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RevisionDojo, a YC startup, is running astroturfing campaigns targeting kids?
RevisionDojo is a YC-backed test prep company ($3.4M raised) that sells International Baccalaureate (IB) test prep. Over the past year, users on r/IBO sub-reddit have documented a pattern of unethical marketing practices:
*Astroturfing:* Coordinated campaigns where accounts pose as students sharing "cheatsheets" and "predicted exam leaks." Other accounts then upvote, leave supportive comments, and ask follow-up questions—creating the illusion of organic student excitement. Multiple threads have exposed this pattern [1][2][3].
*Paid fake posts:* High school students report being offered payment to write promotional Reddit posts [4].
*Pressuring critics:* Users who post negative reviews report being contacted directly by company representatives, told it's "a shame" they're posting publicly [5]. Critical comments receive coordinated mass downvotes [6].
*Soliciting copyrighted materials:* They use TikTok influencers and fake reddit posts to persuade students to sell them official IB exam papers, violating IB policies [7].
The r/IBO moderators are actively investigating [8].
These practices appear to be working great for them. Recently, they acquired OnePrep (oneprep.xyz), a free SAT prep tool that was already popular on r/sat. Since the acquisition, the same manipulation tactics have been deployed at scale: 150 Trustpilot reviews in a window of a few days [9], and widespread coordinated Reddit manipulation—multiple accounts posting "tips" that recommend Oneprep, coordinated upvoting, and fake enthusiasm in comments. The most prominent example was a 2,000+ upvote post removed by moderators for manipulation, but it's part of a sustained campaign across the subreddit.
*Sources:*
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1p55qun/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1jsb00a/
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1ohcohi/
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1p55qun/comment/nqmhal3/
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1my1ajx/comment/na94upv/
[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1my1ajx/comment/na8zvs4/
[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1mej900/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/1my1ajx/comment/nagdkl5/
[9] https://www.trustpilot.com/review/oneprep.xyz
- HeckFeck 10mo ago"Disruption" comes to the world of junior academia. It was inevitable. Nothing's sacred.
- darubedarob 10mo ago[dead]
- zx0r2 10mo agoa YC company being unethical, shocking...
- throw-12-16 10mo agoI am shocked! I mean I am shocked that this post didn't get flagged immediately ofc.
- tedivm 10mo agoHonestly I've posted about some unethical YC companies before and those posts got a lot of attention without being removed. That said we'll see what happens here.
- dang 10mo agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- toomuchtodo 10mo agoReport to your state's Attorney General and the FTC. 404media also would be interested in knowing (Signal info on their site). https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://www.404media.co/ https://www.404media.co/
- red-polygon 10mo ago[dead]
- ipsum2 10mo agoPickle, another yc backed startup, is also acting really fishy. They claimed they developed a standalone AR device, took money from customers, and now they're saying it requires tethering to your phone. https://x.com/cixliv/status/2008129653467492631 https://x.com/cixliv/status/2008129653467492631
- throw-12-16 10mo agoDon't forget about Honey! YC is full of scams.
- colinbartlett 10mo agoThey do back a lot of companies. Is there any evidence that they are pushing unethical or illegal business practices on their portfolio companies at a rate higher than non-YC start ups?
- uoaei 10mo agoWhy do you require comparison in order to determine whether or not this practice is unethical?
- beatslop 10mo agoThat's not at all what he said.
- financetechbro 10mo agoThey don’t have to say anything. The market speaks for itself: do illegal stuff, don’t get caught, capture enough market share of whatever it is you are pursuing, and you will be rewarded handsomely by investors. The name of the game is capital return at whatever cost necessary. We will be living through the repercussions of this system for decades
- KomoD 10mo ago> and now they're saying it requires tethering to your phone Where are they saying that? Also what is the second "conclusion" screenshot from? (Who is the "Matthew" and what analysis, mentioned in that screenshot?)
- vuggamie 10mo agoIt's OK. Paul Graham is one of the good billionaires.
- didntknowyou 10mo agono surprise considering YC's fake it till you make it and growth hacking culture
- joshribakoff 10mo agoAbsolutely, I have worked at several.
- sroussey 10mo agoLike the founders telling employees to lie about compliance cuz everyone does it. There is a line between fake it till you make it and fraud.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- weird-eye-issue 10mo agoAstroturfing on reddit has been a thing for over a decade and has really accelerated over the last few years. There's several companies where literally that is their business model to promote your product or service on reddit. I saw one for sale on acquire.com a while back for 7 figures
- _vqpz 10mo agoSockpuppet accounts are literally the foundation of Reddit [1] [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
- CamelCaseName 10mo agoNot a "gotcha" There's obviously a massive difference between using sockpuppet accounts to: * Influence perception on a social media platform as a 3rd party vs. * Put content on a social media platform that users are looking for so they return to the platform It doesn't matter who shares a story with you on social media if the goal is to entertain, but it does matter if the goal is to get you to do something [spend money on their courses]
- truetraveller 10mo agoThe "value" of Reddit as a platform is knowing that people ORGANICALLY liked content. Otherwise, just go to an aggregator. These sock puppet accounts were there to deceive, no doubt. Obviously, they are "different" in some ways, but deceptive nonetheless.
