Reddit Revelations: Part 1

Trigger warning: rape.

In my previous post, we began our discussion of Reddit & information warfare with an introduction to Reddit's relationship with Stratfor, a private intelligence firm whose emails were leaked in early 2012 by a hacker named Jeremy Hammond. These emails revealed that the Chairman of Reddit (Alexis Ohanian) had met with the CEO of Stratfor (George Friedman), and sought to work with Stratfor as a consultant. The cache also revealed that Stratfor collaborated with Goldman Sachs to monetize insider intelligence through the creation of a strategic investment fund called Stratcap.

In this series, we will discuss the relationship between "insider intelligence" and "information warfare" in the context of Reddit in greater depth. The first parts focus on information warfare, and insider intelligence will be discussed later in the series.

Due to the flexibility of Reddit's social media platform, concepts such as information warfare have become operationalized with respect to the platform itself. This is as simple to verify as noting the existence of a subreddit called /r/SafeSpaceInfoWar, in which the relationship between safe spaces and information warfare is clearly at stake.

Until recently, /r/SafeSpaceInfoWar included among its moderators an account named /u/---. [1] While this account has since been deleted, it was a moderator of the subreddit named /r/CoonTown, an extremely racist antiblack subreddit whose community embraced the manifesto of Charleston shooter Dylann Roof, [2] and recently added as a moderator an account named /u/DylannStormRoof. [3]

/u/DylannStormRoof also moderates a subreddit named /r/snew, [4] and former /r/CoonTown moderator /u/--- used to moderate /r/snew before this account was deleted. [5] All but four of the moderators of /r/SafeSpaceInfoWar moderate /r/snew together, making up more than half of the mod team of /r/snew as a whole. [6][7] One of the top moderators of /r/snew is /u/go1dfish, whose contributions to Reddit have included the following:



/u/go1dfish, /u/KrustyKoonKrackers, and /u/DylannStormRoof also moderate /r/Ellenpaoinaction along with fourteen of the seventeen moderators of /r/SafeSpaceInfoWar, showing how closely affiliated these accounts are with one another. [8]

One of the moderators in this group of /r/SafeSpaceInfoWar moderators is /u/flytape. /u/flytape is a moderator of /r/conspiracy along with /u/assuredlyathrowaway, [9] and both accounts moderate /r/snew along with /u/go1dfish and /u/DylannStormRoof. /u/flytape and /u/go1dfish also moderate /r/RedditPolicy together. [10] The sidebar of /r/RedditPolicy displays an image of "Uncle Sam" superimposed over an image of a male Snoo (the Reddit Mascot) raping a female Snoo, which was directly taken from the subreddit /r/rapingwomen. (EXPLICIT: [11])

The moderators of /r/rapingwomen include /u/KrustyKoonKrackers, two additional moderators of /r/CoonTown (/u/European88 and /u/Suspook), as well as a moderator of /r/snew, /u/GoreFox. [12]

/u/European88, /u/KrustyKoonKrackers, and /u/DylannStormRoof moderate /r/GasTheSnoo together along with /r/RapingWomen moderator /u/BardsDirge and /r/conspiracy moderators /u/Flytape and /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway, further illustrating how closely the moderators of /r/RapingWomen and /r/CoonTown are connected with these moderators of /r/conspiracy.

Many of /r/conspiracy's subscribers have expressed their dissatisfaction with both /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway and /u/Flytape on numerous occasions. The criticisms offered range from claims that /r/conspiracy's modteam are deliberately working to make "conspiracy theorists" look bad[13] to charges that /u/Flytape is a racist:



and a shill:



JTRIG (the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group) is a previously secret unit of the United Kingdom's signals intelligence agency Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ); its existence was revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden. These documents outline a strategy which includes a variety of information operations, including false flag operations (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else). [14][15]

The above exchange between /u/flytape and Anonymous took place in a subreddit called /r/TopMindsOfReddit, which is very similar to /r/conspiratard in that its surface-level purpose is to mock and ridicule "conspiracy theorists." (At least) one member of /r/conspiratard's mod team is a moderator of /r/TopMindsOfReddit, and /r/conspiratard is featured in the sidebar of /r/TopMindsOfReddit as a recommended subreddit.

With an examination of the above evidence that we have more than enough reason to view /u/flytape and /u/assuredlyathrowaway with extreme suspicion. There is also a lot of evidence which demonstrates that the moderators of subreddits dedicated to ridiculing "conspiracy theorists" are closely connected to /r/coontown and /r/rapingwomen as well as these moderators of /r/conspiracy:

     1. /u/duckvimes_, a moderator of /r/TopMindsOfReddit, is also a moderator of /r/Oppression alongside /u/go1dfish and /u/KrustyKoonKrackers. This means that /u/Flytape, a moderator of /r/conspiracy, and /u/duckvimes_, a moderator of /r/TopMindsOfReddit (a subreddit dedicated to mocking "conspiracy theorists") are both directly connected to /r/coontown and /r/rapingwomen through the same account.

