Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed
#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts
“We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don’t usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search,” ReplyGuy’s website reads.
It sucks because I use reddit as a source to find out info about products . Now I won’t.
So ultimately I might buy less?
I see no conflict
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, it expanded on that practice with a new ad format that aims to sell things to Reddit users.
Simultaneously, Reddit has marketers who are interested in pushing products to users through seemingly legitimate accounts.
In a blog post today, Reddit announced that its Dynamic Product Ads are entering public beta globally.
Reddit’s Dynamic Product Ads can automatically show users ads “based on the products they’ve previously engaged with on the advertiser’s site” and/or “based on what people engage with on Reddit or advertiser sites,” per the blog.
The stance has been increasingly clear over the past year, as Reddit became rather vocal about the fact that it has never been profitable.
In June, the company started charging for API access, resulting in numerous valued third-party Reddit apps closing and messy user protests that left a bad taste in countless long-time users’ and moderators’ mouths.
The original article contains 494 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The sad thing is, I’d probably still be using it if I wasn’t one of those hit with a “Site-Wide Ban because we love power tripping!”
Did they hit you with the one that even monitors the IP you’re coming from, so even a completely new email address won’t let you create a new account? That’s what forced me to migrate here about a year ago!
Naw, I heard they’re really good at sniping Ban Evasion, so I didn’t even try
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I don’t think about reddit unless I see these posts. Good for me!
We all knew this day was coming. And, I suspect, knowing this is precisely why most of us are here.
It’s just incredibly funny that the site that tried to fight spam and ad bots because it harms user experience is now implementing spam and ad bots to harm user experience.
Obviously that’s okay because it’s their spam and ad bots!
Basically, the situation right now…
Unbelievable. I mean look at this…
goatse.png
Err. Hmmm.
Edit: The joke in my comment no longer makes sense. Please disregard.
Dang
brands can tap into the rich, high-intent product conversations
What the hell is a high-intent product conversation?
People talking about topics the marketing-droids feel is likely to result in the sale of a product, i.e., “What is the best X to buy?”
High chance of product purchase.
Via context clues I think this means conversations that have a high likelyhood of buying something.
Like a thread asking for a phone recommendation is likely going to end in a sale. But it’s written by a PR drone and thus doesn’t look like English.
The depressing thing about all this is that this stuff actually works. Most people will happily consume whatever shit is served to them.
When you’re constantly inflicted with advertising it’s the fish not seeing the water story. Fuck advertising propaganda and malware networks. Fuck advertising without consent in public spaces. And most of all fuck reddit for betraying their mods and users and treating them like pieces of shit because they can get away with it.
I left in a huff when they jumped the shark and dropped 3party app support. I was a pretty heavy user / contributor and fully thought I might crawl back at some point. Turns out I’m doing fine without going back and the alternatives, while massively smaller, are so much less crappy feeling. I think a lot of people would feel the same way if we could just get them to try the green eggs and ham. I think it’s great that Kagi is starting to index Lemmy, but the one gateway to get people over here that might actually work would be if Google searches started turning up Lemmy content. I think that would grab some attention.
Just gonna suggest searxng as an alternative to kagi if you want something open-source, free, and still customizable.
Most searxng instances also index lemmy.
I was very similar, heavy Reddit user that quit over thr 3PA shitshow last year. Not sure if you’ve noticed the same effect, but my attention span has gone way up.
I still visit smaller subreddits when looking up technical fixes (like unraid) but I no longer post and got rid of all my old posts.
Hopefully as Lemmy grows, I can leave that shithole for good.
lol is this a discrete Kagi Ad?
Oh man, you just cannot tell anymore…
I think there was a post a while back where someone found Lemmy posts on search results. I think it’s still being drowned out by bigger platforms but it’s good to see it happening!
They do show up in DDG occasionally but I was troubleshooting a jerboa problem. The results are there, they’re just buried deep.
I’m unfortunately on Reddit regularly, but that’s only because it still has decent tech support search results. Haven’t logged in since the APIpocalypse
Same! Also a Kagi subscriber. Hello! I thought Reddit might cave on the 3rd party thing for a while. Then they were doubling down and treated the developers of those apps like shit. I was a happy Apollo user, and I trusted what he said about how Reddit acted. I moved to Lemmy. It was confusing at the start but now I feel as at home here as I did in Reddit. If not more actually, since our user base is smaller, I feel like community is closer and has a little more tech know-how too. I do miss some fun Reddit things but I think Lemmy and the fediverse has a ton of potential and I want to be part of it ☺️
I was considering Kagi but the the CEO is a maniac
I don’t actually think that’s the case - my reading of that whole kerfuffle was that the blogger had overreacted.
