Reddit Bans 61 Accounts, Citing 'Coordinated' Russian Campaign To Interfere In UK Vote (stripes.com) 135
"The prospect of Russian interference in Britain's election flared anew Saturday after the social media platform Reddit concluded that people from Russia leaked confidential British government documents on Brexit trade talks just days before the general U.K. vote," reports the Associated Press:
Reddit said in a statement that it has banned 61 accounts suspected of violating policies against vote manipulation. It said the suspect accounts shared the same pattern of activity as a Russian interference operation dubbed "Secondary Infektion" that was uncovered earlier this year.
Reddit investigated the leak after the documents became public during the campaign for Thursday's election, which will determine the country's future relationship with the European Union. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs. Reddit said it believed the documents were leaked as "part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia."
"We were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination," Reddit said...
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan told the BBC that the government is "looking for and monitoring" anything that might suggest interference in the British election. "From what was being put on that (Reddit) website, those who seem to know about these things say that it seems to have all the hallmarks of some form of interference,"" Morgan said.
"And if that is the case, that obviously is extremely serious."
Reddit investigated the leak after the documents became public during the campaign for Thursday's election, which will determine the country's future relationship with the European Union. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs. Reddit said it believed the documents were leaked as "part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia."
"We were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination," Reddit said...
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan told the BBC that the government is "looking for and monitoring" anything that might suggest interference in the British election. "From what was being put on that (Reddit) website, those who seem to know about these things say that it seems to have all the hallmarks of some form of interference,"" Morgan said.
"And if that is the case, that obviously is extremely serious."
Just 4 million accounts left (Score:4, Funny)
They should have started with the most influential (Score:2)
That would be the one of Emmanuel Goldstein, no?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it'll pause them for 20 milliseconds (Score:2)
That said, Reddit is basically useless for political discussion. If you post anything that isn't completely inline with what the mods of the forum in question believe they just ban you. It's a massive circle jerk. No useful or interesting conversations happen there, but on the plus side _nothing_ happens there. It's a place you go to have your existing ideas reinforced as opposed to challenged.
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So, like the rest of the web, then? Business as usual, carry on.
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Oh no, it's far worse, instant pile. Nearly every thread populated by closed minded circle jerkers, every one else modded out. Try it, it is quite amusing and why so many, many threads are pretty much devoid of interaction. Each cluster forming it's own. Easy to delete those suspected Russians, they were all probably active in the same threads, them and only them there.
This silly crap is still going on. Anything can be made to seem like anything on the internet, with regard to percentages. A billion users
Re: Well, that will give them pause! (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot didn't ban 'anonymous' accounts to get rid of trolls. They did it to get rid of APK.
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Not APK, I bet they wanted to get rid of the Nazi spam.
It also really improved moderation for a while, because people were not wasting mod points on Nazi spam (and APK) so they were modding up good comments and undoing some of the trolling.
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It also really improved moderation for a while, because people were not wasting mod points on Nazi spam (and APK) so they were modding up good comments and undoing some of the trolling.
I still regularly see the three swastikas (and the trump 2020 banners) when I click down into discussions. Maybe they should work on the spam filter. It doesn't even seem to check for not enough whitespace?
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It didn't get rid of all of it and some can't back when the ban was lifted.
I don't know why APK doesn't register. What was his objection?
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I don't know why APK doesn't register. What was his objection?
Who knows? I don't even understand time cube, what hope do I have of understanding APK?
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I don't know why APK doesn't register. What was his objection?
APK would have gotten mod-bombed down to permanent -1 status.
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So... Pretty much the same as being an AC for him then.
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Oh, not at all! Permanent -1 accounts have a lot of limitations.
LESS visibility even than posts that start at 0.
You have a pretty restrictive daily limit to the number of posts you can make, total.
Never get mod points.
Pretty much no way out of the hole.
Yeah, pretty sure he wants to stay anon.
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APK doesn't want to be logged by Slashdot to a specific IP or anything of the sort. He appears to have use multiple proxies to avoid the AC post limit under the old system, so there's no telling why he's so shy about the registration process (or registering multiple accounts, like the Nazi spammers). Maybe he's just being lazy, or maybe Slashdot shadowbanned most of his old IPs to keep him out of the new system.
