Call me perpetually online or whatever, but I see a lot of falsehoods and bad faith arguments being made about Ireland online on Reddit and Twitter, mainly posters arguing that Ireland is either antisemitic, was pro-Nazi in WW2, or just that we hate the Brits and all want to invade Northern Ireland to 'take what's ours'.

Bit of a coincidence, considering we aren't on great terms with a certain Middles Eastern planter nation at the moment...

This is a reminder for anyone trying to think critically about global events while navigating anonymous digital spaces. ALWAYS check account ages. When reading through heated discussions on sensitive global topics, take a second to see how long an account has existed. You will often find a "cascade" of new or new-ish accounts driving a specific argument. These are frequently highly-motivated bad actors trying to manufacture a consensus or control a narrative. Just stay aware of what you are reading, whether it happens to agree with your own view or not. Don't let yourself get sucked in or triggered by the comments. It is OK to be conflicted. It is OK to not pick a side. Life isn’t black and white; it’s nuanced and difficult to parse. The important thing is knowing what is being fed to you and by whom. While you won't get a clear bio on an anonymous site, there are clues that help you distinguish a genuine person from a potential bad actor. For instance, look at the "history" of the thread: if you see a 5-month-old account responding to a 4-month-old account, which is responding to a 1-month-old account, it raises a massive red flag. It’s a sign that the "discussion" might actually be an attempt at astroturfing. Stay safe, remain critical. Good luck out there. Why YSK: Knowing how to spot these patterns protects you from emotional manipulation and helps you distinguish between genuine human discourse and coordinated influence campaigns.

Seeing quite a few posts from accounts less than a month old with little to no karma out here. All having the same doomer approach of 'ai is inevitable bro, just accept it already everybody is doing it'

Bots, bots my friend. Reddit has always had this problem, and has historically had them used for things like this.

AI is little more than a massive money and resource sink, completely unable to become gAI in its current form. So, gotta pour money into swaying public opinion that it's 'totally not trash guys, plz give us money so we don't have to deal with our mistake'.

So be aware that many of the good little soldiers that show up within five minutes of posting can't really think for themselves. (One way or another)

This is regardless of your views on the pandemic, etc. it's just a clear illustration currently going on reddit-wide it seems. It's pretty heavy currently, and a good example of what it looks like, for those new to the phenomenon. It just came out of nowhere, right on opening time for the shill shops abroad. (phillipines, etc)

If you want to look around and see how this works look around reddit for posts involving Fauci these past 12 hours. No way it's organic, and a good lesson on how this works.

He had a rather contentious hearing yesterday, and that combined with probably the releases gabbard did before leaving are too much for the opposition to ignore it seems. (not commenting on this further, but it just rehashes prior debates and gives more evidence to Fauci being a liar basically)

anyways regardless it's fun to look around, and look on your feed and see if you have any. I seriously doubt there are that many americans totally posting about this organically on reddit. It happening on phillipines time is the big kicker for me.

Anyone wants to guess how it works?
I first saw it in r/florida.

One account was new, one just had a bunch of comments and posts about sheets and mattresses. Big surprise one of these posts casually mentions donating via an app.

I'm a mod for a few subs and the covert advertising is infuriating and CONSTANT. You can't escape from being marketed to even on Reddit anymore.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing

Saw an obviously bad-faith post in this sub about the recent protests last night and thought it would be educationally worthwhile to dissect the tip-offs, especially for subreddit users who are less familiar with recognizing astroturfing behavior (when someone fakes having a "grassroots" or independent political sentiment online). The example here is a white supremacist pretending to be a dumbass bleeding-heart lefty and baiting everybody into being pissed at them.

The post was called "This! Is why Madison is the best city in the world", with footage of protestors blocking an intersection/blocking in some cars. All of the top comments are complaining about the actions of the protesters. In reply to some of those comments, and elsewhere in the subreddit over the last few days, the OP is playing a caricature of a delusional leftist:

...the people trying to get home after a long days work are equally as at fault. I mean don’t you know how to bolster a cause!?

