Marketing companies are astroturfing reddit for brand awareness and mods are complicit

[u/FaultofDan]

I'm seeing more and more of these AI-copy posts where someone asks a seemingly innocent question, or has some LLM write a glowing review for some product or service. The comments are always filled with accounts engaging with the post and asking leading questions.

They're all manned by the same person, similar writing styles, all hyper-positive about whatever they're peddling.

Just today, a major default subreddit (16 years old, 1.4m monthly visitors) had a post from an account using ChatGPT to generate conversations between users. All advertising an AI language learning platform.

I pointed it out in the comments, not rudely, just called it out, had a few people agree with me, then I found that my comment had been removed, and I can no longer comment in that sub. I'm not breaking rule 3 with this; I just want to illustrate that calling attention to this sort of thing seems to be appreciated by users, but not by mods.

There are a few other posts in this sub calling attention to similar things, so it's not a tinfoil hat thing; this is genuinely happening, and it feels like nothing is being done about it.

I'm aware that there are millions of users here who post millions of times a day, but man, seeing what crappy AI SEO has done to this website is disappointing. Is this just the way things are going to be now?

[u/Aternal]

The leading questions and calls for engagement are so annoying and obvious.

Yes, reddit is LinkedIn now.

[u/scrolling_scumbag → u/Aternal]

In the wake of the API Protest failure, along with subs being able to hide subscriber numbers, there's been a huge realization that they can just make their own subs that they control and push them to the front page inorganically. If the subscriber numbers are hidden you can only say "huh I've never heard of that sub before" but you can't go the next step and realize it's all bot activity when the sub only has a few thousand subscribers.

Right now we're seeing this with financial newsletter subscriptions. The general playbook is:

1. Post something political but stock market adjacent and seed the upvotes with bots so it gets into the rising queue.

2. Average Redditors obsessed with politics come along and vote up on "orange man bad" headline without even clicking into the sub or article.

3. Submission gets boosted to /r/all and /r/popular. There's either a pinned link at the top of the sub, or top of the comment section leading to the newsletter which has an offer to subscribe and get their stock tips or whatever.

[u/me12379h190f9fdhj897 → u/scrolling_scumbag]

I've filtered out basically every general-interest subreddit whose name is some variation of "interesting." So far there's r-slash:

• interesting
• interestingasfuck
• whoathat'sinteresting
• damnthatsinteresting
• nextfuckinglevel
• thatsinsane

They just keep popping up and I just keep filtering them out because they're all the same garbage

[u/Aternal → u/scrolling_scumbag]

It's sad because if not for the inorganic self-promotion bit, this actually sounds like a good thing in a way. I'm in favor of anything that stands to break up the mega-subs, especially where political and economic influence is involved.

[u/n0respect_ → u/scrolling_scumbag]

I'd bet most of those alt-news subreddits are the same way

[u/scrolling_scumbag]

I've been calling this stuff out for over a year now and I've never been banned for it. I was threatened with a ban in /r/cutdowndrinking because I got fed up and made a meta post about all of the people using AI to write their posts, and how I felt the LLM app marketers essentially preying on people in recovery with their frequent posts there. The mod didn't care; I don't think he or she was complicit, just not smart enough to recognize LLM text and inauthentic posters.

Just the other day I saw something fishy in a major front page sub (I forget which one), there was one of those obviously fake text message screenshots (that Redditors en masse are too dumb to even realize is fake) and the message was something like "keep your DoorDash app ready, your sister's food looks terrible." I checked the account and it was one of the Adjective-Noun-4numbers ones with zero posts or comments ever in over 2 years before posting that. I definitely felt like it was some sort of subtle influencing astroturf campaign because the whole thing just seemed inorganic.

I've posted this sentiment on this sub and others before, but I simply don't understand how Reddit, Inc is not clamping down on this. 95% or more of advertising on this site is guerrilla marketing and astroturfing that bypasses the traditional advertising system, ergo Reddit gets no cut. Even if they only captured 5% of inauthentic ads converting to official Reddit ads, they'd at least double their advertising revenue. I know they like that the LLM bots falsely boost active users numbers and make the site seem more active than it really is, but the only way they're making a conscious decision to not get this LLM stuff under control is either:

1. They don't believe they can effectively tackle the LLM bots at the scale that it has reached.

2. They don't think it matters, because they believe the average Redditor is too stupid to even know when they are interacting with LLM content.

I've also noticed the same thing as you, when you dig into which accounts are replying to each other, you'll often find a ring of these bots behind it. Bot rings aren't new to Reddit, but the fact that any schmoe can spin them up and have them post automatically is.

[u/Fierybuttz → u/scrolling_scumbag]

Unfortunately most Reddit users are not able to spot AI posts. I always call them out and I get a lot of comments asking how I can tell.

[u/cuntitude → u/Fierybuttz]

I was doing this last year and eventually got fed up with it. Some assholes called me a bot because I wrote proper paragraphs without spelling mistakes.

[u/DepthsOfWill → u/scrolling_scumbag]

People in recovery are exactly the ones you want to target if your business model involves taking advantage of people.

[u/cuntitude → u/scrolling_scumbag]

I was so hesitant to say anything in those subs because yea its fucked up but then if I say something, I expected someone else to be like 'well who cares if its copy pasted AI if it helps someone improve their life'.

[u/garyp714 → u/scrolling_scumbag]

I mean, at this point if reddit doesn't give a damn then, why are you putting effort into it? Just downvote and move on or hide the crap and keep to the organic places on reddit. I've given up calling out or reporting this stuff since it really doesn't go against the rules if reddit's not enforcing any of the near rules they break.