Re: Well, that will give them pause! (Score:1, Troll)
Slashdot's shady corporate overlords stole our traditional freedom on the pretext of fighting Nazis. Yet we still have swastika spam; still have openly pro-eugenics forced-vax Nazis and similar antidemocratic apologists for the iron boot; still have Anonymous Coward hurling sophomoric insults and making spurious threats of violence.
The big difference now? Everything is more tightly monitored and logged. With the chilling effect that implies. And some accounts are more equal than others, allowed to post AC
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Yet we still have swastika spam; still have openly pro-eugenics forced-vax Nazis and similar antidemocratic apologists for the iron boot; still have Anonymous Coward hurling sophomoric insults and making spurious threats of violence.
Sounds like someone (you) want some speech suppressed, while at the same time bemoaning your own loss of free speech, allegedly.
Freedom of Speech means you also get an earful of shit you don't agree with. Don't like it? Go somewhere else where the speech doesn't offend you personally.
Don't like hearing that there are forced vaccine laws? Accept the reality, or go somewhere where no one is allowed to say there should be forced vaccine laws.
Don't like ACs lobbing grade-school insults? Set your threshold t
Re: Well, that will give them pause! (Score:1)
"Sounds like someone (you) want some speech suppressed, while at the same time bemoaning your own loss of free speech, allegedly."
Is that really what you saw in my post? No it's not. I don't believe you. You're just triggered because of my apostasy from the One True Church of the Forced Vax.
Any damned fool can see what I was saying. Our freedom was stolen on the flimsy pretext of protecting us from Nazis and trolls. So we lost our freedom, we lost what once made Slashdot great - but we still have both trol
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Nazi spam is still here. It is agruably worse than before. We did lose some of the goatse.cx nonsense posting (what was up with that?) and some of the first post/frosty piss posting. Also that guy who kept asking nerds to lick his balls is gone.
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Dude, I know you're bitter about living in a trailer at taxpayer expense, but hating people for their race isn't the way to improve your life. Get help for your drug habit, get a job, and try to redeem yourself as a human being. You don't have to be as wretched as you are today for the rest of your life.
-jcr
nice right wing fundamentalistic put down ;~) the truth is most of us trailer dwellers work at low end jobs all the while being exploited by the arrogant self serving irresponsible and unproductive upper class
"Russian hackers"... (Score:1)
Is there anything they can't interfere in...
Re:"Russian hackers"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump's ability to lie?
Re: "Russian hackers"... (Score:2)
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Re: "Russian hackers"... (Score:4, Informative)
Trump [usatoday.com]
Lies [pbs.org]
About [factcheck.org]
Jobs [nymag.com]
But in the 2 minutes it took to put all those job related lies together, i also found this nugget from those America hating leftists at Forbes:
Trump Has Created 1.5 Million Fewer Jobs Than Obama
https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]
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Trump Has Created 1.5 Million Fewer Jobs Than Obama
We can't really compare side-by-side scores on that one until Trump has finished his second term.
Re: "Russian hackers"... (Score:2)
"as they evidently can't even keep piles of shit off the streets of major cities where they have control. Sad."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Going down the list, San Diego!!!... Jacksonville... Forth Worth... any in particular you want to hold up as an example for democrats? Any particular strategy the rest of them should follow? Pass more laws to hide homelessness?
NOT what it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
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NATO, some NGO, the UK gov, the mil, private sector workers, academics.... should stop funny memes, links, comments, art?
Funny memes, links, comments, art that people created, people saw and people shared... hours of funny and creative work lost due to the political whims of a censor..
A person makes something fun, the people looking at it have the ability to move on, to enjoy, to link, to comment, to LOL...
but under political cen
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The light these leaks err I mean the truth and spreading the truth shed on the situation puts the Leavers into a bad position and makes the Remainers look better.
It's interesting enough that alleged Russian trolls give the Remainers some leverage here all while their main goal was to sow discordance in favour of driving the UK and EU apart.
And since you hate the EU
Re: NOT what it seems (Score:4, Informative)
Pharmaceuticals are hardly a free market. You can choose to take your drugs, or you can choose to suffer or even die. With the high cost drugs, competition is prohibited due to the monopoly granted by parents. Yes, drug development costs are high, but many drug companies are price gouging: tell me the justification of charging $600 for an EpiPen.
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tell me the justification of charging $600 for an EpiPen.
The justification is that the person who is responsible for making the EpiPen wants more money.
That was simple, even if ethically questionable.
