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> My only concern is that once Reddit reviews get used at scale for product discovery, we will see an inflow of fake and paid reviews in the comments This is a

> My only concern is that once Reddit reviews get used at scale for product discovery, we will see an inflow of fake and paid reviews in the comments This is already happening. A lot of product-related posts on Reddit are made by marketing agencies, PR firms, SEO consultants, etc. There's also a thriving secondary market for "high karma" Reddit accounts, which are bought and sold with ease. Unlike old-fashioned forums, which were difficult for outsiders to crack, Reddit is easy to game and basically it's already the most astroturfed place on the internet. Making it the basis of a product search system can only make it worse.

dawalker 3y ago
Very true. It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though. It's also worth noting that while this is happening, there aren't many other places that most people go to where the site is mainly text-based and there is a higher level of trust that I know of. Personally, I'd trust Reddit over a random blog from a Google search, but that isn't a high bar. All of that being said, I think this will be a much bigger problem with misinformation generally on all of the internet as AI gets better, especially considering the election later this year.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  > It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though Maybe the PR companies moved up a level in the meta-game - Don't talk up your product, talk up Reddit itself, _then_ go on Reddit to talk up your product.
  - dawalker 3y ago
    They're getting smarter for sure, maybe some shadow marketing going on with the IPO too lol
  - pphysch 3y ago
    It's not even that "meta": they would just be dogfooding. I would be surprised if this wasn't the case.
addandsubtract 3y ago
As with anything on reddit, "the real ______ is always in the comments." You get the best advice in place you expect it the least.
- dawalker 3y ago
  Great point. While reddit may be astroturfed, all it takes is one good comment.
  - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
    Thing is, there aren't many marketing firms that don't have (or can't buy on a work-for-hire basis) upvote/downvote networks. It's trivial to promote comments in ways that look organic. It's equally trivial to downvote commercially harmful comments into oblivion. What's more, Reddit posts are usually actively discussed only for a day or two. But votes can be cast, and new comments can be added, for months. One strategy is to wait until the conversation has completely died down, then hijack it with new comments that somehow seem to get as many votes as they need to rise to the top. When, a year later, somebody digs up that thread on Google, they'll see the promoted comments first. Reddit has severe structural flaws that are, I think, unfixable. In making the upvote/downvote thing a kind of game, and in enabling easy throwaway accounts whose votes are weighed in the same way as those of the longstanding accounts of regular commenters, they've naturally made their forum easy for commercial interests to game.
    - dawalker 3y ago
      Great points, not sure those are fixable either. It definitely has some advantages from those same things in some respects, but monetizing reddit outside of ads (i.e. ecommerce like tiktok/instagram) because of these things is going to be a challenge for sure.
- fuzzythinker 3y ago
  I wouldn't blindly trust comments.
chasebank 3y ago
Already happening? Here's a clip from an astroturfing firm in the year 2000 for Sprite and other clients. They called it 'under the radar marketing' back then. I'd wager 95% of all product recommendations on Reddit, and HN for that matter, are placed by people with agendas. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0z0a4SLIsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0z0a4SLIsM
- dawalker 3y ago
  The top comment on that clip scores home that point. While there's no way to verify that, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more than we realize. That being said and to play devils advocate - if all of them are already astroturfed with some people discovering that, then how much do most people care about it?
- AndrewCopeland 3y ago
  That's what I do, I think I provide a great product/service but also still want to get the word out. A marketing agency who will sell a bag of shit as long as they get paid is definitely a net negative. Overall reddit has been going down hill for a decade at this point and it only makes sense that it will/has been captured by companies trying to profit off it.
  - qiongzhouh 3y ago
    Do you have any pointers for learning more about this space? I've personally been pretty skeptical of sponsored products on YouTube, though I find myself getting tempted to / actually trying them out anyway, but haven't thought too hard about small Redditors or Tiktokers getting paid to shill products. Curious what companies do this / how companies are going about conducting these unpublicized marketing campaigns?
jsheard 3y ago
Likewise on YouTube, which OPs service is also pulling from, several times now I've gone looking for reviews of a specific product and one of the top results has been a TTS voice reading a probably ChatGPT-generated "review" which invariably recommends the product because the point is to get you to click the affiliate link in the description. The channels I saw were posting "reviews" so frequently and consistently, and for such random products that I suspect the entire operation is completely automated.
- dawalker 3y ago
  Interesting, haven't seen one of those yet. With public video+audio models getting much better that will only get way worse over time. Excited to see what YT/Google decides to do about it.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    Example: search for "MSI G27C4X" on YouTube, for me at least both the first and second results are fake robot reviews. There are a couple of real impressions videos by real people but for some reason YouTube sorts them below the AI spam. One of those spam channels is posting multiple reviews per hour, with >11,000 videos and counting.
    - dawalker 3y ago
      That's crazy, going to be really interesting once this ramps up/if it starts getting good traffic.
  - AndrewCopeland 3y ago
    I've seen AI generated content about dog breeds, the content was absolutely horrible to watch and listen too. In the near future we will have YouTube videos that pride themselves on being organically made, no GMOs and built by humans.
    - dawalker 3y ago
      lmao true, already seen a few companies gunning for the YouTube for AI generated videos mantel so we'll see how it goes
Phanlan2016 3y ago
Can you give me some examples of old-fashioned forums, I just one to see some of it for the sake of it ;)
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  Behold: https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/ https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/
criddell 3y ago
Where can you buy and sell high karma Reddit accounts?
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  There are tons of clearweb markets, e.g.: https://openmarketingstudio.mysellix.io/ https://openmarketingstudio.mysellix.io/
  - ileaf 3y ago
    [flagged]

