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Have any subreddit mods been exposed as paid corporate shills? I'm a bit surprised that I haven't noticed signs of that for subreddits with an obvious commercia

Have any subreddit mods been exposed as paid corporate shills? I'm a bit surprised that I haven't noticed signs of that for subreddits with an obvious commercial angle. Maybe moderating is such a thankless slog that brands can't pay people to do it ;)

JohnBooty 2y ago
Have any subreddit mods been exposed as paid corporate shills? Reddit is just as compromised as any place else, but (like Wikipedia) their user moderation system has effective and transparent enough to largely mitigate this -- at least relative to the rest of the internet. Please don't misunderstand. The challenges and problems with content and moderation at both of those places are very real. But, relative to the most of rest of the internet, (a low bar to clear) they have coped very well.
paulpauper 2y ago
Yeah there was a lot of that going on in 2012/2013. major scandals involving tech and gaming subs. Gaming and tech subs are especially vulnerable to this.
chinchilla2020 2y ago
r/gaming has a series of "I made a game" ads that the moderators allow users to run promotional organic posts Some of the headphone and electronics subs seem to have promotional accounts. There are frequent issues in gaming subs with youtubers bribing mods to promote their content.
asdff 2y ago
There's plenty of signs if you take a look. E.g. most subreddits concerning an interest with products being made will have recommended products and such. Is this an organic, community made list of tools that is regularly vetted? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You can imagine how valuable it would be for your company if you convinced the niche forum in your space that you are the "buy it for life" option or some default no wrong move choice. Sometimes there will also be discussion posts "hey anyone know a good x for z?" written by a shill account where other shill accounts come in with product recommendations, supported by upvotes from other bots over any other evidence. Kind of an interesting thread on the subject in the marketing subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/vf5wmv/do_brands_use_reddit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/vf5wmv/do_brands... Basically people are saying yes, marketing on reddit is very effective, especially if you aren't obvious and using /u/mybrandname but /u/randomuser123. This user is talking about starting a B2B company for this sort of subtle organic reddit posting, after having apparently a lot of success and thinking they can handle more clients than they currently do: https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/1c05w7c/thoughts_on_starting_a_reddit_marketing_agency/ https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/1c05w7c/thoughts...

JohnBooty 2y ago

Have any subreddit mods been exposed as paid corporate shills? Reddit is just as compromised as any place else, but (like Wikipedia) their user moderation system has effective and transparent enough to largely mitigate this -- at least relative to the rest of the internet. Please don't misunderstand. The challenges and problems with content and moderation at both of those places are very real. But, relative to the most of rest of the internet, (a low bar to clear) they have coped very well.

paulpauper 2y ago

Yeah there was a lot of that going on in 2012/2013. major scandals involving tech and gaming subs. Gaming and tech subs are especially vulnerable to this.

chinchilla2020 2y ago

r/gaming has a series of "I made a game" ads that the moderators allow users to run promotional organic posts Some of the headphone and electronics subs seem to have promotional accounts. There are frequent issues in gaming subs with youtubers bribing mods to promote their content.

asdff 2y ago

There's plenty of signs if you take a look. E.g. most subreddits concerning an interest with products being made will have recommended products and such. Is this an organic, community made list of tools that is regularly vetted? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You can imagine how valuable it would be for your company if you convinced the niche forum in your space that you are the "buy it for life" option or some default no wrong move choice. Sometimes there will also be discussion posts "hey anyone know a good x for z?" written by a shill account where other shill accounts come in with product recommendations, supported by upvotes from other bots over any other evidence. Kind of an interesting thread on the subject in the marketing subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/vf5wmv/do_brands_use_reddit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/vf5wmv/do_brands... Basically people are saying yes, marketing on reddit is very effective, especially if you aren't obvious and using /u/mybrandname but /u/randomuser123. This user is talking about starting a B2B company for this sort of subtle organic reddit posting, after having apparently a lot of success and thinking they can handle more clients than they currently do: https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/1c05w7c/thoughts_on_starting_a_reddit_marketing_agency/ https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/1c05w7c/thoughts...