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Theres an incredible amount of foreign propaganda in western social media anyway. Twitter took down like a million CCP accounts the other month (they made an a

Theres an incredible amount of foreign propaganda in western social media anyway. Twitter took down like a million CCP accounts the other month (they made an announcement about it) and thats just the ones they know about. This is a step thats at least in spirit probably makes sense but there are more larger issues. Reddit literally has an API to comment...you think all those policial default subs are real comments? Not a chance. Reddit doesnt care because it drives engagement.

suyash 6y ago
yup they are all over popular websites with fake accounts, YT, FB etc
realusername 6y ago
Almost every CCP-owned channel on Facebook has bought fake subscribers, it's so visible they don't even try to hide it. As an example, CGTN French has 20M subscribers, more than any local French newspapers despite being virtually unknown in the country. If you go by subscribers count, it would be the most popular news platform of the country...
- baby 6y ago
  Link?
  - realusername 6y ago
    https://www.facebook.com/CGTNFrancais https://www.facebook.com/CGTNFrancais You can compare that with the top newspapers of the country: https://www.facebook.com/lemonde.fr https://www.facebook.com/lemonde.fr https://www.facebook.com/lefigaro https://www.facebook.com/lefigaro
qeternity 6y ago
A comment API makes sense as reddit originally had vibrant third-party app developers. It’s not like it can only be used for bots to post.
- 542458 6y ago
  I help mod a medium-sized subreddit (non-political). We get more mobile-app-based traffic than web traffic by a considerable margin, and I believe this is pretty typical.
0xy 6y ago
Political PACs were openly bragging about manipulating reddit's political subs in 2016 with thousands of accounts and reddit did absolutely nothing. [1] [2] [1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/david-brock-hillary-clinton-correct-the-record/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/david-brock-hil... [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-mil...
Deimorz 6y ago
Every website effectively has an API to comment (or do any other action that's available through the site). You can just use HTTP requests.
- systematical 6y ago
  That really depends. What if they require a login that uses a cookie based session? What about CSRF tokens? What if they put in a captcha cause your requests look funny. At some point it quickly goes from API to BOT.

suyash 6y ago

yup they are all over popular websites with fake accounts, YT, FB etc

realusername 6y ago

Almost every CCP-owned channel on Facebook has bought fake subscribers, it's so visible they don't even try to hide it. As an example, CGTN French has 20M subscribers, more than any local French newspapers despite being virtually unknown in the country. If you go by subscribers count, it would be the most popular news platform of the country...

baby 6y ago
Link?
- realusername 6y ago
  https://www.facebook.com/CGTNFrancais https://www.facebook.com/CGTNFrancais You can compare that with the top newspapers of the country: https://www.facebook.com/lemonde.fr https://www.facebook.com/lemonde.fr https://www.facebook.com/lefigaro https://www.facebook.com/lefigaro

qeternity 6y ago

A comment API makes sense as reddit originally had vibrant third-party app developers. It’s not like it can only be used for bots to post.

542458 6y ago
I help mod a medium-sized subreddit (non-political). We get more mobile-app-based traffic than web traffic by a considerable margin, and I believe this is pretty typical.

0xy 6y ago

Political PACs were openly bragging about manipulating reddit's political subs in 2016 with thousands of accounts and reddit did absolutely nothing. [1] [2] [1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/david-brock-hillary-clinton-correct-the-record/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/david-brock-hil... [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-mil...

Deimorz 6y ago

Every website effectively has an API to comment (or do any other action that's available through the site). You can just use HTTP requests.

systematical 6y ago
That really depends. What if they require a login that uses a cookie based session? What about CSRF tokens? What if they put in a captcha cause your requests look funny. At some point it quickly goes from API to BOT.