Look, Capitalism is a great way to motivate people; however, there should be sane and rational laws in place to limit the damage that a Capitalist system brings about. We are lacking those laws in relation to health care.
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And here you have to keep in mind that one of the biggies for the Leavers was that the money they would not longer waste on the EU would be invested in their NHS.
Censoring that information is doing exactly the opposite of saving the system from US prices.
Censoring that information is keeping this trade deal, that looks like it throws their national health service under the bus, a sec
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Sorry, but, though the US and UK governments did send truthful information, military counterintelligence units routinely spread lies and disinformation in order to sow dissent to destabilize Russia's (former USSR's) government and economy. We tend to only hit North Korea with the truth because, that's bad enough; lies would have to be too far-fetched to be believable.
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You are looking at this internationally and without bias which can't be done when analysing a domestic situation.
There is nothing different about USA > Russia as there is in Russia > USA. Not in action. Not in propaganda. No in interference. And most critically the piece you seem to be missing: Not in domestic response. Russia made efforts to curb USB interference. They locked out companies, they shaddow banned foreign accounts on their VK social media platform. The RT was in full overdrive countering
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If there is nothing wrong in targeting Russia in order to help Yeltsin or hinder his direct successor Putin in an act of betrayal of pro-American forces in Russia then there is nothing wrong for Russia to do the same.
You missed my point. Whether something is wrong or not is entirely in the eye of the beholder. There is no double standard, there is only a location dependent and situation dependent standard.
Kind of like how I don't want to get hurt so I punch my attacker in the face. The attacker likely has a similar philosophy. In neither case it's a double standard.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're probably joking as your UID is too low for you to be clueless but, for millennials or younger here's the actual answer: USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka Soviet or Communist (actually Stalinist) Russia before it collapsed.
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No. The USSR was a union of Russia and many other states (now countries), such as Ukraine, Turkmenistan to name two.
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You do realise that Stalin died in 1953 and destalinisation started like four days after he croaked?
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Strengthening Russia was exactly what ended the USSR.
Independent Russia is far from perfect but it is better than what came before.
Re: NOT what it seems (Score:2)
US and UK never saw anything wrong about targeting Russians with propaganda, either in covert or explicit way
don't speak for everyone; I've always had a problem with it. Countries need to mind their own business and stay out of the affairs of others, unless specifically asked.
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So if Hitler is amassing V2's and next gen military tech, you're going to tell your leaders to overlook it?
Re:NOT what it seems (Score:4, Informative)
It's not really propaganda when it's just the government own secret negotiations that they denied were happening being leaked. It's different to say the Clinton email leaks because this time there is actually something there, it's hard evidence of low medicine prices being bartered away for a post-brexit trade deal.
Sadly we live in an age where vital information like this has to be leaked, and by Russia. It's a failure of our own democratic system that this kind of information was not published under transparency rules. The government is making deals with a foreign power on our behalf, we have a right to know about it.
Unfortunately a lot of people are just hell bent on making brexit happen and can't see past it. They don't think about what another 5 years of Boris will do to us, or what brexit will do to us, they just want it to happen on the assumption that everything will be wonderful afterwards. Voting tactically is the best way to stop those loons.
Re:NOT what it seems (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, Brexit does get a disruptive member out of the EU, so not everything is bad about it.
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One down..... 7 or 8 to go?
Its when the French people decide to leave the EU that things will get really interesting.
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That is highly unlikely. Matter of fact, the other good thing about Brexit is that it made even the French far right realise that leaving the EU would be stupid.
The UK is hands down the most disruptive member and with them gone, the other two, whose shenanigans have been up to this point supported by the UK, will probably eat a humble pie.
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Don't believe it. Even the UK doesn't have a year's worth of street riots going on.
The Dutch farmers are protesting and there have been protests in many other countries too.
The Visegrad countries are also very unhappy with the lack of EU accountability and democracy too.
The French are actually very eurosceptic, even the referendum to adopt the euro was so close it makes the Brexit one look like a landslide (but it was the "right" result so nobody cares to re-run it)
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I despise a lot of what you say; however, what you just said is amazingly rational and reasonable. There is some part of your foundational logic that is broken, but that did not affect what you said here. Very well said.
Re:NOT what it seems (Score:5, Informative)
Right, they voted to exit the EU. Not to sell the NHS to the United States, or adopt US length drug patents so we can't use cheaper generics any more.
