Recent investigative findings by Pirate Wires have revealed the existence of a highly coordinated pro-Palestinian network that leverages Reddit as a springboard to disseminate propaganda across platforms like Discord, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Instagram, Quora, and Wikipedia. This extensive online operation has been linked to U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and engages in efforts to manipulate public opinion, suppress ideological opposition, and evade platform moderation.

Since October 7, a well-organized online ecosystem has emerged to amplify content directly sourced from terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi movement. This network exploits major platforms and their algorithms to manipulate information flows and influence public discourse. The ultimate goal is to embed these narratives into universal platforms such as Google Search and ChatGPT, making them appear as mainstream perspectives.

Specifically, at the heart of this operation is r/Palestine, a Reddit community boasting 270,000 members. This subreddit functions as the nerve center of the network’s activities, guiding users to a corresponding Discord server that serves as a command-and-control hub. New members of this Discord must undergo an ideological vetting process, answering questions about their views on Israel, Zionism, and the events of October 7 before gaining access.

Inside the Discord, members coordinate through specialized task forces dedicated to different platforms, including Reddit, X, Quora, TikTok, Instagram, and Wikipedia. These groups engage in strategic content manipulation tactics such as:

• Vote Brigading: Mass upvoting of anti-Israel content and downvoting of pro-Israel perspectives to influence visibility.
• Coordinated Posting: Identifying comments sections and posts that require more pro-Palestinian engagement.
• Astroturfing: Creating an illusion of widespread support for radical ideologies by flooding discussions with coordinated messages.

Beyond its primary subreddit, the network has extended its control over a staggering 110 subreddits, managed by roughly 30 core moderators. By leveraging their positions, these individuals shape narratives, censor opposition, and direct users to increasingly extreme content. Pirate Wires reports on some of the largest infiltrated subreddits:

But it’s with a cluster of million-member-strong subreddits infiltrated and now controlled by the network that have nothing to do with the Mideast — or even politics generally — that the r/Palestine network is particularly effective, and which illustrates an extraordinary degree of unambiguous astroturfing meant to convince unsuspecting users that there’s a widespread anti-Israel, anti-Western, Marxist movement online. These include, but aren’t limited to: r/Documentaries (20 million members), r/therewasanattempt (7.2 million), r/PublicFreakout (4.7 million), r/Fauxmoi (4.3 million), and r/iamatotalpieceofs**t (2.1 million).

The network leverages command-and-control mechanisms, radicalizing messaging and decentralized tactics by exploiting the openness and freedom afforded by these platforms, as well as vulnerabilities in the platforms’ trust and safety operation, which have largely been outsourced to the user-base itself (rather than trained moderators).

A key component of this network’s operations is the Resistance News Network (RNN), a propaganda aggregator that translates and redistributes content from Telegram channels operated by U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. Due to restrictions on terror-related content within the U.S., RNN effectively circumvents legal barriers by repackaging and relaying this material onto mainstream platforms, potentially violating U.S. material support laws.

Pirate Wires  explains that RNN compiles content from a color-coded list of Telegram channels run by terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Many of these channels are banned in the U.S., yet their narratives find their way into broader discourse through RNN’s translation and dissemination efforts.

Breitbart News made the parallel connection to tactics by the Harris-Walz campaign, which was previously exposed for running an extensive astroturfing operation on Reddit. Reports indicate that campaign staff maintained a spreadsheet tracking their influence efforts, orchestrating mass postings and engagement under the guise of organic user participation.