Reddit Users Declare War On Hillary’s and Elon Musk’s Paid Internet Trolls
Reddit users (also known as redditors) are growing increasingly angry at pro-Hillary Clinton political action committee (PAC) Correct The Record over its efforts to promote a pro-Hillary narrative on the site.
Redditors are especially concerned that Correct The Record’s paid internet commenters are suppressing revelations from WikiLeaks’ release of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails, which have produced a flood of damaging revelations about the Clinton campaign.
A Reddit mascot is shown at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, California April 15, 2014. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith Reddit, which describes itself as “a source for what’s new and popular on the web” is divided into thousands of “subreddits,” which the site describes as “sub-communities, each focused on a specific topic.”
Whether or not a post does well on Reddit (and, consequently, how large of an audience it reaches) largely depends on how many “upvotes” and “downvotes” it receives.
Correct The Record is open about its efforts to combat “lies and misleading narratives about Secretary Hillary Clinton” on Reddit, to which it devoted one million dollars.
A coordinated effort to “downvote” a post could keep it from reaching a large audience on the site.
Due to the anonymity the site provides its users, however, it’s impossible to know the extent of Correct The Record’s Reddit campaign.
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But some Redditors are nevertheless sure that the PAC is actively trying to suppress negative stories about Hillary Clinton from the Podesta emails.
One community where Correct The Record appears to be unpopular is the subreddit /r/WikiLeaks, which has more than 60,000 subscribers and is devoted to WikiLeaks-related news and topics.
“It looks like CTR is out in force and getting smarter. Don’t waste your time arguing, just dig!” one user posted on /r/WikiLeaks Wednesday, adding: “Don’t let them eat up your time. Get to work digging or spreading. They’re wasting cash on man hours, don’t let them eat up yours.”
The PAC is similarly unpopular on the subreddit /r/DNCLeaks, which was originally devoted to crowdsourcing findings from WikiLeaks’ release of emails from the Democratic National Committee but has since been repurposed to crowdsourcing revelations from the Podesta emails.
That subreddit has more than 17,000 subscribers and averages 200 new subscribers every day, one of the moderators told The Daily Caller.
One of the top posts on /r/DNCLeaks right now states, “CTR is in here heavy today. Make sure you are generous with your upvotes and downvotes to counteract these jerks.” That post currently has 1,143 points (the number of upvotes a post receives, minus the number of downvotes).
“I think they are making a final 2 week desperate push for their terrible candidate,” reads one of the post’s top comments, from a Redditor who goes by the username “SchlangeHatRecht.”
“Stupid CTR slaves… Get a life and/or a conscience instead of being a propaganda slave for a power that apparantly needs propaganda,” another user –“letusfake” — commented.
“CTR is being shifty. They downvote comments to ‘1’ but not below so it doesn’t look like them shilling. They’re trying to make us seem low energy; we’re not. We’re MAGA!” reads one popular post on subreddit /r/The_Donald, which is the largest pro-Trump subreddit on the site with more than 240,000 subscribers.
“CTR Downvoted the HELL out of my post proving the Podesta emails are verified to be 100% real and accurate. Here’s the PROOF again. (don’t let them downvote it again)” another person posted on /r/The_Donald on Thursday.
Whether or not, Correct The Record is doing what some Redditors say they’re doing — the PAC didn’t respond to an interview request from TheDC by press time — many reddit users believe the group is indeed suppressing negative stories about Hillary from the Podesta emails.
And it doesn’t look like those beliefs will change anytime soon.
In the words of redditor “sockselgato,” “CTR is here to stay, even after this bad joke of an election and it is our duty as responsible and truth-abiding citizens to quash this wretched Thinkpol into oblivion.”