8 ms·

Just a heads up if someone is searching reddit for product reviews. I believe most of them are inauthentic. I worked in marketing for several companies and we a

Just a heads up if someone is searching reddit for product reviews. I believe most of them are inauthentic. I worked in marketing for several companies and we always had some budget for whisper marketing aka shilling. There are third party agency specialized in shilling on reddit and making it all look authentic.

JimBlackwood 5y ago
Do you have a link to such a service? Not to bash on them or anything, I'm just interested in how they market their services
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- qnsi 5y ago
  I see that googling for one seems hard. I can give you link to the one we used if you send me an email (@ in my profile)
wing-_-nuts 5y ago
I click on the profile of any reviewer I'm taking seriously. It's easy to spot the astroturf accounts vs the real degenerates
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Not really - you can buy Reddit accounts and good shills actually use the account somewhat regularly. You can still spot them, but you’d have to comb through the history more thoroughly. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=reddit+account&_trksid=p2380057.m4084.l1313 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=reddit+account&_trksid=...
  - hatsunearu 5y ago
    Being a reddit mod helps (and also about a decade of reddit experience) and these things jump out super quick
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    You can also semi-automate accounts. I used to use reddit actively and was one of the "most active" posters on a couple subreddits, but really I just automatically posted certain articles and then replied to comments([0]). I was clearly a real person who interacted with people which meant I was trusted and because of that the moderators would not pay any attention to me. This was all done for fun in communities I enjoyed participating in, only contributing from sources that I knew would be appreciated. This was so easy that I know that if someone put a bit more effort into making the automation less obvious and also using enough real interaction you could do massive manipulation. 0: interestingly, I posted so many articles from a small amount of sources that people started to assume I worked at those sites. I had to correct people on this repeatedly. Super easy to get trust and once an idea gets out there it's hard to get everyone to forget it.
    - _fn2y 5y ago
      I tried to do something similar but couldn't get karma very quick (using a paraphrasing API on other people's comments and submitting news from RSS feeds). I think I had a chicken and egg problem with karma because most subreddits require a minimum amount to post. I ran it for about two weeks before I lost interest. None of my accounts were limited in any way and I was just using publicly available Hola proxies. It seems that very little scrutiny is applied to the reddit mobile API. No captcha is required for registration (unlike the website) and no email is required. Here are some samples: https://www.reddit.com/user/SereneKingdom36 https://www.reddit.com/user/SereneKingdom36 https://www.reddit.com/user/EnviousEditor41 https://www.reddit.com/user/EnviousEditor41 https://www.reddit.com/user/active_manufacturer6 https://www.reddit.com/user/active_manufacturer6 https://www.reddit.com/user/RemarkableCracker71 https://www.reddit.com/user/RemarkableCracker71 If anyone at reddit is reading this, it'd probably be pretty trivial to identify the 50 other accounts I made like this :)
      - TheFreim 5y ago
        > I tried to do something similar but couldn't get karma very quick. I think I had a chicken and egg problem with karma because most subreddits require a minimum amount to post. Doing this on an account that you personally use is probably the easiest way, but that doesn't scale well for obvious reasons. Getting past time gates (must wait a month or more to post in certain areas) and karma gates takes time. This kind of makes me want to go back and try this again but there are moral/ethical issues that give me pause.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Wow, based on those prices I could make a killing selling my reddit account! I haven't worked there in over a decade, but if I worked there now, I would definitely be scraping eBay and all the other sites and closely monitoring all the accounts that I see for sale. I'd probably even buy a couple of them to see if I could find some patterns in the sellers.
    - Lascaille 5y ago
      > I haven't worked there in over a decade, but if I worked there now, I would definitely be scraping eBay and all the other sites and closely monitoring all the accounts that I see for sale. I think if you did that you would rapidly be asked to leave, because it would expose how few genuine users the site still has. I don't get the feeling - when I use reddit - that a majority of the comments or posts are genuine.
  - MPSimmons 5y ago
    At least shipping is free on the Reddit accounts
- Afton 5y ago
  It's easy to spot the badly astroturfed accounts. How would establish your baseline truth? I'm not claiming it's impossible, but it's very easy to fool yourself in this territory. A good mark is the one who thinks they know the game.
- crucialfelix 5y ago
  Sure it's easy to spot, bit this is a lot of wasted work. Maybe we should pay herds of people to flag the bullshit, since google won't do it anymore.
trdlts 5y ago
Is there any place on the web with authentic reviews? The only thing that comes to mind is something like steam, where you have to at least purchase a copy of a game before leaving a review.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Amazon reviews with a picture inside a dirty living room with, like, a toddler only in their diaper in the background or something have been pretty reliable.
  - suzzer99 5y ago
    Every Amazon review stream: 5-star, 2-star, 5-star, 5-star, 5-star, 5-star, 5-star.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> Is there any place on the web with authentic reviews? This is where a good social network is useful. I'd trust my friends more than any random web site. Unfortunately I don't have a huge network to call on, so it would be nice to trust my friends friends and so on, but the trust quickly drops. We need a way to improve a simple network with some user-controlled measure of authenticity and trust.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Consumer Reports. Since they are paid for subscriptions, they're able to afford to vet products with less influence to leave a good review. You have to pay for quality journalism.
  - nvarsj 5y ago
