r/technology • u/Well_Socialized • 23d ago

Social Media Reddit Is Restricting Luigi Mangione Discourse—but It’s Even Weirder Than That: The website is attacking the users that made it the front page of the internet.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250313203719/https://slate.com/technology/2025/03/reddit-elon-musk-luigi-mangione-censorship.html
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u/joecool42069 23d ago

Reddit has what, 15 years of analytics? I bet they can see civil unrest coming. You can smell it in the air.

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u/LittleMsSavoirFaire 23d ago

It's the last major platform not tied to personal identities

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u/joecool42069 23d ago

my bet is they are. there's more information than just your username. The IP addresses you come from. The Subreddits you interact with. Cross correlate with metadata from ads that were presented to you from other sites. I wouldn't doubt for a moment if someone told me reddit was able to resolve our usernames down to our real identities.

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u/EveroneWantsMyD 23d ago edited 23d ago

I’m certain you and I could figure out most peoples socials and identities with a little hard work and a search bar. I don’t think people are unaware that Reddit could easily figure out who you are.

But a social media platform where its users don’t use their actual names with a community that doesn’t post about their own lives with family pictures and dinner selfies is rare these days.

I think that was the point the comment your replying to was trying to make. What someone might post on their somewhat anonymous reddit account might be different than what they’d post on the social platform that has their face, interests, and people they actually know.

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u/OperaSona 23d ago

The thing about being "doxxable" is, people don't really want to make it too easy, but at the same time they don't want to be unable to share any personal information.

  • You might be okay with people knowing exactly who you are in every single one of your posts.
  • If not, you might be okay with people being able to go through your history and find your name here or there because you sometimes crosspost on reddit from some other social of yours or whatever.
  • If not, you might be okay with some of your posts exposing enough information about you that someone motivated could read one of these posts, and with a little bit of searching, figure out who you are.
  • Or maybe you're not okay with someone being able to do that from just 1 post or comment, but if it takes going through your complete history to compile your age, sex, ethnicity, occupation, the city you live in, the schools you want to, and eventually identify you.
  • Or maybe you really don't want that to be possible at all.

But the thing is, it's going to be harder and harder to make it impossible. AIs are getting more and more sophisticated, and if you have a couple hundred posts or comments in your history, even if you try not to expose anything private, a lot can be inferred.

There's an example in a different context and with different data but that I feel is still relevant, about how what looks like meaningless information can be used be automated tools to identify you. At some point people realized that if you put a website online and you had links, and you had a script on the page that checked the color of the links, you could know whether your visitors had visited the links or not (basically "is the link purple or blue"). Don't worry, this is not possible anymore, but it was possible back then. And so people experimented. Their proof of concept was to pick something like ten thousands of the biggest public facebook groups (not sure about the exact number), and had a web page with a script that dynamically generated the links to these groups (in the background, hidden from the user) and checked if the visitor was a group member or not. Their study showed that something like a third of Facebook users could be uniquely identified by knowing whether they belonged to each of these top groups.

Of course, it's a harder problem to identify you using weak information distilled through your posts, but there's a lot of information there and what would take maybe hours to a human, a machine will do in no time (maybe not today but in the near future).

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u/NobodyImportant13 23d ago

Just throw some posts up lying every once in a while. I live in Dallas, Texas and I'm latino btw.

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u/Vellc 23d ago

If I say that you're a liar then the AI would invalidate your info dump

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u/NobodyImportant13 23d ago

Yeah, but one of those things is true.

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u/Vellc 23d ago

Joking aside, they probably got this sick verification method that connect what you posted with the subs you frequent with and some others. Especially that state or city sub because unless people are living in the said area, they wouldn't bother to even join the sub.

It's like people trying to feed GPT fake news. Even though GPT might say "you're right, your [provided info] are right, thanks for telling me", it would still cross check with other users to determine the validity of it.

Annyways, we're doomed

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u/NobodyImportant13 23d ago edited 23d ago

Especially that state or city sub because unless people are living in the said area, they wouldn't bother to even join the sub.

City/State subs can be way too revealing if you value your privacy, yeah. Another one is university subs especially if you look at when they were most active on them.

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u/joecool42069 23d ago

So you're a white guy in Connecticut? huh?

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u/NobodyImportant13 23d ago

No, I was telling the truth (Stop training the AI)

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u/Morpheus_MD 23d ago

I too am a Latino in Dallas!

What are the odds?

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u/Successful-Ad-847 22d ago

We’re all latinos in Dallas

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 22d ago

Increase noise to signal ratio.

