Reddit has shut down 944 accounts over their suspected ties to the Russian "troll farm," the Internet Research Agency.
The most popular account "u/rubinjer" managed to gain thousands of upvotes by posting memes and images critical of Hillary Clinton and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The account even uploaded an animated gif of a fake Clinton sex tape under the title: "This is how Hillary gets black votes."
On Tuesday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman posted the full list of affected accounts. It comes as the company has been cooperating with Congress on investigating Russian efforts to exploit US social media during the 2016 election.
The Internet Research Agency, which is based in St. Petersburg, Russia, has been accused of hiring hundreds of employees to spread state-sponsored propaganda under fake social media profiles. In February, federal investigators indicted the agency for its role in trying to influence US voters during the 2016 election.
On Reddit, all 944 accounts have been banned from the platform. But in the interest of transparency, the company has decided to leave the account histories online, giving the public a detailed view of what the suspected internet trolls decided to post.
Ironically, the Russian trolls also gained thousands of upvotes on Reddit by sharing apolitical content including videos of cute dogs and cats.
Other content shared was critical of police officers or US politics in general. One of the top subreddits the trolls posted to was Bad_Cop_No_Donut, a community devoted to stories around law enforcement abuse.
The second most popular Russian-controlled account was "u/shomyo," which was also the moderator of a subreddit that focused on news that Reddit was supposedly suppressing. Posts included links to real media articles with the headlines "Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country" and "Russia Collusion: Hillary Clinton, DNC and FBI are the Real Stars."
Together, the 944 accounts made 14,000 posts to the platform, Reddit's CEO said. 316 of them went to President Donald Trump's subreddit page. Another 214 went to the subreddit on racism.
Only 13 of the 944 accounts managed to gain a Reddit karma score of over 10,000, which is calculated based on how many upvotes and downvotes their posts receive. 662 of the accounts had a karma score of zero, and shared little to no posts on Reddit.
A month ago, Reddit's CEO said the company had shut down a "few hundred" Russian troll accounts, but his post on Tuesday indicates that the service continues to uncover more.