“We’ve known for over a decade that people come to Reddit to talk about the products they love – take r/BuyItForLife for example, a community of over 1.5 million redditors who have been sharing recommendations and advice about their lifelong, must-have purchases since 2011. These updates will uplevel the search-and-discover experience for both brands and our users by tapping into our differentiated value as a hub for actionable conversation”

  • Andreas@feddit.dk
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    2 years ago

    This made me realize that I relied on Reddit a lot to decide on making tech-related purchases. I assumed that the contributors to Reddit’s tech subs are enthusiasts who genuinely want to help others improve their systems and avoid scams. Thank you Reddit for being so open about sneaking sponsored content into discussions so that I can stop trusting your site!

    • flamingarms@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      I started rethinking that when I was seeing the influx of bots calling out other users as bots. Then I started noticing weirdly corporate speak in comments about products. I used to add “reddit” to every Google search to find any decent advice, but now I’m realizing even that advice is tainted. Ugh.

    • socsa@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      For a long time it was trivially easy to spot the ads and shills, especially on reddit. It’s definitely getting harder and LLMs are going to make it even worse.

      But this is kind of why I don’t understand the butthurt reddit is having over third party apps. They are clearly pushing for a much more guerilla model for marketing which doesn’t rely on traditional ads. If they can actually make that work, the ability to push impressions through the API would make them very rich.

        • planish@sh.itjust.works
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          2 years ago

          As a large language model, I think it is important to allow consumers to decide whether or not they personally appreciate being surprised and delighted by interactions with their favorite brands wherever they go online. vInfluencers such as myself are driving millions of consumer × brand collaborations every day across all platforms and channels, by delivering aspirational role model stories optimized to drive action.