Marketers and their bots have been using reddit to hype up brands. No wonder Reddit feels like shit these days.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
714 points (98.8% liked)
Fediverse
39785 readers
237 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean astroturfing reddit was never new. It's why /r/HailCorporate existed and tools tried to disenfranchise that sub so much.
It's just 10 times worse because of the phenomenon you described. It also doesn't help that reddit and walled garden social media killed traditional forums so you don't have those to index anymore either. You either have SEO garbage sites trying to bombard you with ads and referral links, links to a walled garden you can't actually see, or reddit posts.
It's a cycle that's bound to repeat, especially with AI. Because that's how MBAs and snake oil salesmen get money, by ruining communal spaces.