I like how they try to sell the idea that tricking users is in fact a nice and innovative way to advertise
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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And that the "increased community engagement" isn't mainly comments of people complaining about being tricked into clicking on an ad.
Apparently click fraud is fine on reddit 🤷♂️
If it's not already the law, it needs to be. It should be required that paid advertising be disclosed in all contexts.
My first subreddit to get banned was one dedicated to pointing out obvious ad campaigns.
"How do you do, fellow redditors? Pray tell, of all the Dodge Ram variants, which one is your favorite, and what make it your choice as a discerning American patriot?"
And I bet it was banned before the infamous subreddit about underaged girls or even before bans of incel network
Oh, would you look at the time! It's the year of the fediverse!
On a Linux desktop, obviously.
I honestly find it impressive how Reddit continues to find new ways to enshittify the platform
Ads are not the only reason, but if you're still on reddit, you clearly missed the point why reddit became popular.
Recently went on Reddit and laughed hysterically at the amount of religious propaganda I saw in this format. Example:
-religious propaganda -gambling bullshit (including crypto/crypto adjacent bullshit) -military brainwashing/propaganda -alcohol ads
Just the worst fucking garbage bullshit.
Who didn’t see that coming?
Obligatory fuck spez
Reddit's new paid ads look exactly like user posts
So what's new?
I'll tell you what's new, pal. The McRib Megaburger, at McDonalds. It's nutritious and delicious at just $7.99 or $9.99 with fries and a drink of your choice as long as you don't want a milkshake or anything with actual sugar in it.
Wow. Everyone, ignore this guy, he's also an ad.
Instead, you should hop on over to your local Chevy Dealership and ask about test driving the all new 2025 Tahoe. Drive one home today for less than $2,000 down!
"28% more clicks" Yeah cuz ppl thought they were actual posts not ads lol
Yep, advertiser don't care how they got those clicks. They just want the numbers to go up so they feel like their "investment" is doing something. Tricking people into thinking it's user content, showing half naked girls for a dumb mobile gambling game, showing fake products... they don't care. Advertisers only have one thought: "Hurr Durr Numbers Go Brr"
How is this news? Reddit has been doing this for literally years.
Welcome to 5 years ago? This has been around for years...
This is what killed Digg in 2010.
So now they're just charging people for what they were already doing anyway.
Yep. Reddit puts very little effort into preventing vote manipulation and astroturfing because it all looks like user engagement but they almost certainly know how common it is.
This is just them monetizing the astroturfing as they try and wring every cent from people ahead of their IPO.
You're just splurging lies at this point, reddit has always put plenty of effort towards vote manipulation. I dislike reddit but stop making stuff up just for votes.
People are welcome to try for themselves, which is how I originally learned they do fuck all. They didn't even clear the lowest bar of "20 upvotes from 20 accounts, on the same IP with no other activity, just switching with RES".
Maybe that's changed in the decade since, but the search results for "buy reddit upvotes" don't bode well.
It has changed since, in fact for me the watershed moment of change came when RES stopped being able to calculate upvotes/dv's because there was no longer clear feedback that your vote counted.
Does that mean they fixed the problem or did they simply make it impossible for people outside of reddit to see the extent of it?
You're both right. They are FINE with manipulation if it's something they want to promote. But if it's not allowed in their dogma then it's banned.
I'll agree with that.
One of the smarter ad analysts I knew likened ad spaces to ecosystems, where a bunch of companies come in with crap ads that aren't related to what people are actually in market for or are misleading, and act as polluters which turn people off from green pastures.
As an example, when mobile browsing was first getting off the ground CTR for mobile banner ads was 15%.
Reddit's metrics are about to go to shit.
15 percent for banner ads is actually pretty good.
Yeah. That's why OP mentioned it.
But his point is that that number has gone down to shit because later the banner ads became shit.
If the ads weren't terrible, people would not have invented and popularised the ad-blocker.
We're not disagreeing here.
Any ad that starts with TIL or DAE gets an immediate down vote, a cringe, and no further reading
So they seriously not remember what thousands of people left Digg and moved to their platform for???
Reddit had a fraction of the users Digg had at one point. Then Digg changed to a new UI no one liked and started putting adds that looked like posts into the main feed.
That was before learned helplessness became a staple of the internet experience, i think a lot fewer reddit users will be motivated to leave compared to the people who left digg for reddit.
Happy to be proven wrong, though.