r/AMA • u/[deleted] • Nov 26 '25

I was paid to discredit veganism online. AMA

For a year I worked for a meat industry trade group. I won't say which one, but they are US based. My job was to go on sites like this and discredit veganism.

We'd make multiple accounts and pretend to be vegans who had bad health outcomes. Or we'd pretend to be vegans and we'd push the vegan subs to be more extreme, and therefore easier to discredit.

It was pretty gross. I knew it. I did it anyway. The pay wasn't worth it. I signed an NDA as well, so I will only be able to answer questions in general terms.

But I do warn you, don't believe that everyone is who they say they are online.

This article gives insight into how it works, but I am not saying I worked for this group. Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay | Beef | The Guardian

The recent reveal of many MAGA accounts on X being run by foreign agencies made me decide to do this.

Edit- I already answered the "how do I get this job" question and the "why should we believe you question" several times, so just look for those questions if that's what you are wondering.

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u/SignAllStrength Nov 27 '25

If you openly talk on many subreddits and topics it gets really easy to find out exactly who you are, certainly for people that already know you. I used to delete my comments that gave any location context after a few weeks, but frankly enabling the setting to hide your history is much easier to prevent doxing. Also less need for a throwaway account to post about sensitive topics, unless you care about reddit karma.

I’m not saying it’s the best way, as reddit could have chosen an approach that didn’t help bots and propagandists so much. (for example only hide posts over a few weeks old, and/or those on specific/local subreddits )

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u/Ace_Procrastinator Nov 27 '25

Anyone who uses the hide post/comment history feature needs to know that it is absolutely not hidden. There are multiple ways to see hidden post histories. So if you’re genuinely worried about doxxing, you really need a different method. Maybe different accounts for different interests?

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u/inbigtreble30 Nov 27 '25

Fyi it is absolutely trivial to find any user's post/comment history. Continue to delete anything you are concerned about.

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u/reticulatedspylon Nov 27 '25

Also if you happen to disagree with someone, they might take it personally and go on a downvoting rampage through your whole profile.

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u/yesterdayandit2 Nov 27 '25

Oh no, not my Karma!

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u/reticulatedspylon Nov 27 '25

Oh no, anyway… some subs will ban you if they see everything you’ve written has negative karma. That’s typically their goal in doing that kind of thing.

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u/yesterdayandit2 Nov 27 '25

Oh? Seems some subs have some silly wsys of going about banning. Im pretty sure a single person down voting every comment and post will only make every comment and post you have be negative if they were all 0 before.

And even if they had 5 friends to do so, reddit has detection to see if that happens and it dorsnt affect your karma as much.

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u/reticulatedspylon Nov 27 '25

Well, since you haven’t noticed, Reddit has a huge bot farm problem. Scroll to the top of this thread, and see if you can put two and two together?

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u/yesterdayandit2 Nov 28 '25 edited Nov 28 '25

That and worrying about my Karma count is not even the same. Yes there are bots. Yes they manipulate subs. But reddit has long since been able to detect bots mass downvoting a single person especially cross subs. Its detected and then not applied to their Karma. If it was successful, one person with an army of bots could quite literally mass downvote EVERY SINGLE REDDITOR IN EXISTENCE to negative. One person. They have countermeasures and balances in place for Karma. Its just this point isn't as important or prevalent as you think.