Reddit was the last place for online product discussions, that wasn't crawling with affiliate links and astroturfing.
Now that there is a 'data-driven' robot crawling these subs, there is no doubt the volume of spam posts will increase to bump up the numbers on this website's front end.
One day we'll look at affiliate links as one of the 10 major factors that made the web worse.
> Reddit was the last place for online product discussions, that wasn't crawling with affiliate links and astroturfing.
No, it's had rampant astroturfing for years now - you just haven't noticed. Reddit was never going to be a good product recommendation place, because there's no (1) verified purchase mechanism (2) web of trust mechanism or (3) gatekeeping into who could enter - and without those things, there's simply no way to prevent astroturfing/influence operations - and the same applies to HN.
Certain categories seem like they would be impossible to astroturf, or at least the brands in those categories wouldn't know the ROI on doing an astroturfing campaign.
Two randomly cherry picked categories:
https://looria.com/search?category.subcategory=TVs - this is pretty consistent with rtings.com. Samsung is very likely astroturfing, but LG's OLED are still consistently rated high no matter how much astroturfing and is consistent with my personal experience.
The astroturfing was more of the 'submarine' type [0] that took skill and effort for more niche products than the more low effort mass spam & fraud types you see on amazon and such.
I remember talking to an accquantance who had a marketer for their kickstarter-esque product and how they leverage reddit to generate interest for their thing via some astroturfing behavior years ago.
I'm not sure with current models but for a long time LG OLED isn't a good choice if you have a room with bright ambient light. The QN80 or QN90 are the best options since they are the brightest TVs and they also have/had anti glare coatings.
I don't need all that stuff. Reddit is plenty credible as long as you use comments as an exploration point, instead of a "buy" indicator.
For categories like men's shoes, I've gotten more value out of 3-line Reddit comments than I have with 20-minute influencer reviews that are mostly ad-infested infomercials.
I'm somebody that grew up on message boards like SlickDeals and RedFlagDeals so maybe I have a better eye for spotting astroturfing.
Yeah, a lot of value is that in these "recommend a product to me" threads, there are genuine comments. I don't really care that some are from marketers, I get some good suggestions and can go look for myself if they're right for me. OTOH, finding out if a product is good has become almost impossible.
Reddit was the last place for online product discussions, that wasn't crawling with affiliate links and astroturfing.
Now that there is a 'data-driven' robot crawling these subs, there is no doubt the volume of spam posts will increase to bump up the numbers on this website's front end.
One day we'll look at affiliate links as one of the 10 major factors that made the web worse.