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A lot of "influencers" get paid good money to shill on Reddit. It has a huge social media site. Of course, it is not ignored by the industry. Products, fads

A lot of "influencers" get paid good money to shill on Reddit. It has a huge social media site. Of course, it is not ignored by the industry. Products, fads and politics. Over the last several years it has become quite infested. All is not lost. There are some really good smaller subreddits. For smaller subreddits who have been around for a long time social meia influencers are easier to spot. Some subreddits are so focused on an obscure niche that it is not worth money to try. Well paid reddit influencers are well trained in "propaganda". One might have several accounts and the information comes "organic" from a "group effort". Some will not even name a product directly but give enough hints. You also have negative influencers that work had to hurt the credibility of others and brand. >Reddit posts are good because the people who create these posts or make comments are doing it to share their knowledge. And there is no financial incentive associated with it. They know that do it to share their knowledge.

ppod 5y ago
The structure of reddit really works well for preventing shilling from being a fatal problem. Namespaces moderated by genuine enthsuasists gain more users, and even if they are infiltrated, there is this constant evaluation of subreddits and posts by subscriber numbers and upvotes. It's a darwinian ecosystem with constant speciation and competition among subreddits.
ravenstine 5y ago
I largely blame Reddit's redesign. Once Reddit became more about infinite scrolling with media content becoming front and center, that made it much easier to gain attention through low-effort gifs and memes. It draws in the lowest common denominator of people looking to scroll through mindless content while on break. More eyeballs and more screen real estate means more opportunities to shill and propagandize. Old Reddit doesn't encourage this to the same degree because feeds are mostly composed of titles and thumbnails without infinite scroll or autoplaying media; much less exciting for mindless content consumers but better for those who are genuinely interested in discussions around particular topics. The change in Reddit's design brought in a very different element that also brought more shilling with it, and so many subreddits have turned into glorified meme generators.
- otherotherchris 5y ago
  The low effort racist/political/pepe shitpost image macros came across from Facebook. My grandparents love them. I wouldn't mind seeing a lot less of them on Reddit, but that's apparently the only part of the site's userbase that doesn't have adblock installed which is why Reddit caters exclusively to them.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    Umm... I guess that can be considered part of it, but somehow I manage to avoid the racist shit without trying. I'm more broadly talking about how it evolved many of Reddit's communities to be more "look at me!" based as opposed to "what do you think?" or "here's my story". Not every community is like this, but if moderators aren't strict, communities quickly become an amalgam of these: - Here's me doing a thing loosely related to the topic of the sub! Look and congratulate me! - Here's a screenshot of some news story with no hyperlink. Get mad with me! - Here's a meme making fun of breaking news. Laugh and mock with me! - Here's a product I bought that's loosely related to the topic. Don't I look badass? Discount code in the thread! - Here I am, [pretending to be] an idiot just getting into the topic. Tell me what to buy! This is of course an incomplete picture, but this more or less reflects my experience with what I consider to be low quality Reddit content. They are mostly about visual attention and are designed to either promote products, their YouTubes/Instagrams, or make you think that the community believes something, ergo the reader should believe it, too. Old Reddit wasn't immune to this, but I think there's a definite difference when the UX is designed around passive content consumption versus something more active. The old Reddit interface was ironically more of an active experience because you were forced more to visit individual posts based on the title and thumbnail, meaning posts better be good or fewer people will read them. With the New Reddit's passive content consumption, the visual content is front and center on the screen with no effort by the user other than to keep swiping their finger upwards to move down their feed. This design both invites a different type of user and greater amounts of shilling for products and political memes. But maybe I'm way off base with how most people use Reddit. I believe I've seen Reddit change overall as well as some individual subs. To the creddit of Reddit, subs do have the ability to avoid most of these issues. Some of them turn off image posts entirely, which seems to greatly increase the value of a community. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop Reddit as a whole from being a shilling and propaganda machine. People want their dumb pictures.

ppod 5y ago

The structure of reddit really works well for preventing shilling from being a fatal problem. Namespaces moderated by genuine enthsuasists gain more users, and even if they are infiltrated, there is this constant evaluation of subreddits and posts by subscriber numbers and upvotes. It's a darwinian ecosystem with constant speciation and competition among subreddits.

ravenstine 5y ago

I largely blame Reddit's redesign. Once Reddit became more about infinite scrolling with media content becoming front and center, that made it much easier to gain attention through low-effort gifs and memes. It draws in the lowest common denominator of people looking to scroll through mindless content while on break. More eyeballs and more screen real estate means more opportunities to shill and propagandize. Old Reddit doesn't encourage this to the same degree because feeds are mostly composed of titles and thumbnails without infinite scroll or autoplaying media; much less exciting for mindless content consumers but better for those who are genuinely interested in discussions around particular topics. The change in Reddit's design brought in a very different element that also brought more shilling with it, and so many subreddits have turned into glorified meme generators.

otherotherchris 5y ago
The low effort racist/political/pepe shitpost image macros came across from Facebook. My grandparents love them. I wouldn't mind seeing a lot less of them on Reddit, but that's apparently the only part of the site's userbase that doesn't have adblock installed which is why Reddit caters exclusively to them.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Umm... I guess that can be considered part of it, but somehow I manage to avoid the racist shit without trying. I'm more broadly talking about how it evolved many of Reddit's communities to be more "look at me!" based as opposed to "what do you think?" or "here's my story". Not every community is like this, but if moderators aren't strict, communities quickly become an amalgam of these: - Here's me doing a thing loosely related to the topic of the sub! Look and congratulate me! - Here's a screenshot of some news story with no hyperlink. Get mad with me! - Here's a meme making fun of breaking news. Laugh and mock with me! - Here's a product I bought that's loosely related to the topic. Don't I look badass? Discount code in the thread! - Here I am, [pretending to be] an idiot just getting into the topic. Tell me what to buy! This is of course an incomplete picture, but this more or less reflects my experience with what I consider to be low quality Reddit content. They are mostly about visual attention and are designed to either promote products, their YouTubes/Instagrams, or make you think that the community believes something, ergo the reader should believe it, too. Old Reddit wasn't immune to this, but I think there's a definite difference when the UX is designed around passive content consumption versus something more active. The old Reddit interface was ironically more of an active experience because you were forced more to visit individual posts based on the title and thumbnail, meaning posts better be good or fewer people will read them. With the New Reddit's passive content consumption, the visual content is front and center on the screen with no effort by the user other than to keep swiping their finger upwards to move down their feed. This design both invites a different type of user and greater amounts of shilling for products and political memes. But maybe I'm way off base with how most people use Reddit. I believe I've seen Reddit change overall as well as some individual subs. To the creddit of Reddit, subs do have the ability to avoid most of these issues. Some of them turn off image posts entirely, which seems to greatly increase the value of a community. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop Reddit as a whole from being a shilling and propaganda machine. People want their dumb pictures.