Reddit, along with Wikipedia, seems to have already slowly been claimed by groups pushing you to buy, only they're seeking something besides (direct) transfer of stuff for cash: buy-in and validation of which political positions are even valid to consider holding, let alone actually adopting. I'm on the left myself (although I think in terms of being liberal first over being "a part of the left"), and as Jon Stewart said during simpler times, "Reality has a liberal bias!", so I don't see it as much a direct threat to my existence as say a center-right conservative would, but oh geez. It's been getting really intense over the last year or two. Over the summer I was listening to a podcast where someone was discussing the remarks of a non-partisan entity (can't remember who, but the podcast itself was The Fifth Column), and the hosts referred to the undertones of those remarks as having an "implied 'we'".

Because the fervor doesn't match what I see in real life, I really do wonder how much of what's happening reflects actual public sentiment, and how much of it is the result of more subtle, nefarious things at play.

I recently found a Wikipedia article where some media organization had published an interview with a public entertainer, only rather than linking to this interview, the Wikipedia article in an attempt to cite a reference for the entertainer's quote linked instead to a Vox article that was, in consideration of prosaic matters alone, much worse than the original source. Of course it was really heavy-handed, too, and overstuffed with "implied 'we'". How did that happen, that piece getting linked in place of the original? Was it the result of laziness, ignorance, or something more intentional? I didn't dive into it (too much of a quagmire to try to wade in and correct it, either), but I wouldn't doubt if there was some monetary cause related to the big business of politics. It's certainly happening in other places.

It's probably related to their policy of preferring secondary sources[1]. (Without a link to the article in question though I can only guess.) You could argue this is a bad policy, but it's certainly not a new one.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...

Not at all. If a journalist interviews someone and then goes to print, and a Wikipedia article is trying to cite a source for something the interviewee said, you don't need another organization to quote the part of the article where the interviewee's words appear in order for a secondary source to come into existence. The article where the quote was first printed is a valid secondary source.

> Because the fervor doesn't match what I see in real life, I really do wonder how much of what's happening reflects actual public sentiment, and how much of it is the result of more subtle, nefarious things at play.

Even though it's one of the biggest online platforms, it's still a niche demographic. It's pockmarked by enough differing opinions that you can feel like it's a good representation, but the US has 320 million people in it, and it's hard to find concrete stats but it seems there are around 30-45 million US reddit users. Only some of them would comment on any particular topic, so what you're reading is a curated voice of a particular demographic self selecting their participation in various topics.

As a microcosm of this, checkout the Motorcycle subreddit. You'd be fooled into thinking everyone rides with full leathers and helmets on, and that the entire motorcycle community feels really strongly about it, and that it's a rare sight to see someone without gear on. But it's extremely common to see people riding without full gear in the real world.

That's why all these big political shakeups take that bubble by surprise. Reddit didn't think Brexit could happen, they didn't think Trump 2016 would happen, and it doesn't matter what your political flavours are, my conclusion is that Reddit as a hive mind doesn't really have that good of a grasp of reality.

I know a couple of people who go through these types of Reddit threads and embed referral links into their answers.

Quora is already filled with growth hacker answers.

We are more captured than we think.

Doesn't reddit automatically strip referral links and put in their own? I thought they started doing that a few years ago as a monetization strategy but I could be wrong.

The content marketers have had a work around for that for years.

Just answer the asked question relatively narrowly, then link to a detailed write up on their affiliate site. Note that the article may have already been there (not that uncommon), but sometimes the article was custom-written for that specific reddit post.

It is really tough for reddit to capture money from these posts or prevent links to the affiliate site because the content marketer is providing (perhaps minimal) value to the community, and a link to their more detailed response is usually not a link that will get reported or deleted because it prevents "walls of text"/detailed answers that some redditors seem to despise.

Does anybody click on such articles? I'd think any subreddit I used for product recommendation would immediately delete such comment and ban the author. I'd also think content marketers would be smarter than to do that.

Yes.

It really depends on if it looks scammy or not.

Some criteria:

1. The question asked on Reddit needs to be answered completely on Reddit — that is, without a need to click on a link.

2. The linked article need to be relevant and informative to the asked question, while also providing more relevant information than was originally asked for but might actually be desired. If all of these links to articles were instantly deleted, then it would be a disservice to the community.

3. Some subreddits are absolutely sticklers about affiliate sites, and I imagine affiliate marketers avoid them. Moderation is not easy, but it does require a balance between meeting the needs of the passive users and the content creators.

Growth hackers, lol

How about "spammers"?

There are many similarities. The growth hackers usually do a better quality job though.

I'd argue that is already is. Wasn't there some big controversy about a SuperMod that was paid by companies to manage Reddit for them all day?

The only place left for good recommendations is the same place that was good for it all those years ago - closed small niche forums (discord servers fill that gap nowdays) and personal recommendations by people you know in real life

Yeah, that might happen. I'd have to find an alternative in that case. Whatever I replace it with would probably still be another highly centralized source though.