Technique T0151.011: Community Sub-Forum

Summary: Community Forum Platforms are made up of many Community Sub-Forums. Sub-Forums provide spaces for platform users to create a community based around any topic.

For example, Reddit (a popular Community Forum Platform) has over 138,000 “subreddits” (Community Sub-Forums), including 1082 unique cat-based communities.

Typically, Sub-Forums allow users post text, image, or video to them, and other platform users can up/downvote, or comment on it. Sub-forums may have their own extra rules alongside the platform’s global rules, enforced by community moderators.

While most Sub-Forums are made by users with Accounts on the Community Forum Platform, Sub-Forums can also be created by the platform itself.
Belongs to tactic stage: TA07

Incident	Descriptions given for this incident
I00101 Pro-Putin Disinformation Warriors Take War of Aggression to Reddit	This report looks at changes content posted to communities on Reddit (called Subreddits) after teams of voluntary moderators are replaced with what appear to be pro-Russian voices: The r/antiwar subreddit appears to be a very recent takeover target. With 12,900 members it is not the largest community on Reddit, but this does place it squarely within the top 5% of all communities in terms of membership. Three months ago a new moderator team was instated by subreddit head u/democracy101. Any posts documenting Russian aggression in Ukraine are now swiftly removed, while the board has been flooded with posts about how Ukraine is losing, or how American “neocons wrecked” the country. The pinned post from moderator u/n0ahbody proclaims: “People who call for an end to Russian aggressions but not the Western aggressions Russia is reacting to don’t really want peace.” This user takes the view that any negative opinion about Russia is “shaped by what the fanatically Russophobic MSM wants you to think,” and that the United States is not threatened by its neighbors. Russia is.” When u/n0ahbody took over the sub, the user posted a triumphant and vitriolic diatribe in another pro-Russia subreddit with some 33,500 members, r/EndlessWar. “We are making progress. We are purging the sub of all NAFO and NAFO-adjacent elements. Hundreds of them have been banned over the last 24 hours for various rule infractions, for being NAFO or NAFO-adjacent,” the user said, referencing the grassroots, pro-Ukrainian North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) meme movement. Several former users have reported they have indeed been banned from r/antiwar since the change in moderators. “If this subreddit cannot be explicitly against the invasion of Ukraine it will never truly be anti-war,” wrote one user Halcyon_Rein, in the antiwar subreddit on September 6. They then edited the post to say, “Edit: btw, I got f**king banned for this 💀💀💀” A community hosted on Reddit was taken over by new moderators (T0151.011: Community Sub-Forum, T0150.005: Compromised). These moderators removed content posted to the community which favoured Ukraine over Russia (T0146.004: Administrator Account, T0151.011: Community Sub-Forum, T0124: Suppress Opposition).

Incident

Descriptions given for this incident

I00101 Pro-Putin Disinformation Warriors Take War of Aggression to Reddit

This report looks at changes content posted to communities on Reddit (called Subreddits) after teams of voluntary moderators are replaced with what appear to be pro-Russian voices:

The r/antiwar subreddit appears to be a very recent takeover target. With 12,900 members it is not the largest community on Reddit, but this does place it squarely within the top 5% of all communities in terms of membership.

Three months ago a new moderator team was instated by subreddit head u/democracy101. Any posts documenting Russian aggression in Ukraine are now swiftly removed, while the board has been flooded with posts about how Ukraine is losing, or how American “neocons wrecked” the country.

The pinned post from moderator u/n0ahbody proclaims: “People who call for an end to Russian aggressions but not the Western aggressions Russia is reacting to don’t really want peace.” This user takes the view that any negative opinion about Russia is “shaped by what the fanatically Russophobic MSM wants you to think,” and that the United States is not threatened by its neighbors. Russia is.”

When u/n0ahbody took over the sub, the user posted a triumphant and vitriolic diatribe in another pro-Russia subreddit with some 33,500 members, r/EndlessWar. “We are making progress. We are purging the sub of all NAFO and NAFO-adjacent elements. Hundreds of them have been banned over the last 24 hours for various rule infractions, for being NAFO or NAFO-adjacent,” the user said, referencing the grassroots, pro-Ukrainian North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) meme movement.

Several former users have reported they have indeed been banned from r/antiwar since the change in moderators. “If this subreddit cannot be explicitly against the invasion of Ukraine it will never truly be anti-war,” wrote one user Halcyon_Rein, in the antiwar subreddit on September 6. They then edited the post to say, “Edit: btw, I got f**king banned for this 💀💀💀”

A community hosted on Reddit was taken over by new moderators (T0151.011: Community Sub-Forum, T0150.005: Compromised). These moderators removed content posted to the community which favoured Ukraine over Russia (T0146.004: Administrator Account, T0151.011: Community Sub-Forum, T0124: Suppress Opposition).

Counters	Response types

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Technique T0151.011: Community Sub-Forum

3.4 KiB

Raw Blame History