Reddit Ties Leaked UK-US Trade Documents to Russian 'Secondary Infektion' Operation
December 2019
Reddit banned one subreddit and 61 accounts after concluding that a cache of leaked US-UK trade documents — weaponized in the 2019 UK general election — was posted as part of a coordinated Russian influence campaign.
What happened
On December 7, 2019, Reddit announced that its security team had linked the upload of a 451-page cache of genuine US-UK trade negotiation documents to a coordinated information operation it attributed to Russia. The documents had been posted to Reddit in October 2019 and were subsequently amplified online; they were seized upon by the UK Labour Party, whose leader Jeremy Corbyn publicly brandished them days before the December 2019 general election, alleging they showed Conservative plans to open the National Health Service to US private healthcare firms.
Reddit said the suspect accounts showed a pattern of coordination matching 'Secondary Infektion,' a long-running Russian operation that Facebook and the analysis firm Graphika had previously documented across more than 300 platforms. Graphika concluded the similarities were 'too close to be simply a coincidence,' while noting they fell short of conclusive attribution. Reddit banned the originating subreddit and 61 associated accounts for violating its policies against vote manipulation and content manipulation, and preserved the accounts for public and researcher scrutiny.
The episode demonstrated that Reddit had become a seeding ground for state-linked 'leak-and-amplify' operations targeting Western elections, with real-world political consequences in a national vote.
Impact
Documented a state-linked influence operation using Reddit to launder a politically explosive leak into a UK general-election issue; tied Reddit activity to the broader Secondary Infektion campaign and prompted a public Reddit attribution to Russia.