Reddit Trolls Are Weaponizing Government Agencies Against Creators

Adam McIntyre, a 22-year-old YouTuber and influencer with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and followers, is no stranger to being the subject of snark. McIntyre has cemented his place in the influencer world as a commentator who makes videos about pop culture, celebrity controversies, and internet feuds. Some of his most viral videos address the allegations he made against former YouTube royalty Colleen Ballinger, including that 29-year-old Ballinger confided in 14-year-old McIntyre about her impending divorce, asked him for inappropriate pictures, and sent him a lingerie set. (Ballinger denied the claims.) Though McIntyre was only one of the handful of young creators who alleged Ballinger had acted inappropriately, he became the subject of threats and doxxing by Ballinger’s fans and others. On the subreddit r/AdamMcIntyreSnark, anonymous posters tracked how much money Adam was spending on flights and travel, speculated about his alleged drug use (which he denies), and even reached out to his friends to troll them. Most of the time, McIntyre tells Rolling Stone, he can shrug off snark as obsessive and strange though essentially harmless – but that was before some members reported McIntyre, who is an Irish citizen and is currently in America on a work visa, to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (). “It got to be too much,” he says. “I mean, we’re in L.A., you know what I mean? False reports are false reports that trigger action in the system.” Luckily the agency has yet to reach out to him, but the experience left him shook. Snark subreddits are communities on dedicated to gossiping about specific influencers or creators. Scrolling through a snark subreddit is an exercise in extremes – there are thoughtful discussions about the power imbalance between creators and their fans next to mocking posts about suspected lip injections. “Snark, at one point, had the potential to be a guardrail in an industry that was largely unregulated,” says Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of digital media at the University of Alabama. “Unfortunately, we have started to see snarking essentially becoming doxxing. That then blurs into more explicitly violent things like Trisha Paytas’ snark calling CPS on a child who isn’t born yet, all the way down to what we saw with Adam McIntyre being reported to ICE.” Editor’s picks McIntyre has been touring his Chronically Online Podcast around the U.S. since January under an 0-1 visa, which is how most artists, comedians, or creators such as himself do so legally for profit. When he was approved, McIntyre posted a photo of the visa to X. “I was excited to let people know I got my visa,” McIntyre says. But in recent weeks, members of r/AdamMcIntyresnark circulated the photo, claiming that McIntyre had been issued an R1 visa, which is for people entering the United States to perform religious work. A rumor began going around the snark page that McIntyre had wrongfully been granted a visa he wasn’t eligible for. Snarkers encouraged each other to report McIntyre to ICE through their online tip form and even posted screenshots that showed their own tips had been received. “The only time I won’t say fck ice,” read the comment of one snarker.  McIntyre found out when fans and friends who saw the snark page posts sent him screenshots. “It’s incredibly bizarre,” says McIntyre. “I’m no stranger to Reddits and snark pages, but knowing that I could literally be detained or arrested on the street because of people who reported me for the LOLs on Reddit? That’s been terrifying.” When he heard news of snarkers reporting him to ICE, McIntyre was in Los Angeles, which has been the scene of intense ICE raids in the last month. “It’s already scary times in America,” he says. McIntyre knows he’s not part of the vulnerable groups who have been targeted by immigration enforcement — mostly people of Hispanic and/or Caribbean descent — but he’s still troubled by snarkers weaponizing the government agency as a harassment campaign tool. (McIntyre’s own views on ICE can be summed up as, “It’s a system that is used to isolate and I cannot scream enough about how disgusting it is.”) Related Content On July 6, McIntyre posted a YouTube video detailing the situation with his snark subreddit and the ICE tips. In the video, he vowed to take legal action against the erroneous claims that he was in the country illegally. Two days later, on July 8, McIntyre posted an update, that the subreddit had been shut down. “Reddit, for all their failings, has always demonstrated that they will play whack-a-mole when these issues come up and they will strike down these things that do cause real offline harm,” says Maddox, the social media expert. She hypothesizes that snarkers weaponizing ICE against McIntyre could prompt Reddit to take further action against other snark communities. “This is a massive escalation of what snarkers have previously done,” she says. “It is insidious. It is disgusting. I think that anybody who filed these reports to ICE knew exactly what they were doing. They are aware of how out of control ICE is at the moment.” “This was no longer snarking,” McIntyre says in his YouTube video. “This was putting me in government records incorrectly because you don’t know how to read a visa. My name, Adam McIntyre, and my personal information have been submitted to a federal agency with the power to investigate, detain, or deport me. This is not a joke. And this is where it has crossed a line.”  Trending Stories In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson from Reddit said, “Harassment and bullying have no place on Reddit, and our rules explicitly prohibit this behavior. This includes real-world harassment and actions that would threaten an individual’s safety. The subreddit in question is banned.” McIntyre says that he’s not focused on legal remedies to the false ICE reports at the moment; his sights are set on finishing his last comedy show in the U.S., slated for July 11 in New York City. Though the snark page dedicated to him has been shut down, McIntyre tells Rolling Stone he thinks it’s only a matter of time before another pops up to take its place. “That’s just how the creator space works,” he says. 

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