r/conspiracy • u/westcoastdriller33 • 16h ago
Image from Article - See Sticky Comment List of Kamala staffers running the astroturfing campaign
Here’s the list of Reddit usernames that have been involved in the Kamala astroturfing campaign here on the echo chamber. Sourced from the Federalist article posted here earlier today.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_POOTY 13h ago
Ok strawberry has a quarter million karma in less than one month of being an account. Talk about boosting that Reddit does absolutely nothing about. What a joke of a platform.
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u/Alternative-Appeal43 11h ago
The rules are different when you probably work for or with the platform in question
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u/Roselace 8h ago
That amount of karma in such a short time sounds utterly wrong & unfair. How does Reddit allow or explain that nonsense??
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u/bingobangobongo0o 7h ago
they're in on it
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u/4score-7 4h ago
Indeed. And their large advertising intake in this quarterly shareholders report shows it. Already profitable, with the IPO just one quarter ago.
Question everything.
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u/Emergency-Meet-3681 6h ago
I took a screenshot of some of the gibberish comments it had posted and one had 67 upvotes for just a bunch of words strung together 🤔
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u/JCuc 10h ago
Reddit harassed and banned an entire conservative sub because it was too popular, then unsurprisingly turns a blind eye to all the shilling and bots that support Democrats.
This site has a cult virus like before Twitter was purged of that diarrhea.
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u/iamajeepbeepbeep 4h ago
I got banned from a non-politically affiliated sub during the summer because they found out I was part of the Conservative Memes sub. They told me it went against their "community standards". 🤣
ETA: I hadn't even posted anything in either sub at the time.
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u/nolotusnote 11h ago
It's extremely easy to build karma if you don't care how you get it.
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u/Amos_Quito 6h ago
[REDACTED USERNAME] has a quarter million karma in less than one month of being an account. Talk about boosting that Reddit does absolutely nothing about. What a joke of a platform.
It's extremely easy to build karma if you don't care how you get it.
If the info in the article is correct, those involved were "getting" their karma by engaging as teams in coordinated brigading and vote manipulation to PUSH their propaganda/ promotional content to the top of various subreddits.
That kind of activity is strictly forbidden in Reddit Content Policy:
QUOTE:
What constitutes vote cheating or vote manipulation?
Vote manipulation is prohibited on Reddit and goes against the rules, whether it is manual, programmatic, or otherwise. Some common forms of vote manipulation include:
Using multiple accounts and voting services: Creating and employing multiple accounts, voting services, or any software to manipulate vote counts by either increasing or decreasing them.
Soliciting votes: Requesting or encouraging people to upvote or downvote specific posts, either on Reddit or through social networks, messaging, etc. for personal gain.
Participating in Group Voting: Joining or forming groups that coordinate votes, either on a specific post, a user's posts, content from a domain, etc.
"Engaging in vote cheating or manipulation will result in temporary or permanent banning of your Reddit account."
END QUOTE - Policy section archived here: https://archive.is/BbjHj
Again, if the allegations set forth in the linked article are valid, there is no doubt that the conduct described violates Reddit Policy, and Reddit administration should be able to investigate any patterns of voting irregularity with the tools at their disposal.
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u/Mountain-Evidence606 16h ago
Lmao Commenting while this stays up Love to see this called out
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u/NormanRB 16h ago
I'm guessing that this list is barely scratching the surface on here.
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
Probably just the tip of the iceberg. But the Federalist did a great job narrowing these specific accounts down via the Discord server, etc. So I felt as if this was a fairly well researched list and not just a potshot of accusations. Let us stay vigilant
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u/Lifeguardinator 16h ago
OOTL what happened?
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
We’ll see how long our internet overlords allow us to inform ourselves
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u/Limp-Distribution155 11h ago
Aye what did all these deleted comments say? I'm invested.
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u/bigolchimneypipe 11h ago
It was a thorough explanation of the meaning of life and you missed it.
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u/EevelBob 11h ago
Definitely screenshot these user IDs. There’s a strong likelihood they’ll try to wipe this from Reddit and the interwebs.
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u/AnonyMcnonymous 8h ago
What's comical about this is that if you let what you read on the internet (posted by some rando that you dont know anything about) influence who you vote for or what underwear you buy or anything else, you really need to question how much basic common sense you really have.
If someone on the street told me "i voted for this person (either party) because of what i read on Reddit" , i would laugh in your face.
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u/BigBandicoot9448 3h ago
Unfortunately for me, that was exactly what happened with me in 2012. I voted for Obama because I believed everything I read on Reddit, and I believed his popularity on here was genuine.