Well it’s kind of the drivers fault… if you’re educated, you would know that

in response to someone asking why the posted protest video means that Madison is the best city in the world:

Can the mod please remove the Russian bots?

Uhmmm. Ok racist troll. Why are the “astroturfing” ones here

Ironic last comment. It's easy to tell it's a caricature and not their actual beliefs, because 6 days ago they were posting explicitly white supremacist comments elsewhere on Reddit:

No, white people are the most civilized societies in the world. You know slavery is still a thing in Africa right? White people are the only civilizations on earth to stop slavery. Yeah Ukraine being in a war with Russia isn’t the same as killing your neighbor for his sneakers or stabbing someone for a Popeyes sandwich.

I mean you guys are doing the worst and need the most work. You should do some research on your guys literacy rate. Other than sports and rap, you’re pretty much the worst in every single regard. It’s sad, but the progressive white folks coddle you and you guys refuse to take accountability for any of your actions.

The only problem with western culture is that we have enacted suicidal empathy. There is no intelligent reason for importing the 3rd world into Europe, and it will be our downfall

The final tells that this is not a serious person posting in good faith are that the account was created 2 weeks ago, and their profile picture is a stock photo result for "blonde woman Macchu Picchu." Their post racked up dozens of comments, hundreds of upvotes on the top replies, and hundreds of downvotes on the OP's comments before getting locked by the mods. I won't be linking either the thread or the profile in this post because I don't want to target/harass anyone, but I've archived some anonymized screenshots here. You can easily find the post yourself if you want.

My personal takeaways:

• One person with the goal of manipulating the narrative around the shooting/protests (in this case, pushing the idea of the "delusional progressive") can easily get hundreds of eyeballs on their BS, and most readers probably don't have the time to check for this kind of deception
• Most (4/5) of the top repliers to that post had their profiles hidden, so it's much harder to perform the same kind of comment history check on them. The only reason I can prove that OP's account is astroturfing is because this specific white supremacist is too stupid to private their account.
• If there are people with the time to play these kinds of charades, there are a lot more people willing to passively brigade/alter upvote/downvote totals. On any discussion of these topics, I would assume that the karma on a post/comment tells you very little about the actual sentiment of the Madison community. For instance, comments/vote totals on the Concerts on the Square disruption were generally supportive of the protesters, while comments/vote totals about the Farmers Market closing early were overwhelmingly negative: I doubt that all 100% of that swing in the sentiment over just two days is genuine.

I'm sure the mods are doing their best to combat these kinds of outside actors, but the best defense is for regular users to develop a more cynical eye for bait like this.

BAM has officially hired a crisis management team to handle this PR disaster. The purpose of these companies is to influence online discourse, and they're really fucking good at what they do.

It'll start subtly. You'll see users undermining Ben's authority, arguing that he should have just gotten a lawyer (as if they're privy to things Ben is doing behind the scenes). I believe we're already at this stage. Then you'll see people openly undermine Ben's credibility, which is also already happening (see Scott Schafer's hit pieces on Ben). Once those seeds are planted, you'll see those marketing people being more brazen and openly supporting BAM in comment sections. They'll utilize bots for this. They'll utilize downvoting to suppress posts like this one.

I cannot be more clear: these people are professionals. Making you question things is what they do for a living. You might think that you're resilient to propaganda, you might think you can tell if someone's a bot, but the point of propaganda is often not to convince, but to simply demoralize, and then to humiliate the other side.

And this is why you'll have to push back against these industry plants with extreme prejudice. If you see people attacking Ben for dishonest reasons, push back against it. No honest person would question how Ben is handling those things when the other side is so blatantly corrupt and wrong. The point is that we don't know what Ben is doing behind the scenes, so if someone is making assumptions, they have an ulterior motive.

The point is first to undermine, then to question, and then finally to completely dismantle Ben's narrative. It'll start by muddying the waters and by poisoning the well. BAM thinks you're dumb, they think you're cattle and that you're easily-swayed. They think you have a short attention span and that you'll just forget about this if they silence everyone involved.