dawalker 3y ago

Very true. It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though. It's also worth noting that while this is happening, there aren't many other places that most people go to where the site is mainly text-based and there is a higher level of trust that I know of. Personally, I'd trust Reddit over a random blog from a Google search, but that isn't a high bar. All of that being said, I think this will be a much bigger problem with misinformation generally on all of the internet as AI gets better, especially considering the election later this year.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
> It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though Maybe the PR companies moved up a level in the meta-game - Don't talk up your product, talk up Reddit itself, _then_ go on Reddit to talk up your product.
- dawalker 3y ago
  They're getting smarter for sure, maybe some shadow marketing going on with the IPO too lol
- pphysch 3y ago
  It's not even that "meta": they would just be dogfooding. I would be surprised if this wasn't the case.

addandsubtract 3y ago

As with anything on reddit, "the real ______ is always in the comments." You get the best advice in place you expect it the least.

dawalker 3y ago
Great point. While reddit may be astroturfed, all it takes is one good comment.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  Thing is, there aren't many marketing firms that don't have (or can't buy on a work-for-hire basis) upvote/downvote networks. It's trivial to promote comments in ways that look organic. It's equally trivial to downvote commercially harmful comments into oblivion. What's more, Reddit posts are usually actively discussed only for a day or two. But votes can be cast, and new comments can be added, for months. One strategy is to wait until the conversation has completely died down, then hijack it with new comments that somehow seem to get as many votes as they need to rise to the top. When, a year later, somebody digs up that thread on Google, they'll see the promoted comments first. Reddit has severe structural flaws that are, I think, unfixable. In making the upvote/downvote thing a kind of game, and in enabling easy throwaway accounts whose votes are weighed in the same way as those of the longstanding accounts of regular commenters, they've naturally made their forum easy for commercial interests to game.
  - dawalker 3y ago
    Great points, not sure those are fixable either. It definitely has some advantages from those same things in some respects, but monetizing reddit outside of ads (i.e. ecommerce like tiktok/instagram) because of these things is going to be a challenge for sure.
fuzzythinker 3y ago
I wouldn't blindly trust comments.

chasebank 3y ago

Already happening? Here's a clip from an astroturfing firm in the year 2000 for Sprite and other clients. They called it 'under the radar marketing' back then. I'd wager 95% of all product recommendations on Reddit, and HN for that matter, are placed by people with agendas. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0z0a4SLIsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0z0a4SLIsM

dawalker 3y ago
The top comment on that clip scores home that point. While there's no way to verify that, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more than we realize. That being said and to play devils advocate - if all of them are already astroturfed with some people discovering that, then how much do most people care about it?
AndrewCopeland 3y ago
That's what I do, I think I provide a great product/service but also still want to get the word out. A marketing agency who will sell a bag of shit as long as they get paid is definitely a net negative. Overall reddit has been going down hill for a decade at this point and it only makes sense that it will/has been captured by companies trying to profit off it.
- qiongzhouh 3y ago
  Do you have any pointers for learning more about this space? I've personally been pretty skeptical of sponsored products on YouTube, though I find myself getting tempted to / actually trying them out anyway, but haven't thought too hard about small Redditors or Tiktokers getting paid to shill products. Curious what companies do this / how companies are going about conducting these unpublicized marketing campaigns?

jsheard 3y ago

Likewise on YouTube, which OPs service is also pulling from, several times now I've gone looking for reviews of a specific product and one of the top results has been a TTS voice reading a probably ChatGPT-generated "review" which invariably recommends the product because the point is to get you to click the affiliate link in the description. The channels I saw were posting "reviews" so frequently and consistently, and for such random products that I suspect the entire operation is completely automated.

dawalker 3y ago
Interesting, haven't seen one of those yet. With public video+audio models getting much better that will only get way worse over time. Excited to see what YT/Google decides to do about it.
- jsheard 3y ago
  Example: search for "MSI G27C4X" on YouTube, for me at least both the first and second results are fake robot reviews. There are a couple of real impressions videos by real people but for some reason YouTube sorts them below the AI spam. One of those spam channels is posting multiple reviews per hour, with >11,000 videos and counting.
  - dawalker 3y ago
    That's crazy, going to be really interesting once this ramps up/if it starts getting good traffic.
- AndrewCopeland 3y ago
  I've seen AI generated content about dog breeds, the content was absolutely horrible to watch and listen too. In the near future we will have YouTube videos that pride themselves on being organically made, no GMOs and built by humans.
  - dawalker 3y ago
    lmao true, already seen a few companies gunning for the YouTube for AI generated videos mantel so we'll see how it goes

Phanlan2016 3y ago

Can you give me some examples of old-fashioned forums, I just one to see some of it for the sake of it ;)

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
Behold: https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/ https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/

criddell 3y ago

Where can you buy and sell high karma Reddit accounts?

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
There are tons of clearweb markets, e.g.: https://openmarketingstudio.mysellix.io/ https://openmarketingstudio.mysellix.io/
- ileaf 3y ago
  [flagged]