Senator Mark Warren has considered examining site, says spokesman, as researcher reports that it was home to ‘coordinated information campaigns’

Reddit could join Facebook and Twitter as a target for federal investigators exploring Russian influence over the 2016 presidential election, according to a spokesperson for Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.

Warner’s staff indicated to the Guardian that, while nothing was imminent, the senator has considered examining the site as the question of 2016 election interference lingers on in parallel congressional and FBI investigations.

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“[Reddit] is one of the forums that some of the coordinated information campaigns happened on,” Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher at Oxford University, told the Hill. Bradshaw studies how governments use social media to influence public opinion, and said she had witnessed patterns on the site that suggested a deliberate effort to distribute false news.

The discussion site is one of the 10 most visited websites in the US, along with Google, Facebook and Twitter, and is considered by many to be the internet’s stepping stone between mainstream social media and more niche sites such as 4chan.

Unlike Facebook, which more aggressively polices content it deems harmful, Reddit is known for much looser rules and restrictions, which is part of why the site has been identified at various times as a safe haven for internet trolls, cyberbullies, and Nazi and white supremacist groups.

In recent years and months, the site has introduced a number of policy changes aimed at curbing that perception, especially in relation to hate speech, but it has demonstrated the ability to easily sustain and proliferate hoax stories. The highest-profile example of this was the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy, which tried to link Hillary Clinton to a fabricated pedophile ring allegedly operating out of a Washington pizzeria via her campaign chairman, John Podesta. In December 2016, a gunman motivated by that story entered a Washington DC pizza restaurant with an assault rifle and fired a shot.

The Senate investigation had already zeroed in on Facebook in its investigation last week with word that data on more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads had been turned over to investigators. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced last week that the site was “actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference”, adding that: “I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That’s not what we stand for.”

That revelation prompted Donald Trump to revive his claim that Russian involvement in the 2016 election was a “hoax”, commenting: “The Russia hoax continues, now it’s ads on Facebook.”

On Wednesday he added: “Facebook was always anti-Trump.”