Someone posted this over on Reddit right when it happened and I apparently saved it. I'm cleaning out my bookmarks and came across it. I hought you'd like to see why it's good news that we found Lemmy.

Edit: I took a screenshot in case it gets deleted.

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[–] 240 points 3 years ago (9 children)

One of the main reasons people come to Reddit is to be informed by discussions they’re interested in, creating an environment of active discovery ripe for brands to show up and add value. Contextual Keyword Targeting places advertisers at the center of this journey, and at the heart of active conversations taking place, giving them the option to select specific keywords to associate with their brand, or even align keywords with their creative ad copy for added relevance. With so much direct traffic to Reddit conversation threads originating from high intent organic searches or research sessions, Contextual Keyword Targeting unlocks value for advertisers during and after discussions unfold, since we know Reddit threads live on as valuable, searchable resources for our users.

I threw up in my mouth reading this. I don't think any community would enjoy being described as "an environment of active discovery ripe for brands to show up and add value".

If you're like me and haven't deleted old reddit comments because of the valuable information they can give other people, now may be the time to reconsider. Being able to advertise on discussions that have already happened is one of the sales pitches Reddit makes to prospective advertisers.

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  • [–] 45 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    They mentioned Ally Financial as one of the success cases so I did a quick search for recent posts about Ally and sure enough the very first result from outside their own sub has this user contributing to the conversation:

    https://www.reddit.com/user/robbiedavissie

    Somebody posts a question about Ally and this 11 minute old account comes along pitching all of Ally Bank's features. Then a week later they're making 3 posts in a row advertising some other brand.

    Super sketch.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    There’s a ton of these accounts. They gather karma with scripts that randomly repost top 100 all time posts on big subs and then delete them so their account looks clean. Then they sell it to ad companies that post client sanctioned posts and comments and get paid based on user engagement with the brand.

    Check out r/hailcorporate. A huge portion of Reddit is just guerrilla advertising.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    They also do it by copying text from comments that are getting upvoted in the same thread and then reposting it higher in the thread so it gets random upvotes. Caught the copy-bots doing it a bunch of times, got tired of reporting them since the reddit admins obviously weren't interested in combatting the problem even if local moderators were (and I suspect they were in fact helping it along because it aligns with their goals for Reddit).

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  • [–] 27 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    The amount of buzzwords just to say "advertisers are a greater priority for us than our users" holy shit

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  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago

    Reddit's recent monetisation schemes can all be summed up as "demanding a cut from people profiting off the site" and this is just more of that. They've done absolutely nothing to prevent astro-turfing and manipulation, now they're just going to offer it as a service.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Come to !recommendations@lemmy.world so that people find content from Lemmy instead ads from Reddit

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago

    I'm so glad people like you are choosing to bootstrap the community's they want to see instead of just hoping mods invested in there existing community's decided to come over and working to try and connect with the people already on lemmy instead of just begging the people on reddit until the mods ban them for spamming

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    I wish there was an easy way to archive my old reddit comments. Anything older than 1000 comments seems impossible to access even though I made them.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    You could do a data request, that should be everything they have on you

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago

    Oh thanks, I've just done that. I wrote a LOT of stuff in my time. I always thought it'd be good to look back and see how my positions changed and how I felt about my old thoughts. It was pretty annoying not to have a way to go back and actually read my stuff, even though they're still hosting them and profiting off of them.

    I'll be honest most of it is anarchist propaganda so I'm in two minds as to whether or not to remove it. I'll definitely get rid of the fun games stuff I posted and find a place here for it.

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 3 years ago*

    Same, we're all prostitutes for Reddit in the end.

    TBH, they're already doing it a little here, but at least we're not being sold to the highest bidder by Reddit. Here, they get ignored and/or downvoted.

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