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u/Canvaverbalist 22d ago edited 22d ago

For me, the doxxing issue is mostly similar to having a house with locked doors when it has so many windows.

I don't want to bunker myself in, I just want it to be inconvenient enough that it most likely will never be an issue - so whatever steps can be done to analyze my account, even through an AI or website with an analyzer algorithm, is already enough of a deterrent for me.

Because even with all the info someone could gather from my account, cross-referencing with maybe my Spotify/Soundcloud/PFP to get my pictures to then reverse image search to get to... what, a Facebook account I haven't used in 5 years, all this for... what? That's too much action for too little. Sure someone might steal my identity to scam someone I know or whatever, just like someone might break your window to steal your shit. But the chances are low enough to be chill about it.

Especially when looking through my windows all you can see is dust and a mattress laying in one corner lol

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u/No_Amoeba6994 22d ago

Yeah, I post in my state sub, mention that I work for the state because it is relevant on some posts, and mention my approximate age and sex in various posts, although rarely more than two of those things at any one time. And I never mention the specific town I am from. It wouldn't take a genius to track me down. But, it also would take a little more effort than the average troll would want to go to I think, which is the value for me. I'd prefer absolute anonymity. But that would require not commenting about anything remotely personal, and the government and Reddit could still just look up my IP address, so it isn't really practical.

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u/Testiculese 22d ago

You how easy it really is?

Spez: "Hey Bezos, look up this IP"
Bezos: "<Name> <Address> <Email> <Phone>. Do you want their CC#?"
Spez: "Nah, thanks though."

Spez then logs onto your state's voter registration records and searches by address to get your political affiliation.

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u/PackOfWildCorndogs 22d ago

lol IP addresses aren’t worth shit for unmasking someone

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u/Testiculese 22d ago edited 22d ago

I've had the same IP for around 8 months now, visiting both Amazon and Reddit. Many people have the same IP for months. I don't even think mine changed after the last power outage. When you have a database full of IPs mapped directly to users, the select query writes itself.

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u/PackOfWildCorndogs 22d ago

If you use an iPhone and have iCloud privacy settings enabled, this wouldn’t work, as there’d be another layer of obfuscation between your IP and the ones that are shown to Amazon, Reddit, whatever other site/app. Preventing cross site ip tracking.

I’m a PI and have been in financial crimes investigations for over a decade. IP address is near the bottom of the totem pole in terms of valuable, actionable data points for identifying the person behind a username. Too easily manipulated and obfuscated.

Are you suggesting that Amazon and Reddit might be in the habit of creating a shared database with user account data points and personally identifiable info, into which they both just dump these records? Usually that sort of customer information sharing is governed by strict legal agreements or forced by a subpoena. Not a casual “hey let’s compare user data.” Or to my knowledge, anyway.

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u/CommissarFart 23d ago

…Reddit is not a social media platform. It’s a link aggregator that they fucked up nearly 20 years ago by enabling comments. 

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u/aquoad 23d ago

its pretty much the only reason i still use reddit, i don't want to "follow" people or even care if i'm interacting with the same person more than once ever.

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u/leibnizslaw 23d ago

God I’d never bicker pointlessly like I do if Reddit wasn’t anonymous and easy to make new accounts. I’d never comment at all. I keep my online footprint extremely minimal. (And suspect I’m the kind of user who made you add the qualifier “most.”)

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u/nerdwerds 23d ago

My greatest fear

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u/AfterBoysenberry3883 23d ago

You certainly can if people aren't careful. People tend to reuse usernames a lot and those can easily just be tied to emails that go to socials that easily show where you are.

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u/levian_durai 22d ago

Yea, it's so easy to just drop information to doxx yourself unintentionally in casual conversation. Lord knows I've overshared. I just haven't bothered to be careful about it, because it hasn't bit me yet.

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u/felicity_jericho_ttv 23d ago

I mean, none of us are anonymous. That why people that have been getting a little too spicy these past few months have probably gotten letters from the feds.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/joecool42069 23d ago

Well, reddit wouldn't have ip to name from your ISP. THe point is theere's enough clues in metadata around our accounts that you can probably piece it together.

Law enforcement, yes.. can just use your IP to get your name from the ISP. Even if your IP changes every couple of days(dhcp), there will be a log of what mac address had what IP at what time.

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u/GaptistePlayer 23d ago

Facebook/Meta even has profiles for people who never signed up for their sites before. It will figure out your family tree based on public information and profiles. If you are friends with your siblings and cousins it has ghost profiles ready for your parents and aunts and uncles even if they never created them. All based on public information and other data their users gave them.

