Michael Gardner & Jessica Ashooh
Data Scientist & Director of Policy

The past several weeks have seen multiple surges of activism on Reddit as our users rally to save net neutrality from the FCC’s plans to gut it. In a political climate where talk of bots and astroturfing has sometimes caused skepticism when it comes to online activism, we wanted to look into the pro-net neutrality activity on the site to make sure that Reddit wasn’t being gamed by outside actors looking to manipulate our platform.

The results of this analysis were so overwhelming that we wanted to share them with the public on this day of action in support of net neutrality. Not only did we find the activity to be an authentic, truly grassroots phenomenon, but it represented some of the most fervent organic activity we have ever seen on the front page in all of Reddit’s twelve year history.

The bottom line is that real people—millions of them—care about preserving the free and open internet, and they are taking to Reddit to express themselves. Whether through telling us their personal stories or by raising an upvote for the members of Congress who refused to sell out their interests, redditors are making themselves heard on this issue. It is up to all of those in Washington who represent us to listen.

The Analysis

On November 21st, the front page of Reddit was covered with posts linking to Battle For The Net and warning about FCC Chairman Pai’s planned vote to end net neutrality on December 14th.

On December 1st, shortly after the admins at Reddit HQ gave Snoo a net neutrality makeover and posted a series of pro-net neutrality banner ads, another round of net neutrality posts from the community hit the front page. This time, they focused on campaign donation amounts that congressional representatives had received from telecom companies (most of these amounts came from this March article in The Verge).

Reddit users care about net neutrality, and the organic voting patterns we observed around these events showed it. Prominent national and international events often result in several links and self-posts on the front page. For comparison, at their peak, voting on Super Bowl and McGregor-Mayweather posts this year represented ~20% of front page votes. At the peak of these two net neutrality events, over 70% of front page votes went to net neutrality posts!

Timeline: Battle For The Net

In the morning hours (UTC) of Nov. 20th, a few Battle For The Net posts were submitted with limited success. Later that evening, the first post to hit the front page was submitted, taking 6 hours to climb there. Subsequently, the morning (UTC) of Nov. 21st saw several Battle For The Net posts submitted, with a few posts hitting the front page after 4 hours. By 3am UTC, Battle For The Net voting hit its peak, 34 hours after the first front page-reaching post was submitted. All voting patterns around this activity registered as organic according to the factors we constantly monitor to help us surface and neutralize spam and bot efforts.

Timeline: “This is my representative…"

The first “This is my representative…" post was submitted in the early morning hours (UTC) of Dec. 1st, with a crosspost hitting the front page 4.5 hours later. After a few hours of “This is my representative…" posts being met with limited success, the momentum started to build with multiple posts submitted around noon UTC, hitting the front page within an hour. By 5pm UTC, “This is my representative…" hit its peak, 13 hours after the first front page post was submitted. As with previous net neutrality activism on the site, this activity registered as authentic. For example, the geo data from the early voting on these posts came primarily from the home states of these representatives before hitting the front page and reaching a wider audience.

After the dust settled, thousands of posts and tens of thousands of comments related to Chairman Pai’s plan to gut net neutrality had been created. Tens of millions of users were informed of the threat, and millions of Reddit voters showed their support. In the end, hundreds of posts on the topic, coming from hundreds of diverse subreddits, hit Reddit’s front page.

Yet, despite the intense concern that the Reddit community demonstrated, in true Reddit form, positivity and good-natured irreverence won the day. Of the “This is my representative…" posts, the top karma-winning representatives were:

Runner-Up: Bernie Sanders not selling out

Winner: Senator Dog!

What You Can Do

The FCC’s vote on net neutrality is scheduled for this Thursday, December 14th. There is still time to tell them why they should reconsider. Go here to share your story of how the repeal of net neutrality rules would personally affect you. And go to battleforthenet.com to tell your member of Congress why he or she should call on Chairman Pai to reconsider his plan.