I’ve repeatedly noticed what feels like coordinated or astroturfed activity on r/worldnews. At some point, the overall tone of r/worldnews seemed to change very suddenly. It wasn’t limited to particular posts or stories. Its a shift in the responses to things, and a heavy shift in the polarity of upvotes and downvotes over topics that have held fairly static consensus until the shift. What viewpoints were being promoted, challenged, upvoted, or buried appeared to shift across the subreddit more broadly as well.

I don’t want to assume that this necessarily means foreign-funded bots/accounts. (Brigading, changing news coverage, coordinated human users, moderation decisions, or ordinary shifts in public opinion could produce similar effects)

Still... with what I consider to be sufficient geopolitical maturity/sensibilities, some of the patterns feel predictable enough that I’m curious whether they have been studied or documented. Or if safety rails exist for sub this large and influential?

A few questions up for discussion:

What kinds of evidence would help distinguish normal Reddit behavior from a coordinated influence campaign?

Has anyone conducted a systematic analysis of this on r/worldnews, or noticed specific recurring patterns?

Should there be mechanisms that require open posting history to allow readers to validate if an account focuses almost exclusively on one country or conflict?

If the same narratives appearing across several subreddits at once does Reddit have a mechanism to detect waves?

Are there checks and balances against mod takeovers? What qualifies a moderator?

If there is a coordinated campaign, can anything really be done?

Am I just noticing a bear shitting in the woods and this is the widely acknowledged nature of r/worldnews ?

Disclaimer: Not starting a witch-hunt. Just a sincere epistemological line of questioning.

How do I revert this change to the way it was before? I do not want algorithmic recommendations of posts from different subreddits, I want my old home page back.

Who came up with the fucking idea that swiping up up on a post, which used to open the comment section on the mobile app, now yeets you to a different, completely unrelated post, instead of showing you details and comments on the post you were interacting with?

It always worked with that swipe gesture, I can’t count how many times I’ve accidentally swiped away from a post in the last days.
Now I have to tap the screen to bring up the overlay, then tap again on the OP/title to bring up the comments. All for a new, shitty, TikTok-style swiping that no one asked for.

I’ve also checked, I could not find a setting in the app to regulate this.

Edit: For clarification, I’m referring to full-screen image or video posts, on which, if you swiped up, it would bring up the comments and UI.

I mostly use Old Reddit, but every so often I switch over to the New Reddit interface to access some missing features, and one of the most annoying "features" that's rolled out lately is that it'll suggest "better" communities for you to submit your posts to.

This feature has never once given me any worthwhile suggestions. Either it suggests subs I've already thought about and/or posted to, or it just suggests crap.

chat buttons are gone. new reddit just pushes ads and clutter. i may still mod a few places but i think i'm about done with this mess.

Yes, you read that question right, I think of the current default avatar like that and many others, is this intentional and why can't it be like it at least has underpants by default? Ugh, human-like nudity, is it just me, I don't like naked aliens, or what? Also, why are so many random almost meaningless names on Reddit?

Does anyone know if there is a way to get the old behavior back? I do not want these garbage algorithmic recommendations front and center over my chosen subs.

I just started over with a new Reddit account and the default subs I'm getting in the mobile app are absolutely infuriating.

Every day I click "show less like this" on a dozen or more subs, and it seems like more extremely random subs get pushed back into my feed to replace them.

I didn't even know there were so many professional wrestling subs, and I don't even want to know why they're defaults.

Is there ANY way to start with a clean slate and only join the subs I want to see? This is madness

Is Reddit making it completely obvious that nobody bothers to read more than the title before commenting? Seriously, having to click "Read more" on every single post, even relatively short ones is getting old fast. For a site that is 50% about reading what other people wrote, I struggle to think of a more annoying design feature. This is on the mobile website, I still use old reddit on a PC so I haven't seen it elsewhere.

Bitch ass platforms have started doing this and I fucking hate it, because now if I need a long screenshot it's plagued by this bullshit.

For those unfamiliar with how to interact with the largest subreddit in the hair category

So In my headset I’m trying to change my home/environment to the moon! So at night I can watch YouTube while on the moon but I don’t know how to do could someone help me?