Reddit's new paid ads look exactly like user posts

Comments

• BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I like how they try to sell the idea that tricking users is in fact a nice and innovative way to advertise

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  • DaddleDew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    And that the “increased community engagement” isn’t mainly comments of people complaining about being tricked into clicking on an ad.

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    • Dkarma@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Apparently click fraud is fine on reddit 🤷‍♂️

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    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The moderation effort required to clean up these ads must be massive.

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  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    “we could just lie to people” is an advertising tactic somebody always comes up with. It’s a Rubicon that absolutely shreds customer goodwill, though.

    Assuming, of course, it isn’t already shredded.

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• NateNate60@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  If it’s not already the law, it needs to be. It should be required that paid advertising be disclosed in all contexts.

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  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Paid ads should not only need to be marked, but noticeably different in a timeline. Something obvious like a different post color.

    Twitter fits ads in the middle of content and just puts a little tiny “Ad” in the upper corner (on mobile at least) and at a glance scrolling through you can’t tell it’s an ad, other than all of their ads now being for some shady mobile game that lies about how it looks or crypto in various forms. Those should be required to have a different color background than actual user posts, not just a size 8 font “Ad” in the corner of the post on a 3.5" screen.

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    • NateNate60@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I think what YouTube does would be sufficient. There’s a noticeably different video progress bar colour (yellow instead of red) and a large "Skip Ad in __" in the corner, plus the advertiser information on the side.

      Reddit could do this by putting a “Paid advertisement” watermark in the corner or putting “Advert” where the upvote/downvote buttons are and colouring it some noticeable colour, like yellow, and I would be satisfied with that.

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  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Pretty sure this is not legal in many countries. Adverts must be at the very least labeled as such, like Google does with a tiny almost unnoticeable label.

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    • Damage@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      In my country TV ads are explicitly marked with text in one corner

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  • Pra@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    In another article they post a photo of an example from reddit and it does say promoted next to the post title. So there’s something there because there is an FTC law saying ads must be disclosed. Obviously they want to obfuscate that it’s an ad as much as possible though so who knows how that’ll change.

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    • samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Like so:

      Image

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  • Gonkulator@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    At this point if you removed all lies in the united states all youd have left is a chimp in a business suit with a flag lapel pin.

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    • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      That’s not a nice thing to say about Trump.

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  • baru@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s already the case in at least the Netherlands.

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  • Shimitar@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Its a law where I live…

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• waterSticksToMyBalls@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  My first subreddit to get banned was one dedicated to pointing out obvious ad campaigns.

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  • Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    "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?

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  • humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    And I bet it was banned before the infamous subreddit about underaged girls or even before bans of incel network

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    • waterSticksToMyBalls@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If was that post jail bait but pre incel ban wave if I recall correctly. They said it was targeted harassment/brigandine bc all the posts specifically named the accounts pushing each campaign.

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• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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  • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I honestly find it impressive how Reddit continues to find new ways to enshittify the platform

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    • jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I honestly find it impressive how quickly the word “enshittification” is brought up in Lemmy comments

      (/s, but we do talk about it a lot here)

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    • Qwaffle_waffle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s like they’re racing to the bottom with Twitter

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  • moon@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Why does that dude have his own Wikipedia page lol, and why is it so long

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    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Because he’s been a well known author for two decades?

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• WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Who didn’t see that coming?

  Obligatory fuck spez

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  • RagnarokOnline@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Fuck spez

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    • WhiteHotaru@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Fuck spez!

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• londos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I was curious about the “Philly cream cheese” campaign example they mentioned. I assume it’s this post.

  The top reply is trolling them, which is awesome. So much for increased engagement.

  But even funnier is the next top reply, which seems sincere. But when you look at the user profile. Almost all of u/sunshinedogger’s comments in the last year are on sponsored posts. So even the positive engagement is manufactured?

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  • reflectedodds@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Dang good catch on the second user, I wouldn’t have noticed since I usually don’t look at people’s profiles.

    It’s kind of funny that reddit will become this chamber of advertisers making posts and fake users “engaging” while the real people all migrate to lemmy.

