The story in my head of the Reddit Legion is a bunch of like 50 dorks got duped after /r/ukraine jumped from 10k to 1mil subscribers and went to volunteer, all got pushed into the same barracks, and then Russia deleted them by tracing phone signals. I have no idea if that has any truth to it at all, but I almost don't want to be corrected
Russia hitting foreign legion barracks has definitely happened on numerous occasions, and at least a few times even western media reported that it was by tracing cell signals.
I believe the volunteer forces split into two groups, and they didn't invite anyone who was a mall ninja to the second group. They didn't want their lives to be trusted to the kind of people you're talking about.