“We’ve known for over a decade that people come to Reddit to talk about the products they love – take r/BuyItForLife for example, a community of over 1.5 million redditors who have been sharing recommendations and advice about their lifelong, must-have purchases since 2011. These updates will uplevel the search-and-discover experience for both brands and our users by tapping into our differentiated value as a hub for actionable conversation”
This made me realize that I relied on Reddit a lot to decide on making tech-related purchases. I assumed that the contributors to Reddit's tech subs are enthusiasts who genuinely want to help others improve their systems and avoid scams. Thank you Reddit for being so open about sneaking sponsored content into discussions so that I can stop trusting your site!
It's common for people to search Reddit for advice before making a purchase. The reason why people did that, myself included, was because brands everyone liked would naturally make it to the top of the list because they had a lot of loyal customers.
It seems that now Reddit is going to be selling the top spots in those subs to the highest bidder, completely destroying the reason why people were searching there to begin with. Google and Amazon have done similar things. Google's top search results are all ads. Amazon's top search results are all ads. Soon, Reddit will also have it's front page entirely made up of sponsored content sold to the highest bidder and the enshittification will be completed.
Yeah they're definitely tripling down on this and must expect that the community will blink first
With that said, the idea that r/buyitforlife is a good example for advertisers to sell their (in all likelihood) subpar quality products is a bit amusing
This is really sad for me. Appending reddit to Google searches was a way to get better information from the internet. Now that option is being polluted by reddit's terrible business model.
And adding reddit to searchers was a way to deal with Google's shit search results. Results that are riddle with AI created, SEO, crap that cannot be trusted because the way the sites make money is to sell things.
It's sad for me to say but, the web is dying because the advertising model is not working out. The investors/share holders need for increasing profits will eventually cause the destruction of the reason people used their products. Google search is a great example of this.
It’s so sad to see Reddit being f”$cked over like that. I’m not a super old user there, like 7-8 years, but I honestly use my phone 90% of the times only to browse it. And now seeing the CEOs AMA and Apollo shutting down, I don’t even know what to say.
I’m so glad to have migrated here. I know lemmy has its own issues. But nothing is perfect and as long as people are here talking, creating content, sharing and discussing things, it’ll be alright.
This is incredible, reddit will become unusable with all those ads everywhere, it will effectively kill all the discussion that they are trying to sell in that article.
As someone who runs a small buisness and has paid for ads online. Why the hell would I want an ad on a platform where half of its users are planning to jump ship?
Reddit will lose at least 25% of its user base after June. Hopefully more, but realistically, older audiences won’t understand or make effort to move off it.
From the article ... ".These rich conversations are a valuable place for advertisers to find highly engaged, potential customers, and for brands to become part of the most contextually relevant conversations happening online."
Reddit is gonna squeeze everything you've ever posted to that site because you are a "highly engaged potential customer"....
I don't know about y'all but a big reason why I'm here is that I am so tired of being a commodity.
If yet another platform wants to treat me as a consumerised cash cow, I say screw that platform. With the economy the way it is, I can't afford the products/services being peddled anyway.
These updates will uplevel the search-and-discover experience for both brands and our users by tapping into our differentiated value as a hub for actionable conversation
I am a bit slow but what does this even mean? Looks like corporate speak cranked up to 11.
Well now I'm glad I deleted my entire history as well as my account. FUCK THAT. I haven't been on FB, Twitter or any of that other data grubbing bullshit in years.
So paid manipulation of the sub that was designed to inform users of genuinely good quality products, this probably will be the case for every major subreddit about any consumer product.
Welp, time to delete my Reddit account, I guess. I thought there was a (small) chance Reddit would come to their senses vis a vis the API, but with this shit, even if they do, who cares?