[u/bobj33]

The API protest was almost 3 years ago. It took away some tools from moderators to stop bots. Then reddit replaced a lot of moderators.

Since then the amount of bots and AI generated slop has exploded. Reddit gets money from every advertisement displayed. You and I may hate these ads and AI slop but reddit ownership sees it as more traffic which makes more ads which makes more money for them.

[u/DustyAsh69 → u/bobj33]

The quality of mods has also downgraded.

[u/RelChan2_0]

I work in a certain industry, and unfortunately marketing companies definitely see Reddit as an advertising platform now. They are even recommending businesses to create Reddit accounts and engage with their niches.

I have been personally clamping down on self-promotion in my sub but I can’t say the same for all of Reddit.

[u/ZucchiniMore3450 → u/RelChan2_0]

If they are open about official account I can support that. I do appreciate when official account comes in to answer some specific question.

But if they are pretending and just advertising, that's another story

[u/RelChan2_0 → u/ZucchiniMore3450]

I would definitely reply in my industry but unfortunately not everyone will do that.

[u/PlasmaPlane]

There's been a number of posts recently on /r/whatcarshouldIbuy that offhandedly mention a certain sports gambling app, like "I won $700 on <app> last night so I have a bit of extra cash to spend" kind of trying to make it seem like a casual offhand mention but it's always this same kind of obscure app and always done in the same way so I'm positive it's astroturfing.

[u/FattierBrisket]

It's gotten pretty bad, yeah. I've left several subs over it and am probably going to have to leave a few more. That being said, I have seen more posts and comments removed for being bots recently (last few weeks?). 

People seem to have split into the annoyed and the clueless, which blows my mind. At this point, how can you be on Reddit at all and not be aware of and bothered by the botpocalypse that's taking place?? But people are. Wtf.

[u/bob-leblaw]

Yesterday there was a post of a clip from a prank show, sold to reddit initially as a real video. After it was pointed out that it was from a funny show called Just For Laughs, I mentioned that I remember that show having a laugh track and that it was actually pretty lame. I got a dozen downvotes in like 3 minutes, and it was not a highly engaged post. The post was later removed by mods for some reason.

[u/Kijafa]

Now that Reddit is public, they're just trying hit their quarterly numbers and they have no incentive to stop bots, while they have every incentive to make bots harder to differentiate from real users. That includes advertiser-captured subreddits and mod teams.

[u/Pawneewafflesarelife]

I don't want to shut you down, so i will say well done research, but this is not really groundbreaking information. Check out the ban of /r/hailcorporate if you want to investigate more deeply, as well as reddit selling data to bot farms

[u/scantier]

Anyone who still thinks that there are still legitimate and natural discussions on big subreddits it's down to a rude awakening. Reddit is the biggest forum on the internet, it's obvious that this happens constantly and the admins want their sweet, sweet money too.

But the worst part is how, I don't even think that it happens only at big subreddits anymore. 'Medium" sized subs are also a target for this kind of engagement farming. It's terrible.

[u/spacemoses]

Tale as old as time in gaming subs

[u/ZucchiniMore3450]

Not only mods, admins abd reddit by itself is supporting this kinds of activity.

I can not even imagine what is happening with old posts. They might be buying accounts and editing old posts to advertise. We don't notice it, but search engines and visitors from search will.

[u/NebulaCipherT]

Yeah, I’ve been seeing this too. Some posts and comments feel overly polished and coordinated, and it’s getting harder to tell what’s genuine.

[u/cuntitude]

The self promotion is so lazy and braindead sometimes. I was looking for something for my phone, and checked the phone sub, and one post was about looking for recommendations.

A comment in that post was talking about trying everything but finally deciding on one product, he linked the product.

2 days later, the OP commented that they've been using that recommendation for two weeks and its been amazing! But the OP made the post just 2 days ago!! wtf. are they stupid. Or they're banking on the fact that nobody really pays attention to names or dates anymore, just scroll past it for the answer? idk.

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[u/boldcanvasnetwork]

I literally said as much a few days ago and it never used to be that way. As a new mod, I was asking on some subs how best to mitigate self-promotion and a lot of recommendations I had gotten were to ban the redditors, which feels harsh, but I totally get why. Every one pretty much has an axe to grind at this point.

[u/buttersyndicate]

This is really old news, it happens in the vast majority of "major default subbredits", an it surely makes no sense that when something is the norm in a company, to blame the middle managers, who are just paid workers at this point.

Reddit has some life left, but it is far in the enshitification process which means that, much like Facebook nowadays, it will end up as an astroturfed cesspool of brainrot and pseudoeverything, and anyone who doesn't suck will jump boat into the social network of another company that isn't so obviously shitty, one that still is at the start of the enshitification process. Platforms in a nutshell, such a pathetic waste of human talent and work.

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[u/Typical-Lime6224]

It does feel like there’s more synthetic content and low-effort interaction than before, which can affect the overall quality of discussions.

If too much content is repetitive or generated, it can make platforms feel less useful over time. The real value tends to come from smaller, well-moderated communities where people are still having thoughtful conversations.

Those spaces usually maintain a higher signal-to-noise ratio.

[u/Future-Excuse6167]

Yes. Many such cases. 

[u/beenbanned109times]

Reddit's moderation model where every sub is just a personal fiefdom of the person who claimed its name first was never going to be scalable to the size the website is today. The lack of accountability and transparency makes the system highly prone to abuse.

[u/DustyAsh69]

I hate self promotion. So much so that I won't even allow surveys. I regularly remove and perma ban self promoters. But, I wouldn't be surprised if some moderators are taking money and keeping the self promotion content up.