Reddit's data they have on users based on comments and subs goes even deeper than Facebook's.

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u/kyle_fall 23d ago

Check mate anon users I already use my real identity

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u/El_Dud3r1n0 23d ago

Browser fingerprinting alone is generally enough to identify you.

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u/TuhanaPF 23d ago

Yep, all they need to do is pick the number of "subs in common" before you get to an entirely unique number. Nearly everyone will have 2 subs in common, Loads will have 5, less will have 10, but how many others have 30 subs in common with you? Especially if you consider those subs across 5 different genres?

Then it wouldn't even matter if you had each of your accounts behind a VPN with a unique browser fingerprint for each, they know it's you because no one has that many varied subs in common.

And if you made the mistake of making your first account's username the same as another social with your real name now attached, they've got you.

True anonymity is next to impossible on here.

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u/Nothinglost7717 23d ago

The mobile app is what can track you and identify you. 

Pretty sure I sniffs your phone’s identification numbers etc. 

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u/ElegantDaemon 22d ago

Reddit logs our IP addresses and it doesn't allow VPNs. It may not have my name at its fingertips, but the NSA sure does. It knows all of us.

The one thing we have on our side is numbers. They can't come for all of us in a single night. At least, not yet.

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u/solidtangent 22d ago

That’s why I delete my Reddit account every so often. What do I have to loose?

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u/onekool 22d ago

They are incredibly creepy, a few years ago they started doing OCR on images that get posted without telling anyone, so that searches for words in images will come up on reddit search (but the rest of the search still sucks). That in itself isn't creepy, maybe, but the fact that they don't tell anyone about these things and users have to figure it out from experiments is.

Btw, anyone know of a good off-reddit place to discuss reddit's software and site policies? r/theoryofreddit is good but I want to be able to talk about reddit without having the actual admins looking over my soulders.

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u/peter_piemelteef 22d ago

The best thing you can do is give false information here and there. Say you're 40, not 30. Lie about your skin colour, heritage, where you live, your job.

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u/Earthworm-Kim 22d ago

if you've used a personal e-mail on one account, they know all your other accounts

people can also search your e-mails to get your reddit account. people are selling this info for $10

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u/Ghostbeen3 23d ago

They 100% can and do. User data is their primary revenue channel that they sell primarily for ad targeting, but there’s probably a shitload of other uses like AI mining, demo insights, content aggregation, and god knows what other shady shit. They may not be able to harvest certain personal identifiers but it’s not a hard puzzle for them to put together considering all the device signals they capture.

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u/Interestingcathouse 23d ago

It’s how they know if you circumnavigate bans.

That’s why you got to be sneaky. Fake email, VPNs, when you make the new account don’t immediately jump back on all your old subs you followed. Think you have to use the browser and avoid the app for a while too. That’s how im theory you circumnavigate a ban.

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u/OrganicNobody22 23d ago

If you have been banned on an account and then tried to make another and then got caught you would realize that yes 100% reddit absolutely knows who we are

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u/DrinkMoreWater2-0 23d ago

Well yeah, that's how they get bans to stick even if you create a new account.

It's called "fingerprinting"

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u/joecool42069 23d ago

How many times have you been banned?

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u/DrinkMoreWater2-0 23d ago

I have not been banned because ban evasion is a ban-able offence.

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u/joecool42069 23d ago

Your secret is safe with me ;)

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u/terpburner 23d ago

This guy narcs

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u/joecool42069 23d ago

Who told you?

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u/terpburner 23d ago

Your general way of being, might as well have the cop glasses and stache

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u/aft_punk 23d ago

I get ads in the reddit app that are %100 driven by my desktop Google searches.

It is shockingly easy to connect the dots that need to be connected to link your reddit account to your other personal accounts.

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u/huskersax 23d ago

That's more to do with google adsense I'd suspect.

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u/airfryerfuntime 23d ago

That's Google, and Google definitely isn't giving reddit access to their ad algorithm.

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u/jcdoe 23d ago

You mean the same google that pushes Reddit content to the top of their searches pretty much every time?

Nah, no collusion at all.

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u/airfryerfuntime 23d ago

Google's ad algorithm is literally worth billions of dollars. Reddit isn't using it. Reddit threads end up at the top of search results because of SEO and other such fuckery.