    Do you really trust CR? In the UK we have which.co.uk, which is similar and you have to subscribe to it. But I'm fairly sure they are shilling for some of their product categories after having subscribed a few times. Like, the mattress category is filled with mattress in a box companies, which are notorious for paying off websites/blogs to promote their products. I really don't trust any of these sites anymore.
criley2 5y ago
I mean, it's not hard to tell shilling, and truly authentic, quality shilling falls along a border of marginally still useful content. Like, I'm hoping to find a specialized community discussing products relevant to that hobby or interest, often posting images or discussions of data gathered. For example I am starting a container garden on my patio using fabric pots and have searched reddit for a wide variety of gardening products. Perhaps I fell for shills but I looked for people posting images of their gardens and discussing opinions and results, so if companies reselling chinese factory sourced fabric grow containers are hiring people to literally make home gardens and shill online about products, then so be it, thank you for the content? And even then, I don't think I saw anyone specifically pushing any brand at all, and even calling the top brand (SmartPot) overpriced . Everyone seems to use a different brand and they all seem to do fine. I think that's a strength on reddit. It's harder to shill in a specialist community than it is in an Amazon review or personal blog. Another reddit community I would look at often for opinions and brands is chef knives and knife sharpening tools. I really don't think there's a lot of shilling there that gets upvoted and promoted.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Even with the shilling, overall on average searching Reddit produces the most useful results for several topics. It’s really good for gauging the severity of a flaw/defect in a product for example, which you’d be hard pressed to find data on elsewhere.
generalizations 5y ago
I remember picking up on this when I was researching vpns. Compare the comments on Reddit and hacker news, and the difference is stark. It becomes fairly apparent that a lot of the Reddit comments were paid.
- flatiron 5y ago
  Oh no are we next? I’ve very often googled “xyz hacker news” because for some reason I trust the people here.
- karmakurtisaani 5y ago
  Which VPN did you end up going with?
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
As someone who add Reddit to my query when I search products, I’m not really looking for a review. Generally, I look for subreddits talking about what I’m trying to buy. I then see if they have a good wiki/something pinned about purchasing advice. Then, I take a look at what is posted about the product I had in mind (mostly questions not reviews). It’s more interesting to read about the experience of actual users than reading a review. You learn a lot from what they find frustrating.
- wackro 5y ago
  Are wikis and subreddits hallowed ground or something?
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    Most of them remains user controlled with relatively lax moderation involving somewhat large teams. I don’t doubt shilling must happen sometimes and moderators on the biggest sub might be bought but most of the time it still feel like genuine users talking to genuine users.
hnxs 5y ago
They’re more likely to be real when they’re 6+ years old.
N1H1L 5y ago
Depends on subreddits. I love shoes for example, and /r/goodyearwelt is a really decent resource in general. /r/malefashionadvice and /r/rawdenim for fashion are pretty great too.
- evilduck 5y ago
  Thursday Boots astroturfs a large number of the comment sections of posts about their products. Red Wing, Nicks and Truman have periodically had self-identified employees that frequented the site and their specific subs if they exist. The small group of GYW brands seem to at least be generally aware that a community of enthusiasts exists on Reddit and that's probably enough to start being skeptical of positive reviews.
  - N1H1L 5y ago
    I am okay with self-identified employees rather than astroturfing. Nicks themselves have mentioned how Reddit attention helped them stay afloat, and how much of a boon it has been for PNW bootmakers. IMO this is a far better outcome than that industry dying, the manufacturing parcelled to China/SE Asia and a storied bootmaker ultimately resurrected as a Frankenstein fast fashion brand. Wesco, for example is doing great because of online attention. However, even before Reddit, StyleForum was great, and their original darling was Viberg.
mupuff1234 5y ago
Is that against the TOS of reddit?
evilduck 5y ago
Generally speaking I search Reddit for genuine looking negative reviews not the glowing ones. I'm looking at Reddit to steer me away from obviously bad choices. Basically, shilling has become so pervasive that positive reviews are automatically untrustworthy regardless of source or apparent trustworthiness. It wouldn't even surprise me to find that companies are generating fake negative review content without ever endorsing their own products, but it's at least a tiny bit harder to fake genuine modes of failure to report on.
- sgslo 5y ago
  I suspect shills are aware that people like yourself are looking for negative reviews. Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/mk0l1w/eero_vs_orbi/ https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/mk0l1w/eero_vs_orbi/ This entire thread dumps on Orbi Wifi devices and praises Eero. Maybe Orbi is inferior to Eeero, but the one-sidedness of the discussion is a bit unsettling. The top comment was created by a poster who almost exclusively posts on the /r/eero subreddit over the span of one year. Many of their comments are specifically in praise of Eero devices.
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    It's one sided but that's a lot of shills if you think they're shills. Shills with 10-year-old accounts and active posting history that continues to this day. No, I'm pretty sure at least some of them must be authentic. Take that terminaldude for example. Ok, ten months ago they didn't have problems with Eero. Well, I guess now they do? https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/pq6mvg/chasing_ghosts_with_loops_that_support_is/hdjetw6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/pq6mvg/chasing_ghosts... Of course, this only hilights that user reviews are hit and miss. It's not so uncommon for something to work well at start but then you discover problems later on.
    - evilduck 5y ago
      On technology specifically I tend to view these types of threads more through the lens of tribalism than shilling. Like, I don't have reason to believe Lenovo or HP is paying people to whine about Apple online, I'm willing to believe people will do that all on their own.
Spooky23 5y ago
Good point. Reddit is great for a specialized user. Not only is there shilling, but you also find hyper-specialized people who go too deep.