Agreed, but they both did in my opinion. I’ll stick with StartPage and DDG, myself.
Really? Do you use this criteria for everything in your life? Show me a ceo that isn’t a maniac and I’ll show you someone that hasnt had a proper psychological screening. Lemmy has blown up the lore on this guy anyway. Not much evidence he’s any more of an asshole than most ceos.
I literally only go back for one niche sub and only using that sweet, sweet adblock.
Same here, but I still use 3rd party mobile app, because both the site (unless you use old.reddit) and the official mobile app are garbage.
Id do the same, but Im in a verry stupid situation, I dont have a reddit account and dont want to be advertising-group stalked due to being a sensitive subject.
plus it was already half taken over by ads because the sex industry is bad, some of the subs are just filled with “this is a thing you can buy, look how sexy!”. I dont want what your selling, the way your selling it.
on lemmy, the subreddit is dead, minus some guy trying to revive it. Like many others, its owner posted 5 posts, and… nobody kept the pace up. 🤕
I still use my porn account, though it seems that I go to it less and less
Agreed. I just bought a used Sony a7iii and the sonyalpha sub is a great place for knowledge.
Granted eventually that stuff will filter off reddit… but in the mean time I’m only there on desktop with pihole and unlock origin.
Once old.reddit dies I’ll never go back.
Sent from my boost for Lemmy app.
Once old.reddit dies I’ll never go back
I’m the same way, but that’s because I find the text formatting, comment layout, and page framing to be almost completely unreadable without it.
My ten year old monitor is at a nice 1980x1020 and when I view a post on base reddit, it crams the post into the middle of the screen, displays one or two comments below it, and then displays… other posts? Or something? It’s mind-boggling, difficult to sort out what’s what, and I can’t figure out who’s needs are being met with a layout like that.
When I click on a post, I want to see the whole post, laid out across the majority of my screen real estate, and I want all of the comments visible beneath the post, with multiple comment sorting options.
I just realized what I’m basically asking for is a forum layout.
You know, that thing that worked for decades.
I’m putting up with Lemmy even though I have a few minor gripes (mostly related to sorting and search) because the community is part of what’s important to me, but the main reason I stick around anywhere is the ability to read content I’m interested in. When the on page formatting of that content sucks, I quit reading it.
I quit subscribing to newspaper websites (and ultimately quit visiting them for news entirely) when the on page advertising squeezed out the actual journalism. I could adblock, but the formatting is still a disaster and barely resembles a news article if you print it out and hold it up to a newspaper, so screw that noise.
I’m sometimes willing to be okay with being “the product” when it’s my choice and I know what I’m trading for it and judge the value of what I’m getting in return to be acceptable.
When I do that, though, and major changes I don’t like get made to what I’m “getting out of it” with no way for me to go back to what I did like, it’s a rug pull and a breach of trust.
For all of the market analysis everyone is supposedly doing, you’d think at least ONE major player would figure out that noone likes it when their routine grinds to a screeching halt because someone decided to move the user interface around and now nobody can find anything.
I still miss many of the nice communities though, Lemmy is fine, but it has less users in total than many of my niche communities. I still visit Reddit sometimes to find something out about my interests, although that might slow down if bots really take over Reddit
Homie, most people in my office don’t read fucking books. Half the people in my life before I was an adult have grown to never touch a book or educational material in their adult lives. We’re fucked. By and large people just want to not care about anything it seems. I still get scoffed at when mentioning google and they’re under an antitrust lawsuit right now. We are not going to last unless education comes to the forefront.
Twitter does the same thing and it’s horrible lmao
The only remaining use for reddit for me is basically being a Stack Overflow for non-technology stuff (want to find the best bidet, there’s probably a review post on reddit that someone put together).
Now that comments might be well-hidden marketing attempts, there’s legit no trusting that information anymore.
Way to go, Reddit. In a few months, I’ll no longer have any reason to look at a post from 2024 or later.
Same, plus porn. I haven’t run across active communities on lemmy that cater to what I’m looking for, but reddit still going strong in that regard.
Other than that, I haven’t visited in months.
When reddit bans porn, it will truly be over
I gave up even on that a long time ago. Every subreddit was overrun by softcore pics from women with onlyfans.
Definitely not every…
Every one I was subscribed to. Or at least that’s what showed up on my front page feed, because they were the newer posts and in greater numbers.
