Yes, they're taking from the Apple playbook so people who don't know will think they actually do things that don't involve leather or sheep at Reddit HQ. It's IPO shenanigans.

It used to be, they were called sponsored links, but the comment sections got filled with angry comments about the ads and people would downvote the shit out of them, then they removed comments, and after the redesign ads didn't have threads/engagement but now they do.

One of my friends tried advertising that way and it went poorly, and the ads weren't even for a real product just a test balloon for the concept.

Pepe also got very mad when your ad replaced the moose in the sidebar.

Ironically, it was spez who introduced sponsored links with comments then, so what's old is new again! I wonder if this time will be different... (Not really, I know how this will end)

On "old reddit" the posts were highlighted so you could tell

I think with the new Facebook style feed it might not be.

The difference is companies used to just run their own super cheap bots to spam fake "engagement" to the site. Now since the API is gone they have to pay Reddit directly for the privilege.

All I know is, they pay me every time I say it. Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

I was about to tag Margot Robbie, but of course it's you

The subreddit /r/hailcorporate has existed for ages pointing this out. Shills have been around since forever and buying upvotes is trivial.

Eh, no shame in self promotion lol

I bet the "community engagement comments" are just people warning others that it is an ad

I don't believe that number, the average reddit clicks one of every 4 ads shown?

No way.

Edit: I misread the post to be 28% CTR, you can ignore my comment.

Ads get shown because they're paid. Regular posts compete with all other posts, and user filters and subscriptions.

Artificial ranking. Without an API it’s much less reliable for botnets to astroturf; now they’re said “if you can’t beat em, join em” and closed the API and everything is for sale: Even the honesty of the site.

the problem is companies have weaponised complacency, there's too many people that don't care and that's why they keep getting away with it. do it enough times and people will begin to think it's inevitable and just put up with it.

Yep, I'm a former Digg user who left at the v4 launch because of this exact thing - they made ads indistinguishable from normal user posts.

People are saying this isn't that big a deal, that Reddit won't just die after this. The thing is, Digg still exists but it's a shadow if its former self and nobody cares about it. It's present, but its presence isn't relevant. This change is likely to push more of the users who submit quality content to Reddit away from it, degrading the site community even more than last year.

Lesson not learned, apparently.

They probably will. The next evolution in ads is going to be serving them within other organic content, your browser can’t block them if it can’t tell the difference. Now you can just pay Reddit to astroturf for you.

Drop them, they’re literally QVC.

They delete those

flavor of deodorant

Something isn't right about that...

Realistically, this likely won't piss off their userbase nearly as much as the API fiasco last summer. A significant amount of users stayed in light of a number of subs going dark, so I have a feeling an influx in ads won't really grind too many gears (or they will but will just bitch and nothing more).

Reddit is much more mainstream these days, and your average Melvin is just used to ads at this point.

Oh, woe 🙀 It's bad enough that we're stuck with me (ba-dum tssh, self-deprecating humour there :D ) but now we're gonna get even worse critters from Reddit because it's gonna be ones who stayed with it during the previous exodus. Bleh!

Why stay there? Make the shift permanent!

I used nails in the past and I never went around telling people how I keep hitting my thumb with the hammer 😭. 😂. I just learned to not put my thumb there and problem solved! So just take your thumb and bring it here! No ads here! I can't believe they finally did put ads there.

Improved by 28%, not at 28%.

That would be some awful idiocracy type of future and we’re not there… yet.