How Trump killed online science engagement

Will Cenci
Aug 31, 2018 · 5 min read
March for Science NYC” by Rhododendrites is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Watching Donald Trump’s dystopian soap opera of a presidency unfold at a distance has until recently felt historically significant, without ever really touching my daily life in any concrete way.

That was until a late May morning when I woke up to the news that one of the biggest and most active online science communities had cancelled its ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) series, Reddit’s hugely popular open Q&As with the world’s leading scientists. This time, it felt weirdly personal.

Back in October 2016, before Trump’s election but after the Brexit vote, I wrote an article for the Guardian extolling the virtues of Reddit as a platform for scientists looking to engage the public with their work.

Little did I know that events unfolding elsewhere on the self-proclaimed ‘front page of the internet’ would ultimately spell doom for one of the site’s most popular content formats — the science AMA.

This is an account of how an army of trolls in the service of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump forced one of the most popular websites on earth to adapt, and the unintended consequences of those changes for its thriving science community.

*Record scratch*

For the uninitiated, Reddit is a social news aggregation website that presents a ranked, evolving snapshot of the most popular online content from across the web.

It attracts over 1.6 billion users per month, known as ‘redditors’, who post content and join discussions in hundreds of thousands of active communities.

These communities, known as ‘subreddits’, cover everything from movies to memes, and importantly for those of us interested in digital engagement with research, academic disciplines like history, philosophy, and science.

Reddit’s biggest science community dubs itself ‘The New Reddit Journal of Science’ and boasts over 13 million subscribers. It takes itself very seriously, demanding content is posted from reputable sources and scorning hyperbolic tabloid headlines.

Until recently, it provided a daily platform for scientists to take part in closely moderated, good-natured Q&As drawing in redditors from a wide range of backgrounds and generating many thousands of questions and comments.

From providing a platform for anyone to ask Stephen Hawking about the impact of AI and automation on employment, to connecting relatively niche scientific research on subjects like how we recognise faces with a huge and hungry audience, the Reddit science AMA provided that rare thing; a platform with huge reach that led to very personal, accessible exchanges that perceptibly benefited both the scientists and the public… while also being fun to read:

Redditor: What is your favourite song ever written?

Stephen Hawking: “Have I Told You Lately” by Rod Stewart.

At a time when researchers in the UK are under increasing pressure to engage with the public and demonstrate ‘impact’ on the wider world, science AMAs provided a time and resource-light opportunity for scientists to participate in genuine dialogues with a huge public audience. But all of this was set to change in dramatic fashion.

The rise of The_Donald

Shortly after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential race, a new Reddit community was created as a hub for “news related to Donald Trump during his presidential run.”[1]

‘The_Donald’ subreddit quickly became a breeding ground for alt right memes like Pepe the Frog and conspiracy theories, finding itself at the centre of the infamous ‘Pizzagate’ scandal.

Pepe the frog” by Vtbossness is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

But it was the day of the tragic Orlando nightclub shooting where battle lines were truly drawn and heralded the first real contact in a messy war that would change the face of Reddit forever.

Using the tragic event as a catalyst, moderators who managed The_Donald and its highly active community flooded the most publically visible areas of one of the world’s most popular websites with pro-Trump content.

In what Forbes described as a “staggering” effect, The_Donald monopolised over half of reddit’s ‘front page’ — the top 25 posts on the site — and was quickly cannibalising members from other prominent Reddit communities.

Just days after the Orlando nightclub shooting became such a rallying point for The_Donald, graphically demonstrating its ability to ‘game’ the site, Reddit made significant changes to the algorithm that dictated the visibility of its content.

Publically, these changes were largely justified as an attempt to make the ‘default’ experience of using Reddit (What anyone who isn’t logged in sees) more closely reflect its most popular communities and content… but with the notable exception of The_Donald and other toxic and NSFW communities.

It also stopped subreddits from being able to pin ‘sticky’ threads to enhance their visibility, a key tactic employed by The_Donald in its attempt to essentially highjack reddit. The problem was, some of these very tactics were also being used by reddit’s biggest science community to ensure its AMAs made it to the front page.

Since the changes were introduced, science AMAs went from generating thousands of upvotes and questions (broadly equivalent to Facebook ‘likes’ and comments) to often only dozens. Major partners like juggernaut open access journal PLOS ONE pulled out of its regular AMA series citing decreased “visibility of AMA content”, while science communications and public engagement professionals found AMAs an increasingly difficult sell to time-pressured researchers.

While the science AMA series limped on for months, it finally succumbed to its injuries on 19 May 2018. With an announcement that attracted close to forty thousand upvotes, moderator u/nallen announced that after 4 years and over 1200 AMAs, “we’ve decided to call an end to the program”.

“We don’t allow the post manipulation for obvious reasons”

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez).

Citing the drastic decline in visibility resulting from changes to the reddit algorithm implemented “without warning or recourse”, the post triggered an outpouring of comments from users lamenting the loss of the science AMA and calling out Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, known on the site as u/spez.

Remarkably, Huffman personally waded into the debate with a comprehensive explanation, tellingly stating “We don’t allow the post manipulation for obvious reasons”, seemingly referring in part to the fallout from the Orlando nightclub shooting fiasco.

And this points to the crucial question raised by this tangled saga: Does science content need some form of positive discrimination to compete with Star Wars memes and cat gifs on a platform like Reddit?

And given the lengths Reddit has gone to in order to limit the influence of The_Donald, is there a place for a form of editorial intervention that would increase the visibility of content like science AMAs?

With the integrity of the site already compromised, what would be the harm in transparently increasing the visibility of content that has the power to stimulate critical thinking and make the world a better informed place?

With science AMAs and scientists’ ability to engage with huge, international public audiences collateral damage in Reddit’s battle with Trump’s legion of online trolls, we should question the logic of applying blanket policies that impact hate speech and science in equal measure.

As someone who believes in the power of university research to change the world and is charged with helping it do so, I’m waiting to see whether sites like Reddit take on the civic responsibilities of those institutions they are outmoding and increasingly threatening to replace.

Over to you, u/spez.

Written by

Sometime artist and UK university research engagement professional. Contributor to The Guardian HE network and Reddit lurker.

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