Reddit is Being Manipulated By Big Financial Services Companies
Web Publication: Forbes, by Jay McGregor
Information bedbugs
For those of a certain vintage, you may not be familiar with Reddit other than name recognition. The average age of a Reddit User is 23.03 and the median is 22 according to one bright young analyst. Additional data is provided by Statista. That makes my brief daily viewing a significant anomaly. Perhaps it’s proof of my dubious maturity. I only go to the top-feature portion of Reddit and therefore miss the bulk of sophomoric content but in general, it’s a great site for news, information, entertainment, and native creativity. Many top technical discussions are anchored by gifted grad-students or young professionals who provide more in-depth discussion information than is often available elsewhere on the web. So in that context, it’s interesting to learn of a twist about how Reddit is being corrupted.
The Forbes article details paid infiltrators that skew discussion threads toward corporate interests. This is not good for the perception that the youthful Reddit is pristine and sincere, uncorrupted by ‘grownups’. For Reddit users, this is more than just a growing pain they’ll have to address. I bring it up to illustrate yet another wrinkle that I expect to see in the broader fake-news/truth war. It’s disturbing knowing that some people are out there promoting fake information but its another kind of disquieting that there are skilled manipulators, including bought-off insiders, steering a chat discussion to gradually stop asking valid hard questions. We should assume that all consumer advocacy chats are at least monitored if not influenced. Overcoming this dynamic will require new web-strategies.