JimBlackwood 5y ago

Do you have a link to such a service? Not to bash on them or anything, I'm just interested in how they market their services

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
qnsi 5y ago
I see that googling for one seems hard. I can give you link to the one we used if you send me an email (@ in my profile)

wing-_-nuts 5y ago

I click on the profile of any reviewer I'm taking seriously. It's easy to spot the astroturf accounts vs the real degenerates

endisneigh 5y ago
Not really - you can buy Reddit accounts and good shills actually use the account somewhat regularly. You can still spot them, but you’d have to comb through the history more thoroughly. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=reddit+account&_trksid=p2380057.m4084.l1313 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=reddit+account&_trksid=...
- hatsunearu 5y ago
  Being a reddit mod helps (and also about a decade of reddit experience) and these things jump out super quick
- TheFreim 5y ago
  You can also semi-automate accounts. I used to use reddit actively and was one of the "most active" posters on a couple subreddits, but really I just automatically posted certain articles and then replied to comments([0]). I was clearly a real person who interacted with people which meant I was trusted and because of that the moderators would not pay any attention to me. This was all done for fun in communities I enjoyed participating in, only contributing from sources that I knew would be appreciated. This was so easy that I know that if someone put a bit more effort into making the automation less obvious and also using enough real interaction you could do massive manipulation. 0: interestingly, I posted so many articles from a small amount of sources that people started to assume I worked at those sites. I had to correct people on this repeatedly. Super easy to get trust and once an idea gets out there it's hard to get everyone to forget it.
  - _fn2y 5y ago
    I tried to do something similar but couldn't get karma very quick (using a paraphrasing API on other people's comments and submitting news from RSS feeds). I think I had a chicken and egg problem with karma because most subreddits require a minimum amount to post. I ran it for about two weeks before I lost interest. None of my accounts were limited in any way and I was just using publicly available Hola proxies. It seems that very little scrutiny is applied to the reddit mobile API. No captcha is required for registration (unlike the website) and no email is required. Here are some samples: https://www.reddit.com/user/SereneKingdom36 https://www.reddit.com/user/SereneKingdom36 https://www.reddit.com/user/EnviousEditor41 https://www.reddit.com/user/EnviousEditor41 https://www.reddit.com/user/active_manufacturer6 https://www.reddit.com/user/active_manufacturer6 https://www.reddit.com/user/RemarkableCracker71 https://www.reddit.com/user/RemarkableCracker71 If anyone at reddit is reading this, it'd probably be pretty trivial to identify the 50 other accounts I made like this :)
    - TheFreim 5y ago
      > I tried to do something similar but couldn't get karma very quick. I think I had a chicken and egg problem with karma because most subreddits require a minimum amount to post. Doing this on an account that you personally use is probably the easiest way, but that doesn't scale well for obvious reasons. Getting past time gates (must wait a month or more to post in certain areas) and karma gates takes time. This kind of makes me want to go back and try this again but there are moral/ethical issues that give me pause.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Wow, based on those prices I could make a killing selling my reddit account! I haven't worked there in over a decade, but if I worked there now, I would definitely be scraping eBay and all the other sites and closely monitoring all the accounts that I see for sale. I'd probably even buy a couple of them to see if I could find some patterns in the sellers.
  - Lascaille 5y ago
