In the wake of new reports that Reddit and Tumblr may have been wielded by Russian hackers to spread misinformation in 2016, the Senate Intelligence Committee plans to interview representatives of both companies in coming weeks. The Washington Post writes:
Staffers for lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a briefing with Tumblr soon, and they’re seeking more information from Reddit after it acknowledged Monday it shuttered hundreds of suspicious accounts in 2015 and 2016, according to a person close to the panel who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Triggering the Senate’s new interest is a trove of documents first reported by the Daily Beast last week. It found at least 21 accounts on Tumblr had ties to the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin troll farm that was the focus of an indictment last month by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Meanwhile, the research agency’s content flourished on Reddit topic pages, called subreddits, related to then-candidate Donald Trump and Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton.
Reddit officials revealed in a post Monday that Russia had influenced the site's users through ads, direct propaganda posted by Russians, and indirect propaganda shared by American users. Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman wrote:
...indirect propaganda, is the most complex. For example, the Twitter account @TEN_GOP is now known to be a Russian agent. @TEN_GOP’s Tweets were amplified by thousands of Reddit users, and sadly, from everything we can tell, these users are mostly American, and appear to be unwittingly promoting Russian propaganda. I believe the biggest risk we face as Americans is our own ability to discern reality from nonsense, and this is a burden we all bear.
Reddit and Tumblr have now joined other tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google in their increasingly public battle to confront Russia’s influence in U.S. elections through their platforms. If Facebook is any gauge, the results are less than inspiring.