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u/hotpatootie69 22d ago

Most mundane searches, I prefer to find a reddit link. I can be generally sure that like, another human being typed up their post, and did it because they actually kind of give a shit, whereas I am actually stricken with disgust any time I click a viewfarming "blog" post written by somebody who gets paid one cent per word, and doesn't actually speak or understand English.

Obviously I'm more thorough with academic searches, but I think a lot of people actually want reddit result up top.

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u/PilotKnob 23d ago

Oh they're keeping tabs on who's who. Make no mistake.

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u/trashtiernoreally 23d ago

I'll just make a new account (again)...

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u/Sythic_ 23d ago

Unless you get a whole new device on a network you've never connected to and change your writing style, they'll match it up to any previous identities.

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u/trashtiernoreally 23d ago

Jokes on them. I’ll just change my MAC address…

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u/Sythic_ 23d ago

They have browser fingerprints, cookies, usage patterns, writing style analysis, IP/location tracking, device identifiers, cross-device tracking, social media integration patterns, email pixel tracking, behavioral biometrics, account recovery information, and aggregated data from third-party brokers that connect identifiers across platforms among other things. They know who you are and all the names you've used lol

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u/Engels777 23d ago

what, pray tell, is email pixel tracking?

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u/Sythic_ 23d ago

When they send emails for your account, if you give an email anyway, they have hidden images in them that when loaded share information with the server. (I used AI to fill in more terms than I could think of on the spot, i wouldn't have put that one, but its a thing)

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u/Engels777 23d ago

Is this the main reason why you often see email clients asking if you'd like to load the images embedded in an email? The images themselves talk back to the sender when loaded on the recipient's computer?

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u/Andrew_Waltfeld 23d ago

Yes. Some attackers can load malicious code into the images themselves that when loaded, will target the end user.

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u/Sythic_ 23d ago

Yep, since they are served by a server (not generally included in the email itself) its a web request your email client makes same as loading an image on a page and that includes your browser information, any cookies for their domain, etc.

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u/EfficientLocksmith66 23d ago

Okay, I know very little about all this, so this is more me being curious than anything, but...

So what? I don't know if I'm being too philosophical on a technical issue here, but if you know everything, you might as well know nothing. The second people stop using their phones and connect via analogue measures again, everything crumbles. What are 'they' gonna do, shoot everyone who ever made a post or comment containing male Italian first names? It's all so impractical in a way.

I'm not saying you're wrong, or that what you describe isn't dangerous, or that the people in power aren't powerful. You're not, it is and they are. But it's a system of subsystems so dependent on precise information and technology - I could see it fail in a million different ways.

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u/Sythic_ 23d ago

I was just bringing up the point that making a new account won't do anything. I'm personally not super protective of my information, its a losing battle and for the most part doesn't effect daily life anyway. There's definitely downsides but its probably easier just to do something about it when that time comes rather than try to be preemptive about it at this point. Just wanted to bring up all the different techniques they can use.

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u/EfficientLocksmith66 22d ago

Ohh okay. I was really just curious, didn't mean to argue in any way. I agree with you, even though I'm certainly not tech savvy. It's all pretty scary, but I try my best at remaining optimistic to a degree, otherwise, what's the point?

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u/trashtiernoreally 23d ago

Hah. My connection is gloved. It leaves no prints...

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u/DaddoAntifa 23d ago

im behind six firewalls😎

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u/DHFranklin 23d ago

Not publicly. However you bet your ass that Homeland Security has a profile on Every American, and our biometrics and other meta data. There are ways we type online that almost as good as finger prints. There are some things that only you really say, in places that only you go to.

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u/dasbtaewntawneta 23d ago

Good thing I’m not American 

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u/DHFranklin 23d ago

You can stop bragging now

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u/il1k3c3r34l 23d ago

Your profile is with a different alphabet agency, that’s all.

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u/GaptistePlayer 23d ago

DHS probably has more info on non-Americans than Americans lol.

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u/99OBJ 23d ago

Wait until you figure out that your government is surveilling you just like America does

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u/hell2pay 23d ago

American YET, you're not an American yet... /s

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u/extinct_cult 23d ago

Oh, by all means, come conquer us all here in Eastern Europe. I'll give you 2 months before US troops are deployed again to forcibly secede us lol

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u/hell2pay 23d ago

I just wish my country would respect the sovereignty of other nations.

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u/extinct_cult 23d ago

I know, I feel you, was just making a joke.

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u/hell2pay 22d ago

Nodding in absolute agreement, lol

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u/SHIZA-GOTDANGMONELLI 23d ago

Eh that probably doesn't matter lol. Not when you use an American site anyway.