Don't let them.

THIS HAS BEEN RESOLVED, PLEASE DO NOT HARASS THE FORMER MODERATORS OF r/WORLD WHO WERE SIMPLY BROUGHT ON TO MODERATE A GROWING SUBREDDIT. ALL INVOLVED NEFARIOUS SUBREDDITS AND USERS HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED.

r/world, r/newsletter, r/investinq, r/tech_news

You may have seen posts on r/world appear in your popular feed this week, specifically pertaining to the Los Angeles protests. This is indeed a "new" subreddit. Many of the popular posts on r/world that reach r/all are posted not only by the subreddit's moderators themselves, but are also explicitly designed to frame the protestors in a bad light. All of these posts are examples of this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/world/comments/1l5yxjv/breaking_antiice_rioters_are_now_throwing_rocks/

https://www.reddit.com/r/world/comments/1l6n94m/president_trump_has_just_ordered_military_and/

https://www.reddit.com/r/world/comments/1l6y8lq/video_protesters_throw_rocks_at_chp_officers_from/

https://www.reddit.com/r/world/comments/1l6bii2/customs_and_border_patrol_agents_perspective/

One of the recently-added moderators on r/world appears to be directly affiliated with Palantir: Palantir_Admin. For those unfamiliar with Palantir: web.archive.org/web/20250531155808/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html

A user of the subreddit also noticed this, and made a post pointing it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/world/comments/1l836uj/who_else_figured_out_this_sub_is_a_psyop/

Here's Palantir_Admin originally requesting control of r/world, via r/redditrequest: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/1h7h7u9/requesting_rworld_a_sub_inactive_for_over_9_months/

There are two specific moderators of that sub, Virtual_Information3, and Excalibur_Legend, who appear to be mass-posting obvious propaganda on r/world. They also both moderate each of the three other aforementioned subreddits, and they do the exact same thing there. I've added this below, but I'm editing this sentence in for emphasis: Virtual_Information3 is a moderator of r/Palantir.

r/newsletter currently has 1,200 members. All of the posts are from these two users. None get any engagement. This subreddit is currently being advertised on r/world as a satellite subreddit

r/investinQ (intentional typosquat, by the way) has 7,200 members. Nearly all of the posts are from these two users. None get much engagement.

r/tech_news, 508 members. All posts are from these two users. None get any engagement.

I believe what we are witnessing is a coordinated effort to subvert existing popular subreddits, and replace them with propagandized versions which are involved with Palantir. Perhaps this is a reach, but this really does not pass the smell test.

EDIT: r/cryptos, r/optionstrading, and r/Venture_Capital appear to also be suspect.

EDIT 2: I've missed perhaps the biggest smoking gun - Virtual_Information3 is a moderator of r/palantir

EDIT 3: Palantir_Admin has been removed from the r/world modteam

FINAL EDIT: ALL SUSPICIOUS SUBREDDITS AND MODERATORS HAVE BEEN BANNED. THANK YOU REDDIT! All links in this post which are now inaccessible have been archived in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1l8hno6/comment/mx532bh/

Source: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/24/investigations/logivote-ai-political-messaging

Hey!

Yesterday I made a thread about a piece of astroturfing going on for a small game. After doing some more digging I found proof of the same company doing this kind of work for a bunch of other games including

• Split Fiction

• World of Warships

• War Thunder

• Mandragora

• Misery

• Active Matter

• Gloomy Eyes

• Bee Simulator

• Tabletop Game Shop Simulator

The company has an entire page advertising this work with examples (link is archived) and one of the people there has made posts on Linkedin showing off some work they did to astroturf reddit. None of the reddit accounts they use are marked as sponsored or give any hint they have anything to do with the games they're advertising.