That's the basic problem with the brexit referendum. It was not made clear what "leave" meant, and even now the various leave factions can't decide. Farage called Boris's deal "not brexit", and he himself has changed his mind from "Norway style EEA membership" to "ultra hard crash out" in the space of 3 years.
If there had been a clear plan to vote on it could have been implemented. The Vote Leave leaflet was pure fantasy, it even suggesting negotiating the withdrawal agreement and future trade deal before even triggering Article 50.
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That's the basic problem with the brexit referendum. It was not made clear what "leave" meant...
It seems even worse than that, from what I've read. It wasn't just *unclear* what leave meant, it was that the leave proponents were travelling around the country portraying leave as whatever the local people wanted. If they were talking to older people, leave meant massive funding for the NHS. If they were talking to young people, leave meant more jobs for citizens because foreigners would no longer be taking them all up. If they were talking to business owners, leave meant more profit because their produc
Re:NOT what it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents are supposed to grant a temporary exclusive right over inventions in order to encourage innovation. They are not meant to last forever, or near as.
The UK hasn't sold out to big pharmaceutical companies. Because we value the NHS so much it's been impossible for politicians to so that so far, but brexit presents an opportunity for them. They know we will be on our knees after it happens, desperate for a trade deal and if Boris has a decent majority unable to do anything about it before it's too late.
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Patents are supposed to grant a temporary exclusive right over inventions in order to encourage innovation. They are not meant to last forever, or near as.
Yeah yeah, and copyright was supposed to be a short period of exclusivity to incentivize the creation of new works and not last forever either. Now Copyrights are "property" to be bought and sold, are used to keep works OUT of the public sphere, and last, as Mary Bono once said, "forever minus one day."
Re:NOT what it seems (Score:4, Insightful)
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Buy from the US private sector, buy from the UK private sector...
Set up a UK gov factory and produce UK gov brand pharmaceutical products...
Buy from Communist China, India... Germany... Ireland?
Re "UK publicly funded research start charging the rest of the world for their results"... that is something for the UK gov to try... if they wanted...
or to keep virtue signalling with free support for nations that cant afford a medical system
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The US provides almost 50% of all worldwide drug R&D funding.
The UK provides about about 5% - which puts them around 4th or 5th in the world, I suppose.
Basically, medical R&D is the US, China, Japan... and the rest of the world leeches off of them.
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The UK gov is free to find its own private sector medical factory system and pay for its own university system to do actual "research"...
That's a factually correct statement, yet one which has absolutely zero to do with the topic at hand or the issues being faced with Brexit.
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Yes, you have to pay for a factory and workers but, you don't have to pay tens of billions of dollars/pounds per year in executive pay, bonuses, and perks.
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Thats for the US free market to set and nations like the UK to pay.
Cant pay? The US will have to find new markets, lower prices...
The UK can set up its own gov " factory and workers" to make products as needed.
Buy from India, Communist China...
The UK gov does not get to set private sector US prices...
Any gov outside the USA can accept the "billions of dollars/pounds per year in executive p
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External influence is nothing compared to the insidious tactics of the domestic parties fighting for even more power right now.
External influence supports one of those insidious domestic parties. It's all part of the same problem.
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Fun Game of 'Change The Source'. (Score:3, Interesting)
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." [wikipedia.org].
The source of the 'influencing posts' is irrelevant. The internet is supposed to be a global unifying medium.
Can you imagine the outrage if the source was pigeon-holed differently? Change 'Russian' for 'Chinese' or 'American'. Change it from a country to a religion - 'Islamic' or 'Jewish'. Change it to a race - 'White' or 'Black. The content being posted remains the same, but the 'reaction' to it varies wildly.
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So were the leaks real or were they forged? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the leaked info is real, then are they merely making a case (albeit in dramatic fashion) that information must be hidden from voters .... to protect democracy?
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Depends on who the "seem to know about these things say" are...
Private sector staff with their own political side to support...
MI6? MI6? GCHQ? NSA? NATO? Some UK NGO? Some well funded EU based NGO? A think tank? The UK mil? Random university experts?
Ex and former UK mil now working as "contractors"?
Who gets to set what can be seen, understood, LOL at, turned into a meme, a cartoon, political news?
Re:So were the leaks real or were they forged? (Score:5, Informative)
The Tories have admitted that they are real. They have accepted that they are genuine and are just trying to lie about it by pointing out that the NHS is barely mentioned. There is a kernel of truth in that, but as has been pointed out direct sale of the NHS is not the primary issue, patents are.