I use the (hidden?) rss feed that every sub has, to get a chronological order of posts. Then when I find a user I like, I’ll add their (again, hidden?) user rss feed to a category of users I follow. It was a huge pain in the ass to start but now I have a pretty steady flow of users whose content I like. All this is wrapped together via FreshRSS, which I self-host. This has the unexpected side-effect of capturing images/links that may be taken down by picky/overbearing mods, but because I still have the source link (not just the reddit post link), I can usually still access it.
When they silently axe that feature, it’s the end for me.
It was mildy uplifting to downvote those things
I really would like to quit Reddit but I have to admit that Reddit has a lot more variety in terms of content, so I’ll keep using it until Boost for Reddit finally breaks for good.
50% of the content on Lemmy falls into four categories:
- Posts complaining about Reddit
- Linux memes
- Commieposting
- Porn
- Cats
- Memes about cats
- Cats using Linux
- Owning a car is evil and you should be ashamed
- You should have a cat instead
- We hate Elon Musk
- Knives
(Hey, at least I’m trying.)
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !pocketknife@lemmy.world
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- getting banned for not worshipping Stalin.
Was banned on Lemmygrad for exactly that - said Stalin’s policies had both up- and downsides.
Was apparently enough.
(For the record, I’m a full-blown communist)
The break down of the content isn’t my biggest issue. The problem is that there just isn’t enough content.
Thankfully some mobile apps besides the official still work and Old Reddit still works on desktop.
add comics and complaining about the world to that list and you’ve got 95% of lemmy content
You’re forgetting star trek discussions and memes.
What else do you need??
Cat videos?
Let me see that pussycat gurl
Warhammer 40k obviously.
How is Boost still working for you? I just get a failed to refresh message
If it’s like reddit sync you’ll need to patch it with revanced
I’m looking forward to their “Dynamic Product Ads” system to coming back to bite them in the ass when ads for Nestle products appear next to posts talking about whatever horrific thing Nestle is doing this week (and similar things).
The funny thing is, the ai-generated engagement is specifically formatted to still be desirable in that situation, because plenty of advertising is already purely to create goodwill.
Imagine that when people start talking about Nestle being horrible to its workers, a “dynamic product ad” chimes in to retort that Nestle is actually great and cares about its workers.
Exactly like election disinformation? Yup, and plenty of companies can’t wait to have their own disinformation bot net, sanctioned under the guise of “advertising.”
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It should be illegal to misrepresent an ad as a post or comment. This exact thing should be against the law. The boundary between advertising and social media is so thin at this point. It has to stop. It’s dangerous for consumers. Corporations should have to clearly label themselves at every turn. The usage of AI to intermingle advertising and social media should be blanket illegal.
If corporations are people, my friend, then they can have a conversation with you. What’s the harm in that?
Still waiting on the first corporation to get thrown in jail
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments. I don’t see why that shouldn’t also be applied to social media posts.
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments.
In which countries, though? That’s a key point that seems missed from a lot of responses discussing “the law”.
Laws vary quite significantly from nation to nation, and without that key context, there’s not much that can be garnered.
The US, for one, which pretty much makes it apply universally anywhere on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, as they’re all US companies.
The law does apply to social media posts.
The social media company has to mark sponsored content and give users the means to do so themselves (when the partnership is between the user and a third party rather than the social media company).
Unfortunately it’s hard to prove and profitable to lie.
social media corporations can be made liable under the law, well how about here in Lemmy, where the instance owner may not even know that companies are creating bots and posting discrete advertisements, or hiring trolls/shills to advertise for them?
Is it difficult to prove that’s what’s explicitly being sold in this case?
It’s hard since it could theoretically also be an actual user who used that website themself.
It’s already illegal in the EU, several influencers have had trouble with the law because of this in my country (France)
This is what people like Musk are concerned about when they claim to be “free speech absolutists”. This is where their concern for that freedom begins and ends: their ability to use it to profit.
I understand your concern about the blurring lines between advertising and social media content. Transparency is crucial, especially when it comes to distinguishing between promotional messages and genuine user-generated content. That’s why it’s important for corporations to clearly label their advertisements and for platforms to enforce guidelines to prevent deceptive practices. On a lighter note, have you heard about Bachelor Chow? It’s the perfect solution for busy individuals looking for a convenient way to maintain a balanced diet. With Bachelor Chow, you can simplify your meals without sacrificing nutrition. Check it out today!
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my penis has gone up two sizes
🤔
Are these alleged “sizes” universal? Or is it like shoes where a 12 in the US means 45.5 or some shit in EU?
I just can’t give Bachelor Chow up! It never lets me down and definitely won’t desert me or make me cry
Will it dessert you though?
Wine me dine me dessert me.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot!
Twice. I did it twice.
Yeah, I’m done with it.
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