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This is kind of ridiculous: Every subreddit is different. Some allow self-promotion and some don't. The ones that do allow self-promotion just happen to not

This is kind of ridiculous: Every subreddit is different. Some allow self-promotion and some don't. The ones that do allow self-promotion just happen to not be as popular as the ones that don't allow it. Hmmm A big reason why Reddit is so popular is that it is mostly free of self-promotion spam (and generic, scam-like spam) and one of the tools that keeps the site spam-free are the anti-self-promotion rules. As annoying as it is--I've tried to promote my own stuff and had it taken down--it's not really as big a problem as spam. There's a tradeoff here: If you allow self-promotion you're devaluing your subreddit (well, it depends on the topic of the subreddit I guess). Also, let's call it what it is: Advertising. It's just a genre of ads. Nobody likes ads because 99.99999% of all ads are trash and they get in the way of the other content people actually want to see.

chomp 4y ago
>A big reason why Reddit is so popular is that it is mostly free of self-promotion spam I think the newer generation wasn't around for the bad ol' days of self promo spam. I don't know if you remember, but when Stumbleupon was a thing, or Digg came out and Adsense was popular, people would shove just so many ads into their site, run it through the aggregator, and then get a big cashout from hitting the front page. These self-promo spam rules are vestigial, but originated from those times. And let's be honest, OP's blog has no visible ads, but it is the front end of a subscription funnel for their substack. At the end of the day, self-submission of external links is a signal that someone is trying to drive conversion to their personal blog, or their personal brand, whereas having another community member submit content is a signal that the content is interesting just by nature of the fact that they liked it enough to share. There's a huge difference between, for instance, /r/astrophotography where people share their creations, and submitting a link that's a vehicle for subscription.

chomp 4y ago

>A big reason why Reddit is so popular is that it is mostly free of self-promotion spam I think the newer generation wasn't around for the bad ol' days of self promo spam. I don't know if you remember, but when Stumbleupon was a thing, or Digg came out and Adsense was popular, people would shove just so many ads into their site, run it through the aggregator, and then get a big cashout from hitting the front page. These self-promo spam rules are vestigial, but originated from those times. And let's be honest, OP's blog has no visible ads, but it is the front end of a subscription funnel for their substack. At the end of the day, self-submission of external links is a signal that someone is trying to drive conversion to their personal blog, or their personal brand, whereas having another community member submit content is a signal that the content is interesting just by nature of the fact that they liked it enough to share. There's a huge difference between, for instance, /r/astrophotography where people share their creations, and submitting a link that's a vehicle for subscription.