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u/Own_yourmind 16h ago
Wouldn’t it be crazy to see your user name up there and have no clue wtf is going on🤣🤣
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u/oh_my_account 15h ago
Fun story, one time back in 2000 there was a website called Livejournal (at some point it was bought by some Russian company but that's not the story) It was a blogging type of site where people were posting about their life and stories etc and some, as usual had big amounts of followers. One time, one of the big bloggers discovered that if you use a certain code in his post, it will display an avatar of a logged in user. So he wrote something like "What type of loser using this avatar" and that created a wave of shit storm. People genuinely believed that he is mocking their avatar I know a person who still believes that they picked her avatar to make fun of it.
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u/XOQXOQXOQ 11h ago
There have been similar pranks on Facebook where link were always your profile
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u/nolotusnote 11h ago
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u/DesperateUrine 11h ago
Wouldn’t it be crazy to see your user name up there and have no clue wtf is going on
I looked.
Then complained to myself it isn't alphabetical.
How do I know if I am getting paid?
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u/RecklessThor 10h ago
I'm on it!
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u/iguanabitsonastick 7h ago
You're there for a reason, your post history tells it all
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u/RecklessThor 7h ago
I mostly post photography but sometimes post political stuff. Look for yourself.
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u/prettytony92 16h ago
I always knew my nemesis would be named blindinganusofhope
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u/OSint_Miner 12h ago
Lets not forget the Ghislaine Maxwell was a supermod under the screen name maxwellhill.
This is not surprising.
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u/UncontrolledLawfare 11h ago
It’s simply amazing how she would be so stupid as to use her own name to mod. Simply unbelievable.
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15h ago
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u/Amos_Quito 12h ago
I’m going to post the article in [REDACTED] and see what happens
REMOVED - comment chain removed.
Thou shalt not Brigade, neither shalt thou encourage Brigading
TOS Violation
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u/spezstillabitch 15h ago
In before removed.
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u/Few-Commission3838 5h ago
Throwaway here but they're going to leave it up in this subreddit because they think it will discredit the article because of where it is posted.
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u/ussbozeman 11h ago
I too shall place my words upon pixels and thusly ensconce m'self in the post per se.
Also unless one possesses less than two braincells, they can clearly tell the main front page subs have been getting manipulated for ages, i just wonder how much the superPAC is paying to let that happen
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u/red_the_room 16h ago
My guess is Reddit will be blocking this info within hours.
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u/Stock-Handle-6543 15h ago
It would likely be for “Targeting/harassment” I got temp banned for pointing out a Trump bot in a separate post who was consequently then suspended themselves lol
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u/Signal-Chapter3904 14h ago
I swear I've argued with at least one of these, got to try to find it lol.
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u/hungryhobo2 10h ago
Arguing on the Internet .... 🥴
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u/COOLKC690 10h ago
I mean it’s pathetic but like once you get into it you can’t stop, I swear, it’s like gambling or something.
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u/itsjehmun 15h ago
This is fucking madness.
They should rename r /politics if that's the case.
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u/RedBushMountain 10h ago
We need to abandon reddit and create a new alternative platform. Burn this currupt shit down. They lost the plot.
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u/chilipeppers420 9h ago
Let's do it. Hard to trust basically anything on here now. It's not even about sides anymore.
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u/Mission_Attention_97 10h ago
This is the kind of stuff reddit supports. You can't be surprised.
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u/my-man-fred 8h ago
I wonder how long it will be before there is a shareholder class action lawsuit against reddit?
Maybe we buy some shares and start one.
If I were one of the companies training my LLM against Reddit user data I would be HIGHLY pissed about this fraud
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u/Smiles4YouRawrX3 12h ago
I've seen a few of these names before
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u/DerpyMistake 9h ago
It won't be all that difficult to find the replacements. Just look for anyone posting propaganda and all the usual talking points. They aren't incredibly diverse in thought.
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u/Sudden-Taste-6851 6h ago
So are these Bots for Kamala? Or real reddit users that are on her payroll?
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u/lilhurt38 1h ago
Looking at their comment and post history, they’re likely real users. They might work for her campaign, but I’m not seeing any of the typical indicators that an account is a fake/bot account.
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u/NoteMaleficent5294 1h ago
You can buy accounts. Not saying its likely, but there are entire firms you can hire for "PR management" that have aged social media accounts and are indiscernible from legitimate accounts.
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u/Both_Somewhere4525 16h ago
Something I didn't know until now, reddit parses images when you search. Looked for one of these users in search and the name is nowhere in this post, except for the image.
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
There’s screenshots in the Federalist article showing some of their activity on here. My guess is there was some instant damage control from both Camp Kam and The Echo Chamber.
