On April 10, Reddit announced that it had found and suspended 944 accounts suspected of being run by the Internet Research Agency, otherwise known as the infamous St. Petersburg “troll farm”.

With welcome transparency, the curating platform left the accounts visible, “to allow moderators, investigators, and all of you to see their account histories for yourselves.”

The behavior of these accounts closely mirrored the troll farm’s operations on Twitter and Facebook. They posed as supporters of American communities, especially the far right and the Black Lives Matter movement. Many were ineffective, but a few substantially prolific.

Their goals seem to have been to attack Hillary Clinton, support Donald Trump, and — most importantly — set Americans against each other.

The numbers

In a separate post (archived here), Reddit listed all 944 accounts, in order of their “karma” — a score based on the upvotes and downvotes (likes and dislikes) each achieved over its lifetime.

Over two thirds of the accounts passed unnoticed, grossing a total of zero karma. A few, however, grossed over 10,000 points, while the most influential, u/rubinjer, reached 99,493. This number is the aggregate of karma yielded by comments and posts, meaning that those accounts with 0 karma were largely inactive.

The twenty most influential accounts, measured by karma. Archived on April 11, 2018. (Source: Reddit)

Reddit’s post was careful to stress how little impact the accounts likely had on the 2016 U.S. election.

Overall, 662 of these accounts had zero karma, suggesting their impact was negligible. Eight had negative karma; 274 scored from 1 to 100,000. Only thirteen accounts — less than 1 percent — had a karma of over 10,000.

According to Reddit’s statement, over half of the accounts with positive karma scores were banned before the 2016 election, mostly in 2015. Of the thirteen best-performing accounts, seven were banned before the election.

“Ultimately, we have seven accounts with significant karma scores that made it past our defenses.” — Reddit

Old friends

Some of the account names read like old friends to those researching Russia’s influence operation because of notorious usernames, which the troll factory operated on other platforms.

One, for example, was u/SouthLoneStar, which had the same name as a celebrated troll farm account on Twitter. Unlike its namesake, the Reddit version only made one post, a reply to far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos posted around March 1, 2016.

Lone Star’s lone post, circa March 1, 2016. Archived on April 11, 2018. (Source: Reddit / u/SouthLoneStar)

Posing as a Trump supporter, the account accused the U.S. political establishment and media of trying to “stump the Trump,” and called for a wholesale change to the U.S. political system. This correlates with known Russian troll accounts on other platforms, which supported Trump, attacked U.S. mainstream politicians and media, and targeted Yiannopoulos — in particular — as a potential amplifier of their messaging.

There is no indication that Yiannopoulos replied. The comment only achieved two points, a minimal impact.

Cross platform

Some accounts were also attached to accounts run by the troll farm on other platforms. These include u/jenn_abrams, u/DorothieBell, u/hyddrox, and u/Ten_GOP (all linked to Twitter accounts of the same names), as well as u/LGBTUnited (Facebook) and u/BleepThePolice (Instagram).

Few of these accounts achieved any impact. u/Ten_GOP, for example, only used Reddit to advertise its restoration on Twitter, after a ban in July 2017.

Two posts, Ten_GOP. The account’s entire activity. Archived on April 11, 2018. (Source: Reddit / u/Ten_GOP)

u/Jenn_Abrams, which was only created in December 2017, two months after the eponymous Twitter account was suspended, was also barely active.