    > I haven't worked there in over a decade, but if I worked there now, I would definitely be scraping eBay and all the other sites and closely monitoring all the accounts that I see for sale. I think if you did that you would rapidly be asked to leave, because it would expose how few genuine users the site still has. I don't get the feeling - when I use reddit - that a majority of the comments or posts are genuine.
- MPSimmons 5y ago
  At least shipping is free on the Reddit accounts
Afton 5y ago
It's easy to spot the badly astroturfed accounts. How would establish your baseline truth? I'm not claiming it's impossible, but it's very easy to fool yourself in this territory. A good mark is the one who thinks they know the game.
crucialfelix 5y ago
Sure it's easy to spot, bit this is a lot of wasted work. Maybe we should pay herds of people to flag the bullshit, since google won't do it anymore.

trdlts 5y ago

Is there any place on the web with authentic reviews? The only thing that comes to mind is something like steam, where you have to at least purchase a copy of a game before leaving a review.

monocasa 5y ago
Amazon reviews with a picture inside a dirty living room with, like, a toddler only in their diaper in the background or something have been pretty reliable.
- suzzer99 5y ago
  Every Amazon review stream: 5-star, 2-star, 5-star, 5-star, 5-star, 5-star, 5-star.
phkahler 5y ago
>> Is there any place on the web with authentic reviews? This is where a good social network is useful. I'd trust my friends more than any random web site. Unfortunately I don't have a huge network to call on, so it would be nice to trust my friends friends and so on, but the trust quickly drops. We need a way to improve a simple network with some user-controlled measure of authenticity and trust.
xeromal 5y ago
Consumer Reports. Since they are paid for subscriptions, they're able to afford to vet products with less influence to leave a good review. You have to pay for quality journalism.
- nvarsj 5y ago
  Do you really trust CR? In the UK we have which.co.uk, which is similar and you have to subscribe to it. But I'm fairly sure they are shilling for some of their product categories after having subscribed a few times. Like, the mattress category is filled with mattress in a box companies, which are notorious for paying off websites/blogs to promote their products. I really don't trust any of these sites anymore.

criley2 5y ago

I mean, it's not hard to tell shilling, and truly authentic, quality shilling falls along a border of marginally still useful content. Like, I'm hoping to find a specialized community discussing products relevant to that hobby or interest, often posting images or discussions of data gathered. For example I am starting a container garden on my patio using fabric pots and have searched reddit for a wide variety of gardening products. Perhaps I fell for shills but I looked for people posting images of their gardens and discussing opinions and results, so if companies reselling chinese factory sourced fabric grow containers are hiring people to literally make home gardens and shill online about products, then so be it, thank you for the content? And even then, I don't think I saw anyone specifically pushing any brand at all, and even calling the top brand (SmartPot) overpriced . Everyone seems to use a different brand and they all seem to do fine. I think that's a strength on reddit. It's harder to shill in a specialist community than it is in an Amazon review or personal blog. Another reddit community I would look at often for opinions and brands is chef knives and knife sharpening tools. I really don't think there's a lot of shilling there that gets upvoted and promoted.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Even with the shilling, overall on average searching Reddit produces the most useful results for several topics. It’s really good for gauging the severity of a flaw/defect in a product for example, which you’d be hard pressed to find data on elsewhere.

generalizations 5y ago

I remember picking up on this when I was researching vpns. Compare the comments on Reddit and hacker news, and the difference is stark. It becomes fairly apparent that a lot of the Reddit comments were paid.

flatiron 5y ago
Oh no are we next? I’ve very often googled “xyz hacker news” because for some reason I trust the people here.
karmakurtisaani 5y ago
Which VPN did you end up going with?

