Submitted 1 month ago by jeze@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/16/reddit_promoted_posts/
Well, look at that. Ads disguised as posts.
Another reason I really look forward for them being sued in Europe - This is a highly illegal practice in the EU and has already brought sizeable penalties for various other media outlets, both conventional and online.
And weeks ago the Dutch and German consumer protection agencies as well as the GDPR ombudsman already commented that they are looking into Reddit (Reddit has it’s European office in Amsterdam).
That will be fun.
Never Interfere With an Enemy While He’s in the Process of Destroying Himself
Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake.
-Sun Tzu
I wonder if an email to european consumer protection would help speed things along
I thought this was illegal in most countries
Which is why they’re now under investigation from the FCC.
Which is why they’re now under investigation from the FCC.
I’m, no, they aren’t. They’re under investigation by the FTC for their deal that allows Google to train their AI on user data. The FCC is not involved and it has nothing to do with ads.
You know what’s wild?
I have seen them replace the top comment on a post with an ad.
Literally still have all the responses to it that are now completely out of place, but treating it like it’s naturally in there. And also it means the top comment (which might have been a bot anyways) has just been taken over by reddit and used to sell ad space.
That is wild. Are you sure it’s not the author of that comment editing their post to become an ad? Screenshot?
My partner still visits reddit on mobile (the communities they want just are not here and they don’t like to post), I know when showing me something we’ve clicked on a post to have to scroll past a “Presented” comment (ad), the communities stickied bot comment, then we finally get to the first real comment only for it to be some highly upvoted joke comment. Sprinkle in bots and native ad’s, I seriously don’t understand still putting up with it. It’s like saying a shopping complex is still a social hot spot like a mall was back in the day.
More of their bullshitery. I had the audacity to use my browser to click a reddit link.
Old.reddit still works
As does putting .i on the end, to use the compact interface.
The links are a bit spotty nowadays, and some of the newer features don’t work quite right, but it otherwise works a treat for most things.
Just curious, because typing Reddit in at the end of searches magically makes the exact niche result you need appear, how do you open a post in old Reddit?
uBO can bypass it too, if you don’t want to have to deal with old.reddit on mobile.
Been that way since the api exodus
Yup, they’re forcing people towards the app because it allows them to collect telemetry data. Your browser walls them off so they can’t data mine your device, but the app gives them full control.
The former mod of /r/jailbait has everything under control. The IPO is going to be a huge success, no doubt about it.
Of all the dumb shit he does, being a mod of r/jailbait is so stupid to bring up. At that time you could make anyone a mod of a subreddit.
And yet he stayed as a mod until they were forced to shut that subreddit down. He could have left at any time, yet he didn’t. So how is it stupid to bring it up?
Here is what one of these ads looks like:
www.reddit.com/u/PhillyCanada/s/O52X2oGf5V
It does not appear to be labeled as an ad on the Reddit mobile app.
Jesus Christ, 1.5k upvotes on an ad. I know it didn’t say it explicitly but it does read very much like an ad
Yeah this is really scary. Maybe the golden thing on the top right is supposed to be the marking? But this is clearly not clearly marked. Should be easy to sack in a court.
This may be on purpose though. They communicate to their future shareholders that they will do everything - legal and illegal - to make profit and pay dividends.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but this referenced ad post is over a year old. There’s been “organic” guerilla marketing by advertisers on Reddit for almost a decade now. How is this relevant to the recent changes?
The context is in the article posted. This was one of the early experiments for the new ad platform. Looks like they did some simple test by coordinating things manually, then once they validated the concept, they spent the year building out a platform and interface for advertisers.
Why are there so many comments in the thread going “Omg great ad/marketing idea!!”, that’s so weird…
I wonder if a lot of that is astroturfing.
Wtf is up with the comments… They’re all congratulating the marketing to for a good campaign? Saying they’re buying the shit.
100% Reddit astroturfing. It’s so unnatural
It’s gone now, on www. and old. via browser. “Page not found” with a pic of that snoo crying under a hot sun because he bought into the pre-IPO hype and sank his entire savings into Reddit shares because Spez sent him an email and told him he was Special but now sees it all going over the cliff before the IPO even lands, lol.
Gotta juice up those numbers before IPO so executives can sell their stock and leave others to hold the bag
This has been the case for ages so it’s not anything new.
Anyone remember when a certain oat milk brand paid to promote a megathread about their new ad campaign, with comments open, and just got savaged by Reddit? The funny thing is that generally people seem to like the product, but hated the smug marketing so much it turned real bad, real fast.
I wonder how they’re doing:
The stock has fallen 42% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX has gained 23%.
Ha.
if you replace the www.reddit part of the link with farside.link/libreddit it will send you to a random frontend instance.
this means no ads, no js, no trackers, and probably none of this.
to do this you’ll need a browser extension. try this one: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/…/redirector/ (couldn’t find this one for chrome but you can choose another)
if you used the extension i gave you you can import below as a plaintext in the settings.
{ “redirects”: [ { “description”: “”, “exampleUrl”: “https://www.reddit.com/r/example”, “exampleResult”: “https://farside.link/libreddit/r/example”, “error”: null, “includePattern”: “https://www.reddit.com*”, “excludePattern”: “”, “patternDesc”: “”, “redirectUrl”: “https://farside.link/libreddit$1”, “patternType”: “W”, “processMatches”: “noProcessing”, “disabled”: false, “grouped”: false, “appliesTo”: [ “main_frame”, “sub_frame” ] }, { “description”: “”, “exampleUrl”: “https://old.reddit.com/r/example”, “exampleResult”: “https://farside.link/libreddit/r/example”, “error”: null, “includePattern”: “https://old.reddit.com*”, “excludePattern”: “”, “patternDesc”: “”, “redirectUrl”: “https://farside.link/libreddit$1”, “patternType”: “W”, “processMatches”: “noProcessing”, “disabled”: false, “grouped”: false, “appliesTo”: [ “main_frame”, “sub_frame” ] } ] }
Half the mods in the big communities work for ad agencies. Fact…
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Haven’t they had ads disguised as posts for years now?
takeda@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I dunno, uBlock never showed any.
fuck spez, fuck Reddit
stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I remember them showing up in the mobile apps, before I discovered third party apps.
catloaf@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Sort of. At least on old reddit, sponsored posts were in a light blue box. Now it sounds like they have a little gray “sponsored” somewhere on it.
db2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Steve doesn’t care as long as he can extract money before the repercussions hit. That’s why he didn’t care about alienating so many people that volunteered their time and energy, he’s counting on their being enough momentum to get through the IPO so he can
stealtake the money he thinks he’s entitled to… he doesn’t give a single shit what happens after because he won’t be there and will just blame everyone else.originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 1 month ago
yep, my thought too. it was one of the big red flags for me awhile back
jeze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
They’re clearly marked as such kind of like promoted tweets.