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    • londos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I’m also curious if the fake users are part of the campaign or if reddit is scamming the advertisers too.

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    • slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Absolutely, you cannot trust reddit content anymore. If anybody wants to still visit the site, I recommend you buy and AdBlock Gold subscription, which you can get at half the price now. Link and discount code in my profile

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    • Gestrid@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Weren’t they also caught using AI bots to drive up engagement in some subreddits, too? (I think it was supposed to be some of their subreddits in foreign languages or something.)

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    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Did you really think all those positive comments were genuine? I almost puked reading the first few.

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  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Man, reading this post nearly gave me a headache. I hate it when brands try to act all ‘hip and cool’.

    Help us fill this thread with ways you use PHILLY Cream Cheese that shouldn’t be delicious✨ but are ✨

    Yes, something about cream cheese freshly squeezed straight from the brick really does hit different. Why let a little packaging get between you and your PHILLY, am I right?

    Shut up brand. Shut the fuck up brand. Jesus Christ

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    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      When it’s a social media manager acting like an actual human, it’s one thing (like when the person running the Moon Pie account roasted the guy for telling them they were wasting their life), and the non-profits are almost always awesome at this (follow libraries, seriously). But if you’re trying to write something relatable and your brand guidelines won’t let you write about it in the way a normal human would (all-caps “PHILLY,” writing “searching with Google” instead of “googling,” ©®™ spam, etc) you’ve already lost.

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  • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Of course it’s manufactured! And I’ll bet you a blowjob from my cousin Chester that it’s all AI-generated.

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    • swab148@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      furiously googles how to prove that a post is made with AI

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• Mereo@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Enshittification to the extreme…

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  • MisterMoo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Hahaha, what’s your problem, come on, let’s just dive into the topic of how delicious Snickers™ bars are and what a great value they are too!

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    • kjaeselrek@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I’m just here to talk about rampart

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    • Kbobabob@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I hear Snickers is making smaller candies at the normal price.

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  • jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Years ago you used to be able to comment in ad threads. And most people were just calling the ad out on its bullshit. So they stopped allowing comment replies in those threads.

    This will somehow be different?

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    • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yeah, I remember those fun times. See an ad post, look up their scandals on Wikipedia, post about those scandals in the comments…

      There’s no way this will work unless they lock down those posts. If they want something that looks like organic engagement with comments that don’t ruin the brand, it can’t work anything like the rest of Reddit. They’ll have to have corporate moderators who remove any post that is even slightly challenging to the brand, because otherwise those will be the ones getting upvotes.

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  • samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    to start conversations with users.

    Sounds like great fun for trolls.

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• rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Reddit’s new paid ads look exactly like user posts

  So what’s new?

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  • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • droans@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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!

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    • ezures@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      mcrib

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  • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It happens here, too. Like this shill post about the Scrub Daddy, where the comments are highly suspicious.

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    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It even happens in RL conversations, say, with people who bought stock of a big company subtly (or they think it looks so) recommending it.

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    • andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Why has that sponge been shilled so heavily? I see it being marketed on TikTok of all places…

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  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Right? Been that way for quite a while. One of the main reasons I refused to use the app.

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• AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  “28% more clicks” Yeah cuz ppl thought they were actual posts not ads lol

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  • kenopsik@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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”

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    • Retrograde@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You made me look up Bill Hicks’ marketing bit

      I miss him

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  • Wiz@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Do you know what’s also getting more clicks than last year at this time and the year before? Lemmy!

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• notapantsday@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  This feels like something that would be illegal in the EU. I have no idea if it actually is.

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  • Ephera@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s illegal here in Germany. Ads need to be clearly recognizable as such.

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    • Yamayo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s an European law, thankfully.

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    • Madeyro@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      So they will serve different frontend for different people based on location?

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• MyFairJulia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Oh, would you look at the time! It’s the year of the fediverse!

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  • elucubra@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    On a Linux desktop, obviously.

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• Ohi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  You plant shit seeds, you get shit weeds.

  If it’s one thing I learned from the last BS they pulled during the protests last year, it’s that their actions will have little impact on reddit user behavior. People will complain and express outrage, but the vast majority of users will just sit back and take it like good little AI trainers.

