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Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users: Leak show feds tracking anti-ICE Reddit users like "Budget-Chicken-2425"
(www.kenklippenstein.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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I find it odd, but a lot of newer users on Reddit go with the default suggested username and those follow the
word-word-0000template.At the same time, it might be better for privacy to do that since it's less likely that someone can track you across platforms if you use the generator built into each platform.
Fair enough. Maybe I’m too old for the internet.
Maybe the internet truly is... No Country for Old Men...
I see it a lot, too. Reddit's been around for 20 years, so all the good usernames are already taken.
Its been a long time since you could build relationships with other users in places like Reddit. The usernames don't matter anymore so you may as well just use randoms.
it has been flooded with bots since '16, when russia got involved with reddit through propaganda. so people are quite suspicious around other users, accusing them bots.
How can lemmy avoid that fate, if it ever gets really popular?
I think the current flow for Reddit account creation is they give you the auto generated username and you have to change it when you're done creating the account. You don't get to set it during creation. So because it's an extra step I think some people don't. (Though I may be misremembering. It's been years since I used it.)
thats how they mass-create bot accounts, just create a large number without carefully making one that reddit wont immediately ban you on.
I did that with my new user. It’s easier to use an account for a year or two and burn it. I don’t care about the fake points. And I am not doing anything wrong. But if tou give a lot of oppinions it’s a lot of data for social engineering, so for privacy reason it’s a good practice to not be attached to any account.