Addit - How hidden ads and activity markets are ruining Reddit's user controlled content

A friend of mine told me to check out r/videos today. Since I barely browse Reddit anymore, pretty much cause of reasons which I'm going to be talking about in this post, I don't really know what's going on there that much lately.

My main Reddit activities lately consist of logging on, checking r/ethereum, r/steemit and r/cryptocurrencies and then I go back to Steemit, steemit.chat and discord and suddenly its time to head to bed again.

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On top of r/videos right now is this video of a user claiming to have bought upvotes to get on top of the subreddit. Here is a screenshot showing him being there with almost 13k upvotes.

He seems pretty chill about it, directly confesses that he has purchased the amount of upvotes that lead to his submission becoming top on the subreddit for "not even that much money". Watch the video.

If this comes as a shock to you, I have to let you know that this is something that has been going on on Reddit ever since it became "mainstream". As someone who lurked on Reddit in its infancy, then created an account 6-7 years ago and watched it grow I can't help but feel that its something that is ruining the site and for me personally at least has made it a "what's paid for and what isn't" on top of the public paid ads which have gotten more and more complex over the years. As you can see the ad on top of the screenshot is about blockchain because Reddit knows where my main activity is when I browse it so the ads are targeted towards my interest no matter on which subreddit I currently am on.

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Buying votes, comments, accounts and other Reddit activity has been something that's been happening behind the scenes for many years. When Reddit became the corporation it is today I somehow saw it coming, it wasn't much about "what is the best for the readers and users of it" but more of "what is best for the shareholders of the company and their monetary gain". Which mostly consists of ad-revenue.

Now don't get me wrong, ads are normal on pretty much any site. Although Reddit didn't have many of them back in the day and instead used the "buy reddit gold feature" to support their server up times and costs, they started becoming more and more. Many lack proper vetting also, there's been tons of times I've had to report scammy ads to Reddit moderators that have been targeted to the crypto subreddits. Of course I can't put the website down for showing ads, everyone is doing it! There are ads on TV, Radio, most of the internet, everywhere outside you go and even people are becoming paid advertisers nowadays.

There is a huge difference though between ads that are public and you know you are currently watching an ad and ads that are hidden pretending to just be content that the majority enjoy. These "clever" ads have been becoming more and more popular over the years probably because they show better results than the usual ones which people have started getting used to.

There is a big market for these as well, and not just for buying upvotes that people in countries with a great imbalance in their economy work for to provide. There are even markets for Reddit accounts that have a good history and positive "karma" which is their point system. I take back when I've said that my 100k karma is "worthless", cause apparently there are advertisers paying top dollar for these to use them for hidden advertisement.

Here is a quick google search on buying Reddit Upvotes:

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My point with this post is not just to bring down Reddit as the money hungry corporation it has become. Most of the other giants are very similar with vote/like buying and other attention markets that users and other corporations can purchase "behind the scenes". After all these are a big issues because of bots becoming better and better over time to pretend they are real users on social media sites for monetary gain combined with actual real users that do this for a living in countries where a dollar is worth a lot more than a dollar in other countries.

I also wanted to talk about the major differences between the usual media sites compared to our platform. Which is transparency.

Of course here on Steemit one could also pay someone "behind the scenes" to advertise their company or product on their account. This is probably already happening, some authors mention that its a paid advertisement while some may not. This is though one of the main ways you can advertise on Steemit. We don't have ads that generate ad-revenue which only "the owners" gain from like on the other ones. For people to advertise here it will either cost them a flat-rate or it will cost the authors publishing these voting power of their already earned/bought Steem Power which in turn most of the stake holders profit from either by the value of Steem increasing or even earning curation rewards from voting up advertisement.

Steem Power is the main thing that makes Steemit and all the other front-ends that will pop up later different from its predecessors. Every user that has a stake of Steem, either earned or purchased, profits from advertisement being published on the platform.

A transparent blockchain makes it so much harder for the "bad" advertisements to have a fighting chance at tricking people into their scams or shady products. The majority of the users decide what gets viewed the most and what doesn't and they all have an incentive for that to be the best of the best since they all are affected by owning a stake in the ecosystem.

On other social media sites we can't know. We don't see every upvote or like and where it originates from, we can't tell what is really an ad and what isn't and neither will we ever get to the bottom of it most of the time. This is the power of transparency in blockchain technology.

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I used to love Reddit back in the day, I was fine with paying for Reddit gold on great submissions and comments knowing it goes to server upkeep and other expanses. I was fine when they started adding ads to the sidelines and top of the subreddits. I was fine when they started increasing in frequency cause I knew it was just ads.

I am however not fine knowing that maybe 50% of all submissions that are on "top" of most subreddits might or might not be advertisement and not user controlled content.

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While I was typing this it seems his account got suspended.

I was going to mention in the end that it might have just been a ruse and he maybe didn't really buy upvotes but the Reddit hive-mind voted it up to the top anyway thinking he actually did, but with the suspension it might be true.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post I haven't used Reddit actively in a long time, much of what is written here may not be 100% true and a lot of other stuff might be missing. That's the way I view Reddit lately though and for me it was the best platform for many years before I stumbled upon Steemit. I decided to not even bring in Facebook much into this and how their system works cause that would keep me busy for a few weeks and I'd probably have to write a 100 post series on everything wrong with it today.

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[Image Source](https://www.inc.com/dave-kerpen/13-quotes-to-inspire-you-to-be-more-transparent.htm