We haven't looked into how sockpuppetry is done alongside attacks, but I presume that it would happen at a smaller scale.

BTW here's our previous research on sockpuppets that you may find interesting: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2127107-sock-puppet-acc...

Hi! Thanks for your comments. I am Srijan (one of the authors of the work).

I agree with some of the risks that the paper entails, e.g., how to attack "better". But at the same time, we suggest how to diffuse those attacks as well :)

We specifically didn't name any subreddits to avoid identifying "suitable [subreddits] to fight against" (e.g., those that have been attacked a lot in the past, or have been unsuccessful in defending themselves). Same for the most (successfully) attacking subreddits. It would just encourage them.

Re colonization during neutral events: we see in Figure 7 that neutral events lead to "immigration" instead of colonization, i.e., there is no decrease in activity of the existing members, while there an increase for the "attacking" members. It would be interesting to see how productive these neutral exchanges are in the future.

Re using the map to identify bans: we haven't looked into that, but it sounds interesting!

Indeed it is interesting question of how to encourage and improve coordination and good information flow between groups. It is an open research area on how that can happen!

Hey nice report, how long did it take you'll?

I don't think your research suggests a reasonable defense for human communities, once you overlay your defense strategy over ground reality.

As the other user suggested, using sock puppets creates a force multiplier for attackers. In theory it can be used by defenders, but that suggests a level of sophistication on the defenders part that is many statistical deviations from the mean for normal people.

For attackers sock puppets won't be an unusual tool to be aware of.

But - A dedicated attacker is always going to be defeating defenders anyway.

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I suspect that the work going on during neutral interactions is far more valuable to Reddit as a whole, and you should be looking into that a lot more.

It may well help with making more cross talk (but in true depressing fashion - increase the echo chamber effect).

I wonder which subs have dissimilar features and yet have successful neutral colonization ? Perhaps that's a healthier feature to examine and deal with polarization ?

Dev - The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time? Would you be interested in this direction?

The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time?