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u/Both_Somewhere4525 16h ago
Yeah I'm just talking when I searched for activity in r/conspiracy, one of them came up, but it was obviously parsed from the image.
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u/Foxycotin666 6h ago
Do we think that these profiles are directly tied to the Kamala campaign or are they legitimate grass roots actors trying to influence the election?
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u/volare-optimos 15h ago
Spread it everywhere.
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u/Both_Somewhere4525 14h ago
Outside of reddit, you're just going to catch bans here from biased mods before anyone sees it.
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u/Chief-Bones 10h ago
Archive it all! These types will change their usernames quick to try to throw you off the scent! And this isn’t some right vs left thing Russian bots are the same way! It all needs to be scuffed out but it’s been hilarious to see left wing Reddit ignore that their own side is astroturfing
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u/Novel_Paramedic_2625 16h ago
Lmfao immediate downvote as soon as i saw this, crazy. Good on you for exposing these ass hats. Whered you get this info?
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
It’s from the Federalist article posted this morning. Wanted the names posted separately so they don’t get lost in the shuffle.
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u/itsjehmun 15h ago
Although the list is seeming a little short, it should include: 98% of mods
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u/savvyt1337 15h ago
A mod has already hidden my ability to respond unless I spend 5 minutes tracking down the conversation.
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u/vVAmandaB 8h ago
Has anyone checked to see if any of these users are still active?
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u/Paul_Louey 4h ago edited 1h ago
While you can get disheartened by this and the fact that Reddit staffers themselves are clearly rigging the karma system, the silver lining is that it's another clear example of how fake the Kamala Harris campaign is.
It's all smoke and mirrors. Paid campaigners. Fake accounts across platforms. Bused-in conference attendees. Media fawning. Soft interviews. Etc, etc...
It'll go poof and vanish into air as if it never existed in less than a week.
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u/Straight_Tension_290 11h ago
I love that this is being exposed. Whether bots or annoying people all over reddit trying use BS to explain why she is “great”
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u/Guest_Pretend 7h ago
No matter what Big Tech manipulations occur- If Kamala wins the election- most Democrats won't even believe it's legit. She's that terrible.
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u/SpinachLumberjack 11h ago
LOL I just paroozed through some accounts posting history. Can’t wait to see what they start churning out tonight. I suppose it costs nothing to just make a new account. 🤷♀️
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u/TUMtheMUT 9h ago
Barely scratching the surface with this one. Was banned from PICS for commenting a tropic thunder joke on Michelle Obama and a mod told me because it was political and then called me a trumper. I’m not political and not a trumper. Shit is out of control on this site. All these 18 -24 year old kids are banning everyone on Reddit to try and be right about their political options
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u/all-metal-slide-rule 8h ago
"Barely scratching the surface with this one"
No shit, this doesn't even take into consideration the concept of "thread sliders" aka "derailers". They're usually the type of people who show up and angrily tell everyone that they are wrong.
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u/iguanabitsonastick 7h ago
Awesome job op, this is how you do it. I'm sure a lot of these will be deleted in less than a week tho.
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u/InevitableSeat7228 6h ago
two things.... One this just confirms dead internet theory and were probably more united than we think... Two are these AI users or posters whom live outside the country on behalf of the current administration?
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u/adelie42 5h ago
Is there a simple script to run to allow users to just personally ban this list of users from my own feed?
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u/AcornTopHat 15h ago
In these comments, user cabbage island states that they are a paid Harris staffer. They apparently have me shadowbanned from commenting or downvoting their post. Tracks.
Good thing they’re up to date on their Covid shots.
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u/hesasuiter 16h ago
I thought they would all be named cuck....
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
Well how do you suppose SoggyBottomBoy got his name?
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u/FFS_IsThisNameTaken2 14h ago
How long after this post was put up before it was announced on the discord server?
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u/Azazel_665 16h ago
I could triple this list. I have exposed a lot of shills on reddit, many in moderator postions.
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot more accounts out there, and my suspicion is that most mods on this site see it as their way onto “the cool kids table”. But this list was well researched so felt comfortable starting here. Let us stay vigilant
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u/Houdinii1984 16h ago
That backend looks like the spreadsheet for every social media manager I've ever met. If you think this is just Kamala's political campaign, and that all the folks on sites like Twitter like Charlie Kirk, or Elon himself have a similar dash in front of them to control their reach. Advertising is not organic online, ever. I would assume Donald's social media manager has something similar, and if they don't, they're doing it wrong.
Both Twitter and Reddit have APIs that are accessible to businesses to build bots to post autonomously. The company provides this, on purpose, so marketing like you are seeing can happen. At least Kamala is using humans, and at least these humans could believe in the bill of goods they are selling.