If drug patents are extended to match US patent terms then the NHS won't be able to buy generic medicines and will end up paying many multiples of the generic price.
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US products can get US patent terms... the UK is free to accept, free to walk away, free to try India, Communist China...
Re "won't be able to buy generic medicines".. that was the UK system set up by UK experts over decades..
The UK was free to buy into US services, free to get gov backed UK production lines, support the UK private s
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The main target here is Corbyn. It's not so much about Brexit. There has been a high intensity campaign against him for years.
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/1... [thegrayzone.com]
https://www.dailymaverick.co.z... [dailymaverick.co.za]
"looking for and monitoring" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because the UK government has such an incredible track record when it comes to understanding all things 'cyber' ;)
There's somewhat of an impasse between the Conservative party and the Labour party that is preventing direct finger pointing and point scoring for the Conservatives. If it weren't for the withheld report on Russian interference - the report the Conservatives refuse to release, then the Conservatives would surely be making hay over how Labour acquired the NHS dossier that points to trade deals with the US.
Of course, this hasn't stopped our toxic British press from once again bashing the Labour party. ;)
It also isn't going to stop the almost completely unregulated social media campaigns both parties are cranking up to volume 11.
To our liberal minded friends across the pond, this is our version of a 'Trump' moment, wish us all luck...
Re:"looking for and monitoring" (Score:5, Informative)
looking from the outside so my view might be wrong.. but to me it seems that your situation in the UK is worse than the US situation.
That is because in the US it is harder to bypass constitutional things due to the way things are "protected" thus Trump, even when Republicans had a majority in both houses was limited in what he could break.
But in the UK, a prime minister with a majority, specially if it i a big enough majority to ignore any "rebels" in the own party can change any law.
Thus Boris, if he wins enough can do things like get rid of the to him annoying supreme court that has insisted that he actually follow the law, leave EU with no deal and whatever else he feels like.
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The last line of defence in the UK is the courts. That's why the Tory manifesto says they want to "review" the powers of the courts to hold Parliament and the Prime Minister to the law.
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Should the UK courts have another say on what the UK voted for?
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If one of the other powers does shit that breaks the law, the judiciary's duty is to interpret and apply the law.
The real wrong here (Score:1, Insightful)
Why the celebration of UK censorship? (Score:1)
Now news, links, comments are getting removed by the US gov? UK gov? Some cyber brand for the UK gov?
How very
A celebration of returning to more use of a D notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ?
Letting some US company select comments, news, links, art?
The US gov? NATO? The UK gov? Experts?
How about some US style freedom of speech a
I feel like I've seen this before (Score:2, Interesting)
Has "Reddit" already forgotten when they "identified" the Boston Bomber - and ended up harassing and threatening an innocent family?
But, hey! Let's have random internet mods using their IP address lists to do media analysis, examine political campaign law, and in-depth predictions of social movements based on 'news reports'! What could possibly go wrong?
Reddit is a joke (Score:1)
It's so toothless that the last time I was “detected”, it was for the totally wrong accounts, and the ban only lasted 3 days.
There is always a way around censorship.
Put on your tin foil hat, its the reds! (Score:2)
For the record: I'm not disagreeing nor agreeing with Reddit's views here. I simply found it interesting, that this is precisely the same as any other conspiracy theory:
Somebody states that there was a nefarious conspiracy by "them". And states that there is massive proof out there, but won't provide said original data for verification.
(Is archive.org capable of helping out here?)
That doesn't make it wrong. But not right either.
*Just completely useless.*
Except to note the side and the agenda of the speaker.
P.S.: Yas, dad waz a debilerayete tie-poe... (Score:2)
... in the subject line.
To make it more authentic. :)
If we like it, it's "whistleblowing" (Score:4, Insightful)
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The truth is exactly that cartoonish version of it. In the UK there have been many accusations that Corbyn is a russian asset. In the US the same accusations are being readied against Sanders, Gabbard, Stein , although there the campaign is only at an early stage.
CIA guy Ciaramella on the other hand is called a whistleblower for doing what the CIA asks him to do.
Are they interfering with the elections by paying (Score:1)
I call cyber bullshit on this story (Score:1)
This being designed to distract from the real story, the fact that the conservative government discussed selling off the more lucrative parts of the NHS to the US pharmaceutical cartel.