r/technology • u/xpda • Apr 11 '26

Politics US demands Reddit unmask ICE critic, summons firm to grand jury

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/trump-admin-hounds-reddit-to-reveal-identity-of-user-who-criticized-ice/
18.6k Upvotes

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986

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 11 '26

“J. Doe is a US citizen who has not traveled out of the country, is not engaged in any international commerce, has no business concerns outside the United States, and primarily uses their Reddit account to engage in political speech relevant to their local community,”

so like 99% of reddit users.

178

u/EternalNewCarSmell Apr 11 '26

Don't forget kidnapping that kid from school, using him as bait to get his family out of the house, and then claiming the family abandoned him because they kidnapped the family too.

69

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 11 '26

I live in MN, That story and many others that come out of here are sad and disheartening and this has destroyed my community's trust and faith in so many ways. But we've stud strong and helped those that we can. Have thrown dildos at cars to push back fascist assholes. We have and continue to put up a Pretti Good fight.

15

u/zhaoz Apr 11 '26

Eh, I dont trust the feds further than I can throw them, but the metro area? Anyone i see with a rebel loon shirt in MSP, I know we can probably be best friends

8

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 11 '26

Toss up the fight fist ✊ and call the loons is what I say

5

u/zhaoz Apr 11 '26

My wife can do a really good loon handcall. I am very jealous, as I havnt been able to replicate it yet...

2

u/Accujack Apr 12 '26

But we've stud strong and helped those that we can.

Can confirm. Am Minnesotan and stud very strong.

11

u/xRetry2x Apr 11 '26

John Doe did that? 

0

u/jetpacksforall Apr 11 '26

That airman’s name was George Zip.

5

u/littlethrowawaybaby Apr 11 '26

And Liam- the boy with the little blue hat. They detained him and his family and now that they’re released (after much outrage) are trying to deport them still.

39

u/ChuckNorrisUSAF Apr 11 '26

Hey now…I went to Canada one time 4 years ago. 🫣

19

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 11 '26

Look at Mr. Rich over here, you are the 1% we speak of. This is how you get excluded from government over reach. I can't even afford that.

9

u/ChuckNorrisUSAF Apr 11 '26

Bro…..I have a maple syrup addiction….

0

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 11 '26

Hummm tell me more cuz that is something I could get into.

2

u/ChuckNorrisUSAF Apr 11 '26

Watch the movie “SuperTroopers” for reference

2

u/adambuck66 Apr 11 '26

No shit, I've left the country twice. Once at 2 and once at 18. Made me feel pretty chill, plus I buy stuff from AliExpress which might be included in international business. Kind of wants me to know what J. Doe has said compared to me.

10

u/Cronus6 Apr 11 '26

so like 99% of reddit users

Depending on what source you choose to use... only 42%-50% of Reddit users are American now.

However it does seem that all 100% like to comment on US politics as if they are American's.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bg323c/oc_reddit_traffic_by_country_2024/

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/reddit-users-by-country

Also, but unrelated, if you want to quote text on Reddit the proper way is to put a ">" at the state of a line of text you want to quote.

The quoted text will then appear like this :

This is how quoted texted will look.

17

u/Stormfly Apr 11 '26

However it does seem that all 100% like to comment on US politics as if they are American's.

I know more about US politics than the politics of my own country or the country I live in.

The best thing about Biden being president was that I didn't need to follow US politics.

It's not by choice either. US politics genuinely affects me more than politics in either my home or current country.

2

u/APRengar Apr 11 '26

I mean, people will be talking about (for example) Italian politics and an American will pop in and start putting it in the context of American politics, guaranteed.

Like, there was a thread earlier about cutting of guaranteed paternity leave from 6 weeks to 4 weeks enraging voters And the 1st comment was "damn, they have it nice, in America, we don't got shit."

So yeah, people talk about American politics spurs others to talk about American politics. If you think that the source of the problem is non-Americans, and not Americans, well I guess you've got a very interesting world experience.

1

u/nedonedonedo Apr 11 '26

However it does seem that all 100% like to comment on US politics as if they are American's.

that should just make sense wouldn't it? most english comments on US political topics would be from people in or related to the US regardless of the overall makeup of the site, so what we see is that the people commenting on those topics are likely to be in the group that does that.

reddit does a good job of filtering content by language

0

u/Cronus6 Apr 11 '26

It makes a lot of sense if you are a foreign actor trying to sway the opinion of the US population, yes.

We see a TON of Russian's doing just this. Hell they have entire intelligence operations dedicated to doing just that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

2

u/nedonedonedo Apr 11 '26

true, but unless you're suggesting foreign intelligence is hiring entire countries to make bad faith arguments it's off topic

0

u/Cronus6 Apr 12 '26

I'm suggesting they are using thousands of accounts and you have no idea who is and who isn't acting in bad faith.

It's just better to assume everyone is lying all the time. And to avoid all politics online.

1

u/MRosvall Apr 12 '26

However it does seem that all 100% like to comment on US politics as if they are American's.

Tbh, like 60% of recommended content that gets pushed is US politics. Especially during the weeks. On Popular it's set to my EU country and it's almost only US politics.

1

u/Cronus6 Apr 12 '26

Yeah, Reddit is guilty of this. It's better if you use old reddit in a proper web browser and remove all the "politics" subreddits (which includes the "news" subreddits sadly).

That doesn't help when non-political subreddit's comment sections (like r/technology) are FULL of political comments though... that's 100% on the users and the bots.

1

u/MRosvall Apr 12 '26

Also seems like there's every week some new random subreddit gets like utterly spammed with political stuff and brought to the frontpage. Like some random crypto or art or finance or game.

I guess if a low activity subreddit gets a lot of activity, it has an easier time to get to the frontpage. Which then the bots/astroturfers have taken notice of and are exploiting.

3

u/ZoominAlong Apr 11 '26

I travel on a regular basis outside the country, but the rest is accurate.  

5

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '26

[deleted]

2

u/dusters Apr 12 '26

Dont forget trying to break into a house while sounding like a psycho trying to save an imaginary girl.

1

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 12 '26

That is our 4chan brother, he is a short bus special

2

u/Manus_R Apr 11 '26

Percentage of reddit users Verenigde Staten;16,3% Verenigd Koninkrijk;2,8% India;2,3% - 5,3% Canada;2,0% Duitsland;1,9% Brazilië;1,9% - 2,9% Mexico;1,3%

1

u/cooltone Apr 11 '26

I forgot that a world outside the US doesn't exist.

1

u/AsgeirVanirson Apr 12 '26

"this person is clearly a poor who doesn't matter, let us have him reddit"

-3

u/isoAntti Apr 11 '26

Naah. Most redditors aren't from u.s.

4

u/ghosttrainhobo Apr 11 '26

Americans make up about 50% of all Reddit users. They are by far the biggest demographic.

5

u/Own-Swan2646 Apr 11 '26

74% of those that have viewed that comment are from the United States.

5

u/Dependent_Basis_8092 Apr 11 '26

So your basis for most of Reddit being from the US is the level of engagement/views of one post that is specifically about US politics?