Reddit is ramping up its war on marketing slop
Reddit announced new steps to combat the spam that it sees as a threat to its competitive advantage, Business Insider exclusively learned.
Reddit is taking aggressive measures to combat what it perceives as "marketing slop" on its platform. Chief Communications Officer Adam Collins stated that the company aims to preserve the human qualities that make Reddit unique, emphasizing the importance of maintaining genuine conversations.
The first step involves preventing suspected spam from appearing in the main home feed while under review. This approach reportedly reduced spam in the home feed by 28%, user reports of spam by 11%, and push notifications with spam by 7%. Reddit plans to test these measures in search results next.
In addition to this, Reddit intends to explain to users why it suspects certain content to be spam, instead of simply labeling it as such. The company also announced it won't recommend posts or comments from accounts that have been asked to verify their human status, but have not yet done so. This move is intended to prevent brands from manipulating the platform for self-promotion.
One notable instance of rule-breaking uncovered by Reddit involved a network of 485 accounts that created over 44,000 pieces of content across the platform, often about work and productivity. These accounts falsely presented themselves as regular users but were actually linked to businesses, violating Reddit's rules requiring disclosure of marketing activity.
To counteract this, Reddit has reversed the potential benefits gained from the coordinated behavior by removing karma and votes from the manipulated content. Karma refers to a score on Reddit that measures a user's reputation.
Collins highlighted that the essence of Reddit — the humanity seen in everyday conversations — is what the company is striving to protect. He added that the goal is to maintain this uniqueness for the future.
The spam issue poses a significant threat to Reddit, which values its human-moderated communities as a key advantage over other social platforms. While Reddit has been proactive in combating AI-generated promotional content and spam, Collins acknowledged that spammers continually find new workarounds, insisting that the fight against spam will be an ongoing process.
Marketers who interact with Reddit genuinely — by listening to consumers and offering genuine value — won't be penalized by the upcoming crackdown. However, those employing manipulative tactics may face consequences. Despite the challenge, Reddit intends to uphold its commitment to preserving the human-centric nature of its platform.
Written by urgent.news from Business Insider's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
