their traffic was bots, I'm sure no social media network does. So you're not going to get a lot of proof of it here on the site, and when people do they get their posts deleted and put on temporary bans, so you'll have to look elsewhere on the internet. Reddit is more of a place to find subs full of cute cuddly kitties.
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u/paolilon 11h ago
Think about how much cheaper ads just became on Twitter because of the loss in traffic
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u/CaseysCardsMTG 9h ago
The interactions I’ve had over the past 24 hours on Reddit remind me of how it was 10 years ago. There are still trash humans but at least they seem like humans.
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u/templeofsyrinx1 🤔 11h ago
I keep seeing people saying this took down the bots, but the news sites are claiming the datacenter that got hit didn't have anything to do with bots, but I am skeptical.
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u/Kerensky97 9h ago edited 9h ago
There was an interesting post that somebody did where they compared the post traffic on 900 subreddits in the last day compared to the same time last week and some subs (very bot heavy ones like worldnews and askreditt) were seeing a 40-50% drop in traffic.
Oddly enough even though I commented on that post yesterday, I can't find it in my history anymore. It's like reddit didn't like people pointing out how much bots existed here and completely nuked it. I hope somebody posts it to the internet at large.
Edit: Found it. Mods removed it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1x3q43a/offsite_comparing_reddit_activity_around_three/ Don't click here3
u/templeofsyrinx1 🤔 9h ago
oh cool, but how are they getting the data??
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u/TheGracefulCrane 9h ago
yeah im uh a little skepitcal of that given reddit locked down all their API stuff
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u/Kerensky97 4h ago
It's not secret data. This isn't looking into locked user profiles, it's just counting new posts and comments. You don't even need an API for that. You just subscribe to a sub, then monitor that stream for new content.
Click on whatever sub you want. Sort by "New". Then count all the posts in the last 24 hours. Congrats, you did what this guy did, he just automated the process for multiple subs.
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u/TheGracefulCrane 4h ago
Oh man I dunno if I buy the accuracy of that seems like way to prone to error
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u/Kerensky97 4h ago
If you want to dig through their methods, it's all documented there. Can you find the proof they're wrong?
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u/TheGracefulCrane 4h ago
I could ueah but im not that invested
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u/Kerensky97 3h ago
So on one side I have the actual data and on the other an opinion.
Honestly where would you put your trust if you were just some rando on the internet?
It's like how I think Trump raped girls on Epstein's Island. But until somebody has the guts to open those documents and prosecute the people involved, I don't have the hard data. Do I?
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u/Kerensky97 4h ago
It says in the documentation, the Reddit API data and live endpoint streams.
The Reddit data on how many posts are made in a sub aren't secret. And even if they were, all you have to do is monitor the sub for posts and comments. It's literally the things you're looking at right now.
You could just snapshot the public site now. Wait 24 hours and do it again. And count how many new posts and comments were made.
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u/CapitalStandard4275 6h ago
as far as I can tell it was removed because it was a very flawed analysis. I don't think this is some conspiracy or coverup, it comes off as a hallucinated analysis written by AI, posted by someone who doesn't know what they were doing. Hence removed
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u/Kerensky97 4h ago
The raw data is there for you to re-interpret.
I ran through it. 75% of the 1222 subs monitored saw a decline when one or more of the 3 data centers were hit (50% saw a decline for all 3). Only 20% saw an increase.
That's not random chance.
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u/Dapper-Ad9787 9h ago
Definitely seeing fewer MAGA type posts on Facebook. Reddit seems to be less affected.
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u/Main_Cauliflower5479 9h ago
I am seeing a whole lot fewer, if any, asinine conservative replies and new posts.
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u/RedWingerD 11h ago
Why would anyone willingly go into a political subreddit? You have to really hate yourself to think thats worth your time
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u/newtoaster 11h ago
I follow politics the way some people follow sports, so I’m reading political subreddits pretty often.
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 11h ago
Not that I've noticed so far. I don;t hang out on political subs mostly just general stuff.
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u/turdbutler 11h ago
Not really when I see accounts like this still active
https://www.reddit.com/u/FreeHugs23/s/ev6SB6mC3W
5 month old account averaging over 80 contributions a day and over 5 million karma. Totally normal
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u/NationalisticMemes 8h ago
bot in this situation is a scraper. This had almost no impact on those spam botnets.
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u/theacp127 5h ago
Not really. Maybe they post more of larger subreddits which I'm not on often. I don't run across many bots usually.
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u/AstronomerSweet2133 4h ago
I havent seen the words Bandera, Nuland, coup, blackrock, or hohol in quite some time. Nor the phrases "protecting ethnic Russians of Donbas" or ""Russia is advancing on all fronts". So yeah it has made a profound difference.
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u/3lfk1ng 2h ago
Imagine living in a country where 1/2 the government is paying a hostile nation money to provide support their party. Providing them funds to fight an alliance so they can push propaganda.
Then, when it becomes immediately apparent to all netizens, there is not enough support for anything to change.
The US Government is corrupt AF.
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u/manhattanabe 11h ago
Yes. Much less “free Palestine” any genocide posts. Now if they can only shut down the Iranian bots.
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u/Financial_Rice_4807 11h ago edited 11h ago
The bots post on both sides to get the outrage going. You should see a drop is the hate bait. People also think like that now, so it won't do away all of it.
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u/Ok_Theory_1323 10h ago
MUH BOTH SIIIIIIDESZZZZ
MUH ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISMMMS!!!!!
What the F does a left-wing bot do, spam too much empathy and compassion for fellow human beings? Cite too many legit sources instead of TurningPoint and Newsmax?
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u/Financial_Rice_4807 10h ago edited 10h ago
They could post BS hyperbolic posts like yours.
Many bots and coordinated accounts are not truly pushing a single ideology. Their goal is often to maximize engagement, outrage, division, or visibility, so they may post on multiple sides of the same issue.
Researchers studying influence operations have repeatedly found that some campaigns seek to increase polarization and distrust, rather than persuade people toward a specific position. In those cases, promoting extreme viewpoints on both sides can be more effective than advocating one side consistently.
Common patterns include: Playing both sides: One set of accounts argues Position A while another argues Position B, encouraging arguments and longer comment chains. Amplifying conflict: Posts are designed to trigger emotional reactions, because anger and fear tend to generate replies, shares, and upvotes. Astroturfing: Creating the appearance of widespread support or opposition by using many accounts.
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u/Ok_Theory_1323 8h ago
Didn't answer my question. What extreme views do leftist bots promote to sow outrage?
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u/Intelligent_Papaya61 11h ago
I’ve been seeing this sub flooded with more anti Trump stuff than makes sense lol
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u/throwthisaway9696969 7h ago
botnets typically use security vulnerabilities to build zombie networks not data centers
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u/ChartPuzzleheaded747 11h ago
It never was a thing
“Bots” are a label mentally ill people use to justify de humanizing folks that have a different view point
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u/Working-Holiday420 11h ago
You dont think bots exist at all?
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u/ChartPuzzleheaded747 11h ago
I mean the spam ones that just post the exact same “here’s how to make money at home” BS into a ton of threads, yeah that’s probably a program.
But the majority of folks who are called “bots” are not robots, no
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u/SlicedBread0556 11h ago
Everyone I disagree with is a Russian bot. I still disagree with people, so there has been no change.
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u/OilInternational2566 11h ago
In [r/conservative](r/conservative) there’s literally an 8 hour pause in posts.. lol
… but it’s back up running manufacturing outrage.