Brigading
Also called: brigade, reddit brigade, community interference, vote brigading
Definition
Brigading is when a group of users from one community or channel is directed into another subreddit or thread to vote, comment, report or harass in a coordinated way. Reddit treats it as community interference under its rules and Moderator Code of Conduct.
A brigade is a crowd sent somewhere it does not belong. Reddit's help center uses the word directly, noting that many mod teams have rules against interference, "sometimes called 'brigading.'"
How it works
Brigading usually starts with a link and a call to action: "look at what they said in r/whatever," "go downvote this," "everyone report this post." The crowd arrives, votes or comments en masse, and leaves. The target thread's votes, tone and reports stop reflecting the people who actually belong to that community.
Reddit addresses it in two places:
- Disrupting Communities (Reddit Rule 2). The policy prohibits coordinated voting by an organized group of people or bots aimed at a specific post, a user's posts or a domain, and also coordinating others to abuse Reddit's reporting tools.
- Moderator Code of Conduct, Rule 3. A community must not be used to direct, coordinate or encourage interference in other communities, or to target users for harassment. Reddit's examples include posts urging members to go post in another subreddit, or to flood another subreddit's modmail.
Reddit is clear about what is not brigading: discussing another community's content, criticizing its moderators, mentioning that you were banned, or encouraging people to report genuinely violating content.
How subreddits defend against it
Reddit recommends several tools to mods dealing with a sudden influx: crowd control (collapses or filters content from people who are not yet trusted members), the harassment filter, the ban evasion filter, the reputation filter, and AutoModerator. Crowd control was built partly for this: Reddit describes it as useful when a post goes viral or people engage "in bad faith."
Why it matters for marketers
Brands brigade without calling it that. Common versions:
- Posting a Reddit thread link in a company Slack, newsletter or Discord with "go upvote" or "go reply."
- Asking customers to "go defend us" in a thread that criticizes the product.
- Pointing a community you run at a competitor's thread.
Each one is a group being directed at a specific thread to change its votes or conversation. Even when every person is real, the result reads as astroturfing, and the vote side of it is vote manipulation. Crowd control also means many of those outside comments get collapsed or held anyway, so the effort often backfires visibly.
Example
A thread in a software subreddit criticizes a company's pricing. The company tweets the link asking happy customers to "share your experience." Two hundred accounts with no history in that subreddit arrive within an hour. Mods turn crowd control to maximum, lock the thread, and post a note about the brigade. The criticism now has more upvotes than before.
Frequently asked questions
What does brigading mean on Reddit?
Brigading means a group of users being directed from one community or platform into another thread to vote, comment or report together. Reddit treats it as interference with communities.
Is linking to another subreddit brigading?
Not by itself. Reddit says discussing another community or its content is usually fine. It becomes brigading when there is a call to action to go interfere, such as telling people to vote, comment, report or harass there.