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

As someone who add Reddit to my query when I search products, I’m not really looking for a review. Generally, I look for subreddits talking about what I’m trying to buy. I then see if they have a good wiki/something pinned about purchasing advice. Then, I take a look at what is posted about the product I had in mind (mostly questions not reviews). It’s more interesting to read about the experience of actual users than reading a review. You learn a lot from what they find frustrating.

wackro 5y ago
Are wikis and subreddits hallowed ground or something?
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  Most of them remains user controlled with relatively lax moderation involving somewhat large teams. I don’t doubt shilling must happen sometimes and moderators on the biggest sub might be bought but most of the time it still feel like genuine users talking to genuine users.

hnxs 5y ago

They’re more likely to be real when they’re 6+ years old.

N1H1L 5y ago

Depends on subreddits. I love shoes for example, and /r/goodyearwelt is a really decent resource in general. /r/malefashionadvice and /r/rawdenim for fashion are pretty great too.

evilduck 5y ago
Thursday Boots astroturfs a large number of the comment sections of posts about their products. Red Wing, Nicks and Truman have periodically had self-identified employees that frequented the site and their specific subs if they exist. The small group of GYW brands seem to at least be generally aware that a community of enthusiasts exists on Reddit and that's probably enough to start being skeptical of positive reviews.
- N1H1L 5y ago
  I am okay with self-identified employees rather than astroturfing. Nicks themselves have mentioned how Reddit attention helped them stay afloat, and how much of a boon it has been for PNW bootmakers. IMO this is a far better outcome than that industry dying, the manufacturing parcelled to China/SE Asia and a storied bootmaker ultimately resurrected as a Frankenstein fast fashion brand. Wesco, for example is doing great because of online attention. However, even before Reddit, StyleForum was great, and their original darling was Viberg.

mupuff1234 5y ago

Is that against the TOS of reddit?

evilduck 5y ago

Generally speaking I search Reddit for genuine looking negative reviews not the glowing ones. I'm looking at Reddit to steer me away from obviously bad choices. Basically, shilling has become so pervasive that positive reviews are automatically untrustworthy regardless of source or apparent trustworthiness. It wouldn't even surprise me to find that companies are generating fake negative review content without ever endorsing their own products, but it's at least a tiny bit harder to fake genuine modes of failure to report on.

sgslo 5y ago
I suspect shills are aware that people like yourself are looking for negative reviews. Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/mk0l1w/eero_vs_orbi/ https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/mk0l1w/eero_vs_orbi/ This entire thread dumps on Orbi Wifi devices and praises Eero. Maybe Orbi is inferior to Eeero, but the one-sidedness of the discussion is a bit unsettling. The top comment was created by a poster who almost exclusively posts on the /r/eero subreddit over the span of one year. Many of their comments are specifically in praise of Eero devices.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  It's one sided but that's a lot of shills if you think they're shills. Shills with 10-year-old accounts and active posting history that continues to this day. No, I'm pretty sure at least some of them must be authentic. Take that terminaldude for example. Ok, ten months ago they didn't have problems with Eero. Well, I guess now they do? https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/pq6mvg/chasing_ghosts_with_loops_that_support_is/hdjetw6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/pq6mvg/chasing_ghosts... Of course, this only hilights that user reviews are hit and miss. It's not so uncommon for something to work well at start but then you discover problems later on.
  - evilduck 5y ago
    On technology specifically I tend to view these types of threads more through the lens of tribalism than shilling. Like, I don't have reason to believe Lenovo or HP is paying people to whine about Apple online, I'm willing to believe people will do that all on their own.

Spooky23 5y ago

Good point. Reddit is great for a specialized user. Not only is there shilling, but you also find hyper-specialized people who go too deep.