Reddit is one of the most visited sites on the web. SimilarWeb estimates that last month it received nearly 4 billion visits. It receives millions of visits on a daily basis, often from a young, fairly tech-savvy audience.
It ranks #5 in terms of the most visited websites of the United States - and importantly most the audience (but not all of) is American.
Checking out the frontpage of Reddit over the past few weeks - and it has been eerily quiet about the genocide that Israel is carrying out in Gaza. And I believe pro-Israel accounts and bots are helping to suppress these stories.
What is the frontpage of Reddit and why is that important?
First, it's important to know what Reddit is and how it works. It's kind of a hybrid between a web forum and a social network. It's like a forum because there are many subreddits - these are like boards - dedicated to a huge range of topics, from hobbies to TV shows to locations, anything you can think of.
You can join a specific subreddit and submit (or consume) content. Content could be a meme you've made, or a piece of text you've written, a video you created, or whatever.
The frontpage of Reddit (as visible on 25/07)
Users within that subreddit might upvote or downvote your content. The more upvotes you get, the higher within that subreddit your content appears. People can downvote your content if they disagree with it. People can also comment on your posts (and these can also help to aid visibility of content, especially when it comes to visibility on Google - Google and Reddit have been in partnership for a while now).
Due to this partnership with Google, AI is being trained on Reddit data, meaning if you can influence Reddit, potentially you can also influence AI... so - from a political point of view, being able to influence and control the narrative on the Israel and Palestine "war" has become a big part of digital warfare.
Now, returning to how Reddit works, if your content gets submitted in a popular subreddit (some have millions of users subscribed to them), there's a big chance that your content can make it to the frontpage of Reddit meaning it's gone viral - it will then be seen by millions of people depending on how long it stays there.
So - ensuring content gets shared in the right type of subreddit (based on size, category and some other factors) is vital when it comes to giving your content the best chances of really being seen by a massive audience.
How is Reddit suppressing the Gaza genocide?
This is the challenge - I've gone through many iterations of the frontpage of Reddit over the past few weeks using the Web Archive- and am yet to see any example of relevent Israel/Gaza content being displayed.
Web Archive screenshot showing available backups of the frontpage of Reddit - note that within each day there are often several page versions available (because Reddit's frontpage is dynamic - it is regularly changing)
It's important to note here that the frontpage content you see will depend on your geographic location and your active subreddit subscriptions. So, if you are based in the UK you might see different frontpage content based on this factor, but if signed in you will also see a frontpage that features content of your subreddit subscriptions (this content might not actually have made it onto the actual frontpage of Reddit).
When you understand that the content you see on the homepage of Reddit is based on what people have - or haven't - upvoted (or which has been heavily downvoted) it's easy to see how some content *could* be suppressed.
If you have a group of users, all being paid to do a task, or aligned with the overall values of a movement (eg a group of Zionists) then they could easily coordinate to downvote content which contains coverage relating to the genocide in Gaza, or anything negative about Israel in general.
Bots can easily be setup (Reddit accounts with no attributed human that controls them) to manipulate based on downvoting specific content, or even upvoting content which aligns with their views.
I believe this has happened specifically when Palestine Action were proscribed by the UK Government a few weeks back. This news item was shared within /r/ukpolitics and /r/uknews and both had thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments, the "top" comments being very supportive of the news (which again aligns with what Israel would want).
Above we can see the most upvoted comment here on this piece of news (with 509 votes).
How Comments can also be used to Manipulate and Steer the Conversation on Reddit
Related to the above - even if a potentially divisive or negative story gets good traction on Reddit, and there's a concern that it could be damaging for Israel's narrative, what they can do is to ensure they are controlling or manipulating the conversation.
The funny thing with Reddit is this - despite it being made up largely of external links (many top submissions are actually news stories) - many people don't even bother to read the story that has been linked. They just read the headline and they jump to the comments section, and this is where they spend time engaging.
This is a critical point. People might not engage with the article directly but jump to the comments - so if someone can share a comment that helps to plant doubt, or helps to counter what the headline is suggesting, or something else to help murken the waters, then as far as they're concerned, job done.
Comments can also be up or downvoted - so all they need to do is write a comment that aligns with the narrative they are trying to create, and then get their botfarm to upvote this comment to give it top position in the page. This will be the first thing someone sees when exploring the comments section, and so it's easy to see the negative influence that can be had.
When reading the submissions around Palestine Action's proscription, I was surprised that I couldn't see any that were in any shape disappointed by the news. This went completely against what I have seen on the independent outlets that I do use (clearly this action went against the freedom of a citizens rights). So basically it is clear to me that the comments section under these stories have been manipulated to portray Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
Who else is covering Reddit's suppression of the Genocide?
I tried looking online to see if anyone else is speaking about this - but struggled to find anything.
The only stories I did find were written in 2022 (!) speaking out about this very topic - https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/otp-reddit-allegedly-censor-pro-palestine-news-and-threads-by-users-violating-itys-own-online-democracy-slogan/
https://www.newarab.com/opinion/reddits-silencing-pro-palestine-speech-betrays-its-ethos
How to Prove this Suppression is Taking Place on Reddit?
I think this is partly the issue - it is quite hard to prove that ths suppression is taking place. We could try sharing content and watching to see what happens, but it's hard to say conclusively that even if it fails to get any kind of traction, that it is being artificially demoted. We don't have insights into how the algorithm works, and even if we did, it would still be hard to prove this is going on.
What I would love to do is figure out a way to extract all stories from the frontpage of Reddit over a certain period of time (eg the last 2 years) and assess when or if Palestine/Gaza stories have ever been succeeded in reaching the frontpage.
Why would Israel Suppress Coverage of the Genocide on Reddit (which is largely US focused?)
This is fairly simple to answer - Israel is an ally of the US and it relies a lot on the support of America. If Americans were to see what is going on right now in Gaza, they might think very differently upon this relationship. Many Americans might be keen to see this relationship and support end - as many UK citizens currently feel about their own relationship with Israel.
Suppressing or filtering this content in the digital world has become a huge undertaking. This is why Israel, with its many tech connections, have been working overtime to try and control this, across all forms of social media, not just Reddit.
Just a few days ago I shared how the Israel Government are running ads on Google, targeting users in the US, sharing more hateful propaganda. And this is the goal - to keep portraying Palestine as the enemy, and to help justify their genocidal actions.
For now perhaps the best course of action is to try sharing more content on Reddit, and upvoting/supporting those who are trying to share real coverage of what is actively taking place right now - the intentional starvation of thousands of innocent Palestinian children, men and women.
Has your content been suppressed on Reddit - share your examples
Have you tried speaking out about the genocide on Reddit, or sharing anything considered pro-Palestine, or which could be considered damaging to the state of Israel? Submit your examples at the following website - share your experience of Reddit's censorship of Gaza.
I think what needs further investigation is the moderation of these subreddits. The moderator at unitedkingdom admitted they shadowbanned my account and my contributions at ukpolitics are consistently removed for dubious reasons when anti-Palestinian content is allowed to remain. Moderators at worldnews for example only allow zionist narratives as well - users publishing stories and comments that provide news about Palestinian suffering and Israeli crimes are consistently removed and users are outright banned.