Russian disinformation peddlers trying to stay ahead of social media and tech companies cracking down on fake accounts just got caught by Reddit.
Reddit users last week were able to trace links posted to a pro-Trump community back to a Russian propaganda website that shares web infrastructure with the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). The links appeared to have been custom-made to appeal to a particular community, /r/The_Donald, which is known to be the most fervent and active in support of the president.
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The links in question appeared to come from the URLs GEOTUS.army and GEOTUS.band. GEOTUS is an acronym for the phrase “God Emperor of the United States,” a nickname for the president used on fringe message board 4chan and Reddit’s /r/The_Donald.
Those sites used a publicly available service called Rebrandly, which allows people and businesses to create custom and shortened URLs that then direct people back to another website. In this case, the GEOTUS links took users to pages from USA Really, which NBC News previously reported as having ties to known Russian propaganda web infrastructure.
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The connection between the GEOTUS links and USA Really was first found by a Reddit user who attempted to bring the information to light in a lengthy post, which attracted attention from the Reddit community and reached the website’s front page. Reddit is the fifth-most visited website in the U.S., according to web analytics firm Alexa.
Reddit has since banned USA Really, GEOTUS.band and GEOTUS.army.
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Reddit users and moderators — volunteers who oversee particular communities on Reddit — have played an integral role in rooting out propaganda ...