  I for one will not be one of them. When they removed mods from communities that were in protest, that’s enough for me to stay clear going forward. As much as I miss the content, it warms my soul every time I think about the ad revenue they’re missing out on by my own personal decisions to not consume it.

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  • madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Honestly your mental health has almost certainly improved since leaving that place.

    Their algorithms are designed to pump engagement and outrage. They want you either scared or angry and it sucks.

    Lemmy has less content, but is also less addictive and less toxic. Yes it’s still social media, it still has shit bags but the numbers are far better.

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    • T156@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Lemmy has less content, but is also less addictive and less toxic. Yes it’s still social media, it still has shit bags but the numbers are far better.

      Although part of that could also just be due to the size of the place. Lemmy’s still absolutely tiny compared to Reddit, and like a lot of social media’s early days, it’ll likely only get worse as more people move in.

      Early Reddit would have been pretty cosy and non-toxic, that would only come in later.

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  • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Entirely agreed, though I wish there were more of a joint effort between Lemmy and Kbin communities to find novel ways of getting more redditors to switch over to the Fediverse. Wishful thinking perhaps, though it’d be nice to have more active communities around here.

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    • madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The biggest problem with lemmy is that we don’t have a good way to search for info.

      Usually I do shit like “reddit monitor recommandation”, and I’ll get some thread where I can read opinions.

      We can’t do they with lemmy 😐

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  • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I never went back to /r/programming after they forced it open with new mods.

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• seSvxR3ull7LHaEZFIjM@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Early results suggest the effort is working. According to numbers from Reddit, free-form ads got 28% more clicks than all other types of ads on the site and saw a jump in community engagement.

  Yeah, because users get tricked into clicking and then immediately leave.

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  • gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    But not before commenting, “fuck you, spez!”

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    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Which counts as engagement.

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• kromem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

  When mobile browsing was first getting off the ground CTR for mobile banner ads was 15%.

  Reddit’s metrics are going to go to shit.

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  • CitizenKong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    15 percent for banner ads is actually pretty good.

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• denast@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Recently went on Reddit and laughed historically at the amount of religious propaganda I saw in this format. Example:

  1000009776

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• Stoneykins@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Solution is simple, community should turn any suspiciously product focused thread into an advertisers nightmare of filth

  Then the ads will just be the ones with the comment sections turned off

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• cmrn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Clicking an image on Twitter and it actually being an external link was the last thing I ever did on that platform.

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• w2tpmf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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• CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I remember it already being a thing 5 years ago with upvote/downvote buttons, karma and everything. I guess they just removed the abyssmally small grey text that sad ad in a corner or something?

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• SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  If the article is about how ads look, could they provide a useful picture?

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• FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Not sure the FTC is going to be a big fan of this…

  www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising

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• llama@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  So now they’re just charging people for what they were already doing anyway.

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• DaddleDew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Just deleted my Reddit account. I haven’t used it in over a year now anyway. I was waiting for something like this to make a statement.

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• DingoBilly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Welcome to 5 years ago? This has been around for years…

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• Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  That’s weird; I’ve never seen any of those…

  Oh yeah, that’s because I haven’t visited reddit in ~9 months.

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• The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I took ads out on Reddit years ago just to see if I could promote my music. It did less than zero and actively dragged me into a load of shit on various subs of interests I had. People there refused to talk to me, and told others not to.

  Reddit is toxic. I avoid the site. Or better still maybe people should just spam it with irelevant shit

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• werefreeatlast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  For anyone who is curious, Coca-Cola! Real cocaine in the lower 13 states and real cane sugar! Nothing blasts thirst like the delicious taste of a coca-cola fizzy drink!

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• TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Jesus reddit is run by such massive shitheads.

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• michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  In a few years my computer will be able to run an acceptable but obviously not chatGPT4 level AI that will among other things pre filter this crap from my feed as part of normal ad blocking. Buckle up bitches.

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• Savas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Ads are not the only reason, but if you’re still on reddit, you clearly missed the point why reddit became popular.

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