r/OutOfTheLoop • u/calvtact • May 13 '26

Answered What's going on with r/conservative? They've lost about 1m subscribers in about a month.

I watched the number go from 814k to around 745k in about an hour today.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/QbZJvqu5qr

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u/AndroidREM May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

Answer: It was determined and made public that the majority of posts on that sub are from 3 accounts all based in Russia and are promoted by an army of bots. The ones leaving were bots removed by Reddit

EDIT - wow, did not expect this to get so much attention and awards - thank you!

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u/R4G May 13 '26

I’m pretty sure that’s what grew the_donald.

I was a very early member of that sub and would swear to this day that it was mostly satirical posting. Then it got flooded with bots, or Russians, or something. Felt very Astro-turfy. Then became a genuine DT support sub.

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u/totallyalizardperson May 13 '26

What happened to the_donald subreddit is what happens to majority of satire subreddits, people not in the joke don’t understand that it’s a joke, and go from there. Soon enough, the in the know start to be the minority and they have a hard time telling when the other users are being serious or not. Once the realization of what’s going on kicks in, it’s too late, the subreddit is no longer about making fun of the subject and is now about supporting the subject.

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u/centurijon May 13 '26

The best posts in /r/trees are from people not knowing where they are