Brigading

Brigading is the coordinated action of a group of users descending on a post, comment, account, or community to overwhelm it, typically to harass a target or to manipulate visibility through mass voting. The term originated on Reddit to describe organized attacks by members of an antagonistic subreddit, who would agree to mass-downvote a target's contributions so they would be hidden or deprioritized, effectively silencing them. The meaning has broadened to cover any coordinated effort to make content or a person appear more or less popular than they genuinely are, and the tactic is now recognized across social platforms.

On Reddit, brigades commonly organize in private subreddits, off-platform chat servers, or group messages, where a member shares a link with a call to action. The resulting influx can flood a thread, swamp moderators, and spill into sustained harassment of marginalized users or anyone defending them. Reddit's Content Policy explicitly prohibits brigading as a form of content manipulation and instructs users not to encourage voting on linked content in a particular way. Subreddits found to organize brigades against others can be banned, and individuals can be suspended. Linking to other Reddit content with no-participation conventions and using cross-posting tools responsibly are among the practices intended to avoid triggering brigades.