Nearly 1,000 Russian trolls were banned from Reddit - here's what they were posting about
These examples are taken from the top 20 most influential accounts, meaning the 20 with the most Reddit "karma" points.
As expected, unflattering depictions of Hillary Clinton were common on many of the banned accounts, including this one posted to a controversial subreddit called "The Donald."
Popular memes like this one were incorporated into many of the political sentiments.
A few celebrities made appearances in a lot of the troll-linked posts. This one decided to take aim at comedian and actress Amy Schumer.
Surprisingly, many of the troll accounts would occasionally post memes, news articles, images, or jokes that seemed to appeal to a more left-leaning audience, like this one. This is a common practice for state-sanctioned accounts attempting to seem more realistic, and hopefully slip through detection algorithms.
This particular user posted regularly about the advocacy group Black Lives Matter — mostly in a negative light — along with other less specifically-focused jokes like this one, meant to stir up conflict around American racial inequality.
Despite the unnerving nature of simply knowing these accounts were run by Russian trolls, some of the posts displayed genuine creativity and humor.
The current tension around American gun laws was also a common subject matter.
And many posts made appeals to common American conspiracy theories.
Because the posts about highly controversial political topics don't typically get many comments or likes, there were lots of posts like this one, that are designed to be relatable (and likable) in the effort to make the account look authentic and generate karma. This troll decided to pose as an "American University Grad." The broken English somewhat cracks the illusion.
After all, who on the Internet wouldn't upvote a photo of a cute puppy...
...or SNL and Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor Andy Samberg?
As expected, there were also several accounts solely dedicated to sharing "news" articles — many concerning rumors of Russian hacking — from sites with varying levels of journalistic authority, including a few well-known fake news generators like YourNewsWire.com.
You can learn more about the suspicious accounts banned by Reddit here.
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