     2. /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway is a moderator of /r/Oppression, and so at least one moderator of both /r/conspiracy and /r/TopMindsOfReddit are moderating /r/Oppression together, and both of them are also connected to /r/coontown and /r/rapingwomen through the same account. [16]

    3. The top moderator of /r/TopMindsOfReddit (/u/government_shill) co-moderates /r/BestOfAdminSmackdown with /u/Dropping_Fruits, a moderator of /r/Oppression. [17]
 
In my last post I discussed /u/Bipolarbear0, a moderator of /r/apple and /r/justshillthings who has promoted /r/conspiratard and /r/GMOmyths in /r/subredditoftheday. /u/Bipolarbear0 is also connected to /r/rapingwomen, /r/coontown, and the moderators of /r/conspiracy in multiple ways.

     1. /u/BipolarBear0 is directly connected to /u/KrustyKoonKrackers and /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway through /u/Fritzly.[19][20][21] /u/Fritzly is a moderator of /r/Videos (which has over 8 million subscribers) and /r/tifu (which has over 3 million subscribers), and also moderates /r/snew (alongside /u/go1dfish and /u/DylannStormRoof) and /r/Oppression (alongside /u/go1dfish, /u/KrustyKoonKrackers, and /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway).

     2. /u/BipolarBear0 is also a moderator of /r/conspiratardmythos, a "meta" subreddit which describes itself as a space for discussing "conspiracy theories" about /r/conspiratard as well as /u/BipolarBear0:



/u/BipolarBear0 moderates /r/conspiratardmythos alongside /u/Shredder13 (a moderator of /r/TopMindsOfReddit) and /u/david-me.[18] /u/david-me co-moderates at least four subreddits with /r/KrustyKoonKrackers: /r/TrueRedditDrama, /r/SRSsucks, /r/LaurelaiInAction, and /r/ProlapseVille [22][23][24][25]

/u/BipolarBear0 and /u/david-me also moderate /r/JustShillThings (featured in my last post) together along with /u/government_shill, the top moderator of /r/TopMindsOfReddit, making /r/JustShillThings another example of an "anti-conspiracy theory" subreddit which is closely tied to /r/rapingwomen and /r/coontown.[26]

In the next part of this series, we will examine how Reddit's administrators are connected to this network of subreddits and moderators.


CITATIONS:

[1] http://i.imgur.com/0y8vG1x.png?1
[2] http://www.buzzfeed.com/brandonwall/racist-reddit-group-embraces-alleged-charleston-shooting-man#.kazX4JKyx
[3] http://i.imgur.com/S0vt3v6.png?1
[4] http://i.imgur.com/FpO0v8t.png?1
[5] http://i.imgur.com/LRhxnLK.png?1
[6] http://i.imgur.com/35053SC.png?1
[7] http://i.imgur.com/1Am8ZyO.png?1
[8] http://i.imgur.com/Mp47oQU.png?1
[9] http://i.imgur.com/TEiRtiM.png
[10] http://i.imgur.com/lXQ70Hj.png?1
[11] WARNING - EXPLICIT (rape): http://i.imgur.com/s5CXG4y.png
[12] http://i.imgur.com/XgscAdn.png
[13] http://i.imgur.com/XEkmfQc.png
[14] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/22/controversial-gchq-unit-domestic-law-enforcement-propaganda/
[15] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
[16] http://i.imgur.com/YDRSoE0.png?1
[17] http://i.imgur.com/2ZzbqwN.png
[18] http://i.imgur.com/snA0PrB.png?1
[19] http://i.imgur.com/8QfVzJJ.png
[20] http://i.imgur.com/lvJwlCl.png
[21] http://i.imgur.com/roVV599.png
[22] http://i.imgur.com/5OZITFK.png?1
[23] http://i.imgur.com/hXRecod.png?1
[24] http://i.imgur.com/h6i6Tt8.png
[25] http://i.imgur.com/4AqcZMJ.png
[26] https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0iG8apUeBO3Od4nNFIXS6pyV_wXcZgFURwNivfft1xSI1TzcSdtV9gCtpwgERzyE1ayHmU09C3kcZXYdusDPrlTcGX8wyjiaLfHv954cRRVsJzM8CXKJNE63IN_moMYcLMrqVjx2_k_lW/s400/justshillthings+key.png