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Did y'all know about redditforbusiness.com?
(redditforbusiness.com)
Enshitification. Step 2 specifically.
What the fuck, I keep finding more.
Is this a guide to how to get hold of people's tax refunds? They thoroughly confused me by calling tax refunds "tax returns" in the short description, but regardless of that, it sure looks like a guide specifically and only on how to motivate people to spend their tax refunds on your stuff.
This one is fascinating. It is either a fairly genuine guidebook on how as a company to engage and be a productive member of a community to communicate authentically with your customers... or else a guide for how to infiltrate a community anonymously and subtly insert little recommendations for your products in a way where they won't be detected. Or maybe it is both, depending on who is reading it.
The shill bit is probably the single worst thing. If there is one reason to go to reddit when looking for opinions on something, it is to get genuine opinions from users or customers. Thinking that part of the business model is to infiltrate communities and nudge, despite how obvious it might be, it is completely crazy and potentially counterproductive. The moment the trust is broken, I will ignore reddit as I ignore the first 80% of a google search page...
This distributed trust thing is interesting.I tend to agree with much of what they write there. Its just... shouldn't they lead by example? "Engage genuinely". Yeah, look who's talking!
It's not though. The front page is PR bullshit. Once you go beyond the first layer, it's an extremely thorough guide, written by dishonest people, for dishonest people, on how to manipulate the reddit userbase into buying your shitty products.
I'm actually not sure that most big companies do have pages like this. I think their marketing teams probably look at the general public in exactly this way, but they mostly have more sense than to say it out loud. Do you think you can find a page hosted by Google Ads, or Fox News, that explains the breakdown of their different user segments and how to successfully manipulate each one of them by targeting their anxiety or their mental health issues?
written by dishonest people, for dishonest people, on how to manipulate the reddit userbase into buying your shitty products
Isn't that what every profit-driven company does? I mean, it's shitty, but I don't think it's something exclusive to reddit.
But... the computer or phone you're using to post this was made by a profit-driven company, as was the internet service you're using, as was the electricity that powers that thing, etc etc. I actually don't think there's anything wrong with running a business or trying to make a profit, or running ads to promote your business. You can do it honestly or dishonestly, and one is fine and one is not.
Uh, no. The phone was made by workers. Workers laid the infrastructure and maintain the networks. Workers run the power plant and maintain that infrastructure as well.
Profit happens when the business takes more money than is needed to Do The Thing. That money is then given to people who (generally) have nothing to do with Doing The Thing. These people then take their ~~extracted value~~ profits, and increase their holdings so they can get more.
So to expand on my other post: Compare this site with Vox's advertisers site or Fox News's hilariously boomer-y advertisers page. I see a lot of things but I don't see anywhere on either of these where they're advising their clients on how to get hold of people's tax refunds (although I'm sure that Fox's marketing team says that and worse behind closed doors).
marketing team says that and worse behind closed doors
That's my point, all companies driven by profit do that, we just don't know.
Key word is "driven by profit", not all companies are like that, there are also smaller companies that do care about their customers, but if they get big enough, or they get investors involved, they change for the worse.
And among the worse, some companies are smart and don't disclose what they really think to the public, other are stupid like reddit and totally lose trust by showing their true colors.
Redditors don’t doom-scroll—they engage with intent.
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
That last one is hilariously bad. "We know so much about our communities that we know they would hate how we speak about them here, anyway want to buy ads?"
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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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