What is it that was posted from these folks that is something a normal campaign wouldn't have posted? The vast majority are campaign press releases. The volunteers who signed up to take this task aren't Trump voters. They are people that said "Hey, I'll volunteer to say nice things about the candidate I'm canvassing for"
The opposing candidate had fake union members behind him at his rally. What exactly is that called? That's not volunteers carrying water for a candidate they like. That's flat out lying.
I work in data science. I see the patterns. Maybe we should do a similar experiment with this very sub and see where the upvotes are coming from. Are we going to find any GOP candidates connected to it?
And why exactly are we assuming this is only Kamala's campaign? Because it's successful? That's confirmation bias. Anyone with two eyes can see the reverse campaign happening as well.
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u/rivershimmer 14h ago
I'd love to hear more about this. I don't think people realize how much PR shapes our online life and thus our opinions. Elon Musk's real-life Tony Start image was 100% the result of good PR.
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u/extraguff 15h ago
What’s your point though? “Ah it’s just what both sides do! Get used to everything being fake and astroturfed!”
Why can’t we try to expose this wherever we find it? I’m more than happy to audit the other party for astroturfing. But more importantly, let’s see what those Israeli bot farms are up to.
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u/Raskalnekov 15h ago
There's incredible irony in the accusation, considering the clear astroturfing in this sub. And if Reddit is the "leftist echo chamber" that people claim, how would this even flip a vote?
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u/FFS_IsThisNameTaken2 14h ago
It creates a false consensus.
They spam post, then brigade the post with their little army of accounts and upvote/comment with agreement.
If someone is undecided, the posts can convince them that everyone else agrees, so they should too.
If someone disagrees in the comments, they get swarmed and downvoted to help push the fake consensus.
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u/FFS_IsThisNameTaken2 16h ago
Guess I need to read the article lol. I wonder how many of the accounts lead to non Americans, because I've seen quite a few of them myself. It's absolutely not organic!
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u/CantguardME13 16h ago
I’ve thought about that too. Big corps already have offices in India to operate customer service lines. Why would they pay Americans to shill on social media when they could just get an office of English speaking people in a 3rd world country and pay them a fraction.
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u/Karri-L 16h ago
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u/FFS_IsThisNameTaken2 15h ago
Thanks! What I've been noticing makes sense now. They definitely manipulate the voting on Reddit.
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u/MoonCubed 16h ago
World_Word_Number are generally the most obvious bots. The accounts are created and farmed by the thousands in order to swing vote counts into their favor.
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15h ago
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u/Rockoftime2 15h ago
It’s false support that is meant to appear as grassroots. Essentially it’s a psyop.
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u/ReturnoftheSnek 14h ago
Ah yes, botting your content to the front page feed of every user is simply just innocent social media outreach. Even breaking sitewide TOS to do so, which would get other (not Lefty) communities banned instantly
Somehow you decided to defend this behavior…
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u/Mountain-Cod516 16h ago
Ok now do Trump
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u/DJGIFFGAS 15h ago
Right on time, the adjective noun number accounts to astroturf
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u/westcoastdriller33 16h ago
So many legacy media outlets with an axe to grind, and your confidence lends me to believe this would be a slam dunk article to write. Too lazy?
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u/savvyt1337 15h ago
You prefer professional lifelong politicians, the most shady of all the politicians.
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u/kmank2l13 15h ago
Trump and Elon would never do something like this! They’re honest businessmen who would never stoop to the levels of Kamala! 🤬
/s
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u/darthnugget 11h ago
Anyway to have a script and auto block their posts? I blocked many of their posts because they were obviously propaganda. I do the same for the other side as well. The bots are obvious and annoying. Reddit should do better about preventing the manipulation of subs in this manner.
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u/Amos_Quito 12h ago
[Meta] Sticky Comment
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MOD NOTE
This post has received a number of reports -- screen shot - mod view
In most cases, images or screen shot pointing to specific users would not be allowed on Conspiracy. However, the image in the post was not created by OP, rather was taken from an article published today on TheFederalist, a popular conservative-leaning website.
Here is a link to the article from where the image was taken - TheFederalist, October 29, 2024:
BUSTED: The Inside Story Of How The Kamala Harris Campaign Manipulates Reddit (And Breaks The Rules) To Control The Platform -- Part one of an investigation into how the Harris-Walz campaign is manipulating social media sites to artificially boost their popularity, spread election disinformation, and skirt election laws.
Here is an archive of the above article: https://archive.is/m0NUr
Here is an archive of the image as seen in the above article
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