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Roll in the Tanks! Measuring Left-wing Extremism on Reddit at Scale

Utkucan Balcı, Michael Sirivianos, Jeremy Blackburn

TL;DR

This work addresses the gap in measuring left-wing extremism online by presenting the first large-scale analysis of 'tankies' on Reddit. It combines a comprehensive data pipeline with network analysis, BERTopic-based topic modeling, and cross-community lexical alignment (via Word2Vec and MultiCCA) to characterize tankie scale, position, and discourse. Key findings show tankies form a distinct peripheral cluster within the far-left, exhibit rapid MAU growth, migrate from other far-left subreddits, prioritize state-level politics and authoritarian regimes, and display higher toxicity and a propensity to share state-sponsored media. The study broadens extremism research beyond the dominant right-wing focus and provides a scalable methodology for monitoring online extremist dynamics across political spectra.

Abstract

Social media's role in the spread and evolution of extremism is a focus of intense study. Online extremists have been involved in the dissemination of online hate, mis- and disinformation, and real-world violence. While the majority of research has focused on right-wing extremism, recent real-world incidents have highlighted the potential for far-left extremists to engage in violence and cause real-world harm as well. In this paper, we present the first large-scale measurement of left-wing extremism on social media. Analyzing 1.3 million posts from 53,000 authors from tankie subreddits, we focus on ``tankies,'' a left-wing community that first arose in the 1950s in support of hardline actions of the USSR and has evolved to support what they call ``Actually Existing Socialist'' countries, e.g., CCP-run China, the USSR, and North Korea. Among other things, our analysis reveals that these groups occupy the periphery of the broader far-left community on Reddit, and their discourse distinctively focus on state-level politics and support for authoritarian regimes, rather than on social justice issues. Finally, we show that tankies have high toxicity scores and use pejorative language, mirroring toxicity patterns reported for other online extremist communities. Our findings provide empirical evidence of the distinct positioning and discourse of left-wing extremist groups on social media.

Roll in the Tanks! Measuring Left-wing Extremism on Reddit at Scale

TL;DR

This work addresses the gap in measuring left-wing extremism online by presenting the first large-scale analysis of 'tankies' on Reddit. It combines a comprehensive data pipeline with network analysis, BERTopic-based topic modeling, and cross-community lexical alignment (via Word2Vec and MultiCCA) to characterize tankie scale, position, and discourse. Key findings show tankies form a distinct peripheral cluster within the far-left, exhibit rapid MAU growth, migrate from other far-left subreddits, prioritize state-level politics and authoritarian regimes, and display higher toxicity and a propensity to share state-sponsored media. The study broadens extremism research beyond the dominant right-wing focus and provides a scalable methodology for monitoring online extremist dynamics across political spectra.

Abstract

Social media's role in the spread and evolution of extremism is a focus of intense study. Online extremists have been involved in the dissemination of online hate, mis- and disinformation, and real-world violence. While the majority of research has focused on right-wing extremism, recent real-world incidents have highlighted the potential for far-left extremists to engage in violence and cause real-world harm as well. In this paper, we present the first large-scale measurement of left-wing extremism on social media. Analyzing 1.3 million posts from 53,000 authors from tankie subreddits, we focus on ``tankies,'' a left-wing community that first arose in the 1950s in support of hardline actions of the USSR and has evolved to support what they call ``Actually Existing Socialist'' countries, e.g., CCP-run China, the USSR, and North Korea. Among other things, our analysis reveals that these groups occupy the periphery of the broader far-left community on Reddit, and their discourse distinctively focus on state-level politics and support for authoritarian regimes, rather than on social justice issues. Finally, we show that tankies have high toxicity scores and use pejorative language, mirroring toxicity patterns reported for other online extremist communities. Our findings provide empirical evidence of the distinct positioning and discourse of left-wing extremist groups on social media.
Paper Structure (24 sections, 3 equations, 12 figures, 11 tables)

This paper contains 24 sections, 3 equations, 12 figures, 11 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background & Related Work
  3. Measuring Tankie Activity
  4. Ideological Position of Tankies
  5. Measuring The Tankie Narrative
  6. What do tankies talk about?
  7. What are their lexical differences?
  8. Discussion & Conclusion
  9. Future Work
  10. Limitations
  11. Ethics
  12. MEASURING TANKIE ACTIVITY
  13. Tankie Subreddits
  14. Network Metrics
  15. User Migrations Over Time
  16. ...and 9 more sections

Figures (12)

  • Figure 1: Conceptual overview of how tankies differ from other far-left communities on Reddit.
  • Figure 2: Overview of the data collection and analysis pipeline for measuring tankies on Reddit.
  • Figure 3: Screenshot of r/InformedTankie.
  • Figure 4: Monthly active user counts of the largest tankie subreddit, r/GenZedong, compared to non-tankie far-left communities. r/GenZedong outgrows the monthly active user counts of any other far-left community starting from April 2021.
  • Figure 5: Monthly migrations from far-left subreddits relative to tankie subreddits (a) and monthly migrations to tankie subreddits relative to far-left subreddits (b). The black line shows the month tankies surpass the monthly user count of r/communism. The figure illustrates the rapid influx of members to the tankies from other far-left communities once it surpassed the user base of r/communism.
  • ...and 7 more figures