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u/chesterriley 22d ago

Good thing I’m not American 

Parent poster is wrong. Our Homeland Security department actually cares more about non Americans.

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u/Delimeme 23d ago

Private (corporations) and public (government) entities both can link online activity to individuals. The government side leans on Big Tech’s willingness to share the necessary data with them, but also has the capacity to do so without corporate cooperation - this was well established by leaks which uncovered the extent of warrantless domestic surveillance in the US.

I’m sure they could link or at least group profiles to real life identities based on speech patterns alone as you suggest, but its really unnecessary as there are far easier ways for government agencies to do so. Given what we saw during the whole Snowden debacle what…15 years?…ago, I can only imagine how far government surveillance has come. Corporate surveillance likely isn’t far behind, but I’m less literate in that field

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u/DHFranklin 23d ago

Exactly. There are limitations of things like the NSA where they can't track Americans here or foreigners there but can track Americans abroad or foreigners here. They can just buy the data they want from Palantir to fill in the gaps.

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u/chesterriley 22d ago

However you bet your ass that Homeland Security has a profile on Every American

They likely care more about non-Americans than Americans.

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u/RippleEffect8800 23d ago

4Chan?

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u/jeff_kaiser 23d ago

last major platform

not to mention all the other reasons people don't use 4chan

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u/HAHA_goats 23d ago

4chan is a whole lot bigger than /b and /pol. The site actually has quite large communities among the blue boards.

Not sure what standard you're using for "major", but I'd consider 4chan major by most standards.

Once old.reddit vanishes, I'll probably go back to /o. It was a nice place.

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u/Burial 22d ago

People like you thinking 4chan isn't a major platform is partly why it has such outsized influence. You genuinely have no idea what you're talking about, and that's fine, most normal people avoid it like the plague.

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u/juanjing 23d ago

I don't remember the specifics due to several years of constant mental trauma, but i seem to recall some clause in the ToS that was described at the time as a "canary in the coal mine" clause. Something having to do with our user data.

At the time, I thought "huh, interesting..." and forgot about it. I know a lot more about the world now, and I wish I had paid closer attention.

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u/Sendnudec00kies 22d ago

Reddit accidentally outed Eglin AFB botting reddit a decade or so ago. Reddit admins were still doing "fun" annual blog posts and one of the stats was most active city. Eglin AFB, a city with a population of about 3-4k, somehow beat out every other US city.

You can find many research papers, such as Containment Control for a Social network with State-dependent Connectivity, credited to Eglin AFB.

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u/Cabrakan 23d ago

They keep track of your hardware IDs, your installed fonts, your google accounts, your IPs, the metadata from ads, this website knows exactly who you are.

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u/Master-Scar6469 23d ago

Oh sweet, summer child... ....

Even though they pretend to let you be anonymous, they track you by location, by IP address and by browser fingerprints. It's actually more than just deceptive -- it's EVIL.

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u/Better-Strike7290 23d ago

Wait...you think they don't know who you are?

Hahahahahahahaha

Reddit can do the types of thinks Facebook only wishes ot could do because of the "illusion" of privacy.

They absolutely know who you are, they're just letting you think they don't because that's their gimmick 

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u/texaseclectus 23d ago

They're trying though. I just noticed the stupid badge it's pitching to try to get me to fill out my profile. Reddit doesn't know what the hell it is anymore.

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u/FillMySoupDumpling 23d ago

Not so much anymore. Email addresses are required to create an account now and they track people across logins too (so for example, what u/unidan was doing would be caught immediately these days). 

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u/theLaLiLuLeLol 23d ago

If you think they couldn't tie your reddit account to you, you are fooling yourself.

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u/epichesgonnapuke 23d ago

Still tied to IPs and MAC addresses.

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u/_-Taelanos-_ 22d ago

not the last one... but 4chan and it's ilk are rather unsavory to a lot.

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u/pruit1337 22d ago

look up Xkeyscore

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u/[deleted] 23d ago edited 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/AVaudevilleOfDespair 23d ago

Absurd. The shit you'll see on facebook or twitter is far worse these days.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago edited 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 23d ago

The white supremacists have won a bunch of elections so flyover boomers post their nazi manifestos next to their real names and faces on twitter. Look at that blonde nazi barbie from the Sam Seder video. They think it is normal because of a trillion dollars worth of right wing propaganda from every major media outlet.

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u/TripperDay 23d ago

What do you mean by "off-site psychosis"? Redditors are insufferable in real life too?

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u/forresja 23d ago

Didn't strike a nerve so much as it's just a bad take.