Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed
#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts
“We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don’t usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search,” ReplyGuy’s website reads.
Gross.
Jfc people came to Reddit because up until now they were getting replies from real people with that have no financial interest in the outcome. This completely subverts everything people valued about Reddit. This fucking guy.
If people who are still on Reddit don’t leave over this, I don’t know what will make them leave.
Nothing. Social media (and social-ish media like Reddit) have a strong, strong hold on people. Facebook is still an incredibly popular site. People don’t abandon social media sites until they literally have to, like in the instance of MySpace, vine. A company definitely contributes to that by tanking their own UI and making people leave, which in turn causes a downward spiral of the company grabbing on harder to the dwindling user base, trying to monetize them harder and harder, until they company itself bottoms out and shuts down the servers.
Those of us that left Reddit willingly when we were tired of being used by them are in the very small minority. They lost, what, like 1-2% of their user base when nearly every single comment in any thread about the API debacle that said, “this is the last straw, I’m leaving and deleting my comment history” was getting massive amounts of support? People on the internet talk a big game, but ultimately are hopelessly addicted to their routines.
This is all by design, of course. We’re conditioned to open their apps and sites by reflex when we turn on the phone or computer. It fuckin works. But dammit if it doesn’t feel good breaking that spell. But it’s super disappointing others are willing to take every slap to the face and simply say “thank you sir may I have another.” Those people contribute to enshittification as much as the companies, honestly.
Nice pic to visualize every modern boycott. Aggravating to see people lie about their morals, and then keep eating the shit they are being fed.
Removed by mod
It’s so interesting, how so many people did not leave? Well I guess many prolific posters have left but
Yes, but by completely destroying that they can make the line go up for 2 quarters, so worth it. Also, corpos would actually prefer users not having access to these discussion spaces and the free information they provide, so you would have to rely on overSEOd shit content and ads. I hate what the internet has become
They think that the entire reason the Internet exists is to sell things. To make you want to buy things. And if you tell them it’s not, they laugh.
All true, and I hate it too
these people make me so fucking sick i cannot
i cannot believe this site i spent so many sad years posting on in high school, with pure heart, posting purely out of a desire for interesting interactions and the potential to make insightful, peer-reviewed contributions that others could enjoy, has turned into such fucking dead-eyed garbage.
It makes me so mad…it’s like a company butting into a conversation me and a friend are having in person.
“how do we turn our users into money”
What research is telling them that people come to Reddit to talk to corporations about products? Where was the survey? And what the fuck is a “high-intent product conversation”? These people are making shit up.
Edit: so, I looked up what a “high intent product conversation” is, and this is the answer I got.
So this man really thinks that people come to Reddit looking for shit to buy, because we have problems and desires and they want companies on Reddit to be right there hawking their snake oil cures to all our little problems via their AI marketing reps?
Where did he get that idea? Did he ask actual Reddit users? Was a survey mailed out? What was the sample size? What were the questions on the survey? Did they do a focus group?
I remember seeing threads like “What was the best purchase that you made for under 100” or some variation every once in a while. I’m sure those got corpo eyes real interested if they weren’t advertising in them already.
also remember the ineeeedit sub? they initially nuked it due to companies using it to secretly sell products then reddit realized they themselves can do it.
See Also: r/thisiswhyimbroke
Oh look, another what “bought for life” thread.
So they started by making polls and surveys not obvious? That makes sense. If people know that a survey is a survey, especially on a site like Reddit, the users will tell each other and attempt to fuck with the results
Yeah, that’s marketing for you.
Based on that quote, AI might have already taken over the leadership also
Ew.
Full of corporate speak BS
Yes, because insert smoking company name here are all having an intense beutiful pipedream relationship with the nice folks at those pro-smoking subreddits.
hey, this is a joke btw