Plus don’t forget the effect of bots, especially those created specifically to mess with the protests. I saw people going around to subs they had NEVER visited before in their entire existence, and spreading misinformation and generalized disorder. Often they were quite upfront about their purpose even.

Like, polls should be for those who participate in THAT community, not some rando from somewhere else on the internet entirely? I’m not trying to spread a conspiracy theory, but I will say that if I were part of a Russian troll farm, I would 100% have done that, in order to keep people on Reddit where my disinformation content could more easily reach them. (Thus it’s hard to imagine them NOT doing that… maybe, plus many others doing the same just for the fun of it and enjoying helping spread the chaos.)

It might be good to ignore all accounts created since the week prior to the protests and moving forward, since there likely would not have been so many accounts created organically, but it would be expected to be enriched in trolling accounts, even if not bots.