- CamelCaseName 10mo agoThey didn't fake voting, they faked submissions. So you could clearly tell if people liked or didn't like something.
- Teever 10mo ago
- arm32 10mo agoThis thread will be hidden soon.
- throw-12-16 10mo agohello dang!
- minimaxir 10mo agoHacker News doesn't memoryhole anti-YC threads.
- throw-12-16 10mo agolol it absolute does you ever notice how most YC announcements have comments disabled?
- minimaxir 10mo agoThose are job ads (a special type of post), not normal user discussions. Actual YC announcements do not have comments disabled.
- jascha_eng 10mo agoThey do however often ask friends and family to upvote and leave comments. Like "we have been very happy using XYZ" which is against HN rules but not that strictly enforced. I feel like it is extra-lax towards YC companies but maybe I'm imagining things.
- dang 10mo agoOn the contrary, we particularly tell YC founders not to do this—mostly privately, but there's a public version of it at https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html (scroll down to "Comments" and see the part in bold. That's me trying to scare them.) We do tend to be more lenient when there's no evidence of organized manipulation, just friends/fans/users trying to be helpful and not realizing that it's actually unhelpful. What dedicated HN users tend not to realize is that such casual commenters usually have no idea how HN is supposed to work. But this leniency isn't YC-specific. We're actually less lax when it comes to YC startups, for several reasons.
- onetimeusename 10mo agoWhat is this cheatsheets and predicted exam leaks stuff? I don't mean to sound naive but is cheating a significant part of the test prep space?
- stuartjohnson12 10mo agoI looked into founding a company in this space and steered straight back out of it because yes, by far and away the VAST majority of demand in the market of study tools for high/middle schoolers is cheating. Below that, parents are involved and there's a market there (but a bad one, because of double sales where you have to sell through the parent to the child even though those two actors have misaligned incentives). https://www.gauthmath.com/ https://www.gauthmath.com/ This AI cheating app is currently #8 for "education" in the iOS app store.
- onetimeusename 10mo agoThat is interesting and kind of what I suspected anecdotally. I think it's unfortunate for people who aren't aware of all this. That is what I will say.
- cinntaile 10mo agoA cheat sheet could be a piece of paper you're allowed to bring to an exam. To make a proper cheat sheet you have to understand the material you're working with anyway so it usually doesn't help you.
- 1718627440 10mo agoI usually does help you by having written it.
- cinntaile 10mo agoThat's true, I meant it doesn't help much as a cheat sheet if you didn't put in the work to make it yourself.
- austinrm 10mo ago[dead]
- darubedarob 10mo ago[dead]
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- opengrass 10mo agoWelcome to Reddit. That, and the code camp thing. Reddit is a terrible anyway.
- throw-12-16 10mo agoReddit is the garbage bin of the internet.
- qwerpy 10mo agoBetter to have the garbage collected somewhere than to have it strewn about everywhere.
- the__alchemist 10mo agoCoincidentally, I just observed that the USAA subreddit is very likely to be astroturfed.
- bigbadfeline 10mo ago> Astroturfing: Coordinated campaigns... [to post,] upvote, leave supportive comments, and ask follow-up questions—creating the illusion of organic excitement... Critical comments receive coordinated mass downvotes. I thought that was the dictionary definition of social media? If it isn't yet, it should be, Reddit is just the tip of the iceberg.
- tedivm 10mo agoThere are laws in the US, and if you're advertising you have to disclose it.
- TZubiri 10mo agoProposal to change title from "kids" to "teens"?
- SpaceNoodled 10mo agoTeens are kids.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- fud101 10mo agoDoes anyone want to make the argument YC does more good than harm? I'd be surprised if that was a tenable position.
- snicky 10mo agoSemi-related opinion, but it really boggles me how people can be such a*holes to leave spam all over the internet and keep turning it into a cesspit. If a company does it in such an obvious way it has to be systematic, meaning that someone somewhere comes up with an idea, his manager gives an okay to proceed and then they chop it into tasks and other employees pick them up. There are multiple people involved. All of them know about what's happening and that it's unethical. And for what? I doubt most people running/working for the YC companies need money that badly. Are they going to buy a boat? A higher Tesla model? Invite their friends to Michelin-starred restaurants to show how successful they are?
- bicepjai 10mo agoWhat is Astroturfing ? It’s a deceptive, organized effort to make a message, campaign, or movement look like it’s genuine grassroots public support (or opposition) when it is actually planned, funded, and often controlled by a hidden sponsor (such as a corporation, political group, or other organization).
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]