[A_D_E_P_T]

> My only concern is that once Reddit reviews get used at scale for product discovery, we will see an inflow of fake and paid reviews in the comments

This is already happening.

A lot of product-related posts on Reddit are made by marketing agencies, PR firms, SEO consultants, etc. There's also a thriving secondary market for "high karma" Reddit accounts, which are bought and sold with ease. Unlike old-fashioned forums, which were difficult for outsiders to crack, Reddit is easy to game and basically it's already the most astroturfed place on the internet. Making it the basis of a product search system can only make it worse.

[jsheard]

Likewise on YouTube, which OPs service is also pulling from, several times now I've gone looking for reviews of a specific product and one of the top results has been a TTS voice reading a probably ChatGPT-generated "review" which invariably recommends the product because the point is to get you to click the affiliate link in the description. The channels I saw were posting "reviews" so frequently and consistently, and for such random products that I suspect the entire operation is completely automated.

[qiongzhouh]

Hmm, that's interesting. I've been getting a lot of Instagram and Tiktok reels with the robotic TTS voice nowadays, I've just been assuming that it's a funny thing that people do so that they don't have to record their own voice.

Wondering how / if we should be filtering out this content now that you can make TTS voices that sounds like they're completely real

[jsheard]

Even with a perfectly convincing TTS voice it's still given away by the fact that they don't show themselves on video interacting with the product, they usually just show a slideshow of official product images. At least some people must already be falling for this crudely generated content for it to be worth their while to produce it though.

[btown]

There's an interesting phenomenon where a certain type of rapid-to-experience, entertaining content, often with an enjoyable twist, has become synonymous with the glaringly imperfect TikTok voice... and thus, conversely, creators use TTS to signal that their content is similarly entertaining. And as more and more traditional creators start to use TTS, real voices become devalued as a quality signal. Avoiding recording is only a part of the phenomenon!

https://gesserit.co/ (formerly tiktoktts) is one of the most popular ways to generate a TikTok-esque TTS voice outside of that platform. I don't think they could have chosen a better name!

[qiongzhouh]

Wow, that voice on the page sounds exactly like what I hear on TikTok / Instagram all the time. Definitely evokes the feeling that I'm about to be entertained by something.

Thanks for sharing that, we'll have to think hard about how to measure the quality / realness of content online beyond the simple things like upvotes and subscriber count

[dawalker]

Interesting, haven't seen one of those yet. With public video+audio models getting much better that will only get way worse over time. Excited to see what YT/Google decides to do about it.

[jsheard]

Example: search for "MSI G27C4X" on YouTube, for me at least both the first and second results are fake robot reviews. There are a couple of real impressions videos by real people but for some reason YouTube sorts them below the AI spam. One of those spam channels is posting multiple reviews per hour, with >11,000 videos and counting.

[dawalker]

That's crazy, going to be really interesting once this ramps up/if it starts getting good traffic.

[AndrewCopeland]

I've seen AI generated content about dog breeds, the content was absolutely horrible to watch and listen too.

In the near future we will have YouTube videos that pride themselves on being organically made, no GMOs and built by humans.

[dawalker]

lmao true, already seen a few companies gunning for the YouTube for AI generated videos mantel so we'll see how it goes

[chasebank]

Already happening? Here's a clip from an astroturfing firm in the year 2000 for Sprite and other clients. They called it 'under the radar marketing' back then. I'd wager 95% of all product recommendations on Reddit, and HN for that matter, are placed by people with agendas.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0z0a4SLIsM

[AndrewCopeland]

That's what I do, I think I provide a great product/service but also still want to get the word out.

A marketing agency who will sell a bag of shit as long as they get paid is definitely a net negative.

Overall reddit has been going down hill for a decade at this point and it only makes sense that it will/has been captured by companies trying to profit off it.

[qiongzhouh]

Do you have any pointers for learning more about this space? I've personally been pretty skeptical of sponsored products on YouTube, though I find myself getting tempted to / actually trying them out anyway, but haven't thought too hard about small Redditors or Tiktokers getting paid to shill products.

Curious what companies do this / how companies are going about conducting these unpublicized marketing campaigns?

[dawalker]

The top comment on that clip scores home that point. While there's no way to verify that, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more than we realize. That being said and to play devils advocate - if all of them are already astroturfed with some people discovering that, then how much do most people care about it?

[dawalker]

Very true. It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though. It's also worth noting that while this is happening, there aren't many other places that most people go to where the site is mainly text-based and there is a higher level of trust that I know of. Personally, I'd trust Reddit over a random blog from a Google search, but that isn't a high bar.

All of that being said, I think this will be a much bigger problem with misinformation generally on all of the internet as AI gets better, especially considering the election later this year.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

> It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though

Maybe the PR companies moved up a level in the meta-game - Don't talk up your product, talk up Reddit itself, _then_ go on Reddit to talk up your product.

[pphysch]

It's not even that "meta": they would just be dogfooding. I would be surprised if this wasn't the case.

[dawalker]

They're getting smarter for sure, maybe some shadow marketing going on with the IPO too lol

[addandsubtract]

As with anything on reddit, "the real ______ is always in the comments." You get the best advice in place you expect it the least.

[dawalker]

Great point. While reddit may be astroturfed, all it takes is one good comment.

[A_D_E_P_T]

Thing is, there aren't many marketing firms that don't have (or can't buy on a work-for-hire basis) upvote/downvote networks. It's trivial to promote comments in ways that look organic. It's equally trivial to downvote commercially harmful comments into oblivion.

What's more, Reddit posts are usually actively discussed only for a day or two. But votes can be cast, and new comments can be added, for months. One strategy is to wait until the conversation has completely died down, then hijack it with new comments that somehow seem to get as many votes as they need to rise to the top. When, a year later, somebody digs up that thread on Google, they'll see the promoted comments first.

Reddit has severe structural flaws that are, I think, unfixable. In making the upvote/downvote thing a kind of game, and in enabling easy throwaway accounts whose votes are weighed in the same way as those of the longstanding accounts of regular commenters, they've naturally made their forum easy for commercial interests to game.

[dawalker]

Great points, not sure those are fixable either. It definitely has some advantages from those same things in some respects, but monetizing reddit outside of ads (i.e. ecommerce like tiktok/instagram) because of these things is going to be a challenge for sure.

[fuzzythinker]

I wouldn't blindly trust comments.

[Phanlan2016]

Can you give me some examples of old-fashioned forums, I just one to see some of it for the sake of it ;)

[A_D_E_P_T]

Behold: https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/

[criddell]

Where can you buy and sell high karma Reddit accounts?

[A_D_E_P_T]

There are tons of clearweb markets, e.g.: https://openmarketingstudio.mysellix.io/