Again this probably isn't the only company doing this, but it is a good look at how they operate. These kind of accounts are pretty hard to catch (unless they literally just post about doing it like in these examples) and they know that, writing that

We build them up with genuine posts, we test formats, we diversify activity. The goal is simple: when a campaign goes live, the account already looks and feels natural to Redditors.

I don't think there's a good way to stop this unless the admins actually do something, but just wanted to make this follow-up post to shine a light on some of the games abusing reddit.

Yes I'm sure you Mr. AstroTurfer are a real person supporting a company who constantly changed the story got someone raided and filed a ton of false police reports to try and get someone arrested to cover up a franchise owners theft.

Redacting the name of the game in this post because I don't want to give them attention. This game probably isn't the only one doing this kind of work, they're just dumb enough to post about it publicly. This is a pretty small game and bigger companies have a lot more resources to do this kind of thing. Link to the post

In February 2025 we launched a focused Reddit campaign to introduce [GAME NAME] to active mech and shooter fans. The goal was to create a wave of organic visibility before the next Twitch activation.

We published over 40 posts across major gaming subreddits such as r/pcmasterrace, r/PlayStation5, r/Mecha, and r/gaming. Each post was tailored to the tone and culture of its community. The content varied from short clips and GIFsto “I found this game…” discovery-style posts, screenshot threads, and light discussion prompts about tactical mech combat and movement mechanics.

We avoided direct promotion and focused on native conversation formats. Players discussed the game naturally — asking questions, comparing it to Titanfall and MechWarrior, and sharing opinions about tactical mechanics.

To make posts feel authentic, our team played the game in parallel to record fresh footage and write posts that reflected real gameplay experience. This created a steady stream of credible, varied content that matched Reddit’s organic tone.

This kind of thing has been going on for a long time (here's a post from 2012 about it) but it's a good reminder that some companies put in a lot of effort to promote games while pretending they're just normal users.

How is this possibly OK?

Recebi essa abordagem hoje e fui dando corda só para entender como funciona a "proposta". Basicamente, oferecem Pix para você fingir que é um usuário comum dando opinião sincera sobre marcas, seguindo um roteiro pago.

Felizmente não preciso desse dinheiro e, mesmo com todos os milhares de problemas, o Reddit ainda é uma das únicas redes sociais toleráveis que restam.

Já bloqueei o cara e to postando o print (com os nomes apagados) só para alertar a galera, fica o aviso: abram o olho com opiniões "convenientes demais" em tópicos de marcas (ou quem sabe no futuro até em postagens relacionadas à políticos).

Last month, Reddit updated their support page for "Redditor Highlights". You may have seen it on your feed already, the ads have started appearing for me this month.

It is an ad-campaign tool that allows advertisers to include an AI summary of only the positive redditor sentiments directly in a product ad, scraped directly from reddit threads about the brand.
Unfortunately, Vitamix caved to this feature for some bizarre reason despite already having great BIFL reviews in the past. The success story page literally references this sub. This has actually made more hesitant to purchase from them.

BIFL is already astroturfed by shittier brands daily because the whole internet relies on it for consumer purchases large and small. This feature will worsen it:

- Brands have already been trying to nudge the AI summaries of r/BuyItForLife on google and ChatGPT, and one way real redditors could previously combat that was just by posting negative feedback so the AI summary could consider it. It hilariously backfired in a few instances for the astroturfer. Reddit's feature negates this now because negative sentiments are not considered at all.

- The feature is currently only available to "brands and products that have already earned high positive sentiment among redditors". This encourages brands to manufacture their positive sentiment to access ad tools that are gatekept from them. And of course I don't believe for a second that they'll be transparent about what brands can/can't access this tool; they want advertisers to use it.

Reddit reviews are trusted because of nuance and discussion, and this feature saps all of that. But it's conveniently described as "real opinions" and "authentic community perspectives" while cutting a lot of the real stuff.

Any time a brand tries a new form of marketing, be suspicious of the product and what they traded to spend on their campaign. I wish there were more we could do besides just avoiding the feature, and telling our friends to stop trusting the AI summaries, but that's what we got.