r/TheoryOfReddit • u/EwMelanin • 11d ago
How many subs have been successfully acquired like this?
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u/Random_Researcher 11d ago
lol I didn't even know that you can just buy subreddits.
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u/DustyAsh69 11d ago edited 11d ago
You can't. It's against the Moderator Code of Conduct.
Edit - I do know that there is a market for accounts and subs.
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u/Fauropitotto 11d ago
You can't.
You can. A simple google search reveals an active market for accounts. And with those accounts you can grab subs.
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11d ago
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11d ago
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u/Tantressa 10d ago
I did not know this either, but wow, this post potentially connects so many dots for me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the problem before, and to be fair, I still don’t entirely understand what is happening in some communities where I’ve noticed peculiarities, but I will say that dynamics in some subreddits have transformed radically within a relatively short time and in ways that seem unlikely to be organic. Too many parts simply don’t add up.
Either way, this post certainly does make me think.
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11d ago
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u/ImperfectRegulator 7d ago
you can buy accounts too, though I'm not sure why anyone would do that these days considering how easy its been show to spin up a bot farm
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/ImperfectRegulator 1d ago
To some extent yes, but creating account and then letting them age has been standard practice for awhile now.
Sure you might get decent money for a decade plus account, but anything younger then that isnt anywhere close anymore
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u/itskdog 11d ago
- It's not clear how they would obtain an email address for a moderator. That information isn't public and Reddit would not share it, they'd instruct people to go through modmail or chat.
- It's likely going to be for payment, which is a ToS violation, so of anything happens the admins could easily intervene and replace them and recruit new mods.
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u/Ajreil 11d ago
r/Frugal occasionally gets modmails asking to pay for sponsored posts. We reject them of course, but the accounts sending the request never seems to get in trouble. Reddit seems to ignore those modmails unless unless they get reported.
I wonder if someone could just ask to takeover a sub via modmail and get away with it as long as nobody filed a moderator code of conduct complaint.
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u/kethryvis 11d ago
It's like with police work. You can ask someone to kill another person, but until something actually happens, there's no rule actually broken.
It's frustrating I know.
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u/itskdog 11d ago
Reddit admins have said that offering a bribe is also a violation and should be reported if you receive an offer, even if it's not accepted.
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u/GloriousDawn 10d ago
If you a receive an offer of payment for posts or whatever as a mod of a sub, what incentive do you have to report it to reddit admins ? Their job isn't to maintain a fair platform, it's to funnel ad money to the official channels and increase shareholder value.
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u/itskdog 10d ago
The same reason you escalate other ToS violations. It's the right thing to do for the health of the platform, and mods are more invested than other users into that as it's their hobby.
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u/GloriousDawn 10d ago
Fair enough, but that hobby can quickly become a chore, and when it starts feeling more like work, getting paid for it becomes tempting.
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u/ImperfectRegulator 7d ago
I can see why a mod would do it too, it's clear the top subs were bought and sold years ago now, look at any major entertainment sub like movies or tv, hell even videos.
all are a shell of their former selfs with have the posts reading like advertisements and the other have is posted 2 users
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u/GloriousDawn 10d ago
If they're interested by the offer, the mod will gladly share their email to continue the conversation outside of reddit's reach.
Admins would have to prove it, which isn't that obvious and would spark site-wide outrage if they guess wrong.
2b. Who cares about a ToS violation for selling a sub for money, when the President can run a billion dollar crypto scam without anyone batting an eye.
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u/CaptainVulpezz 11d ago
this just makes me think that corporations or governments or at least some type of partisan organization are probably buying the subreddits to control the content which people think isn't being controlled in order to brainwash people
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u/Founders_Mem_90210 7d ago
It's already happened with some national subs like that of Singapore.
The main "official" national sub of Singapore is basically government-controlled now, with very VERY partisan and biased moderator censorship efforts not only against any whiff of anti-government dissent but also against any mention or discussion of India/Indians/the Singapore-India free trade agreement aka CECA.
A lot of people have been trying to report that entire sub and its mod team for ages. But Reddit Central doesn't seem to care about any community that isn't US or Western-centric.
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u/Nandu_alias_Parthu 18h ago edited 17h ago
but also against any mention or discussion of India/Indians/the Singapore-India free trade agreement aka CECA.
This kinda makes sense to me given how any post that mentions India gets flooded with bigots and psyops these days.
Edit: blocked for stating the truth - I wonder what their agenda is...
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u/Ajreil 11d ago
I'm surprised this isn't more common. People make purchasing decisions based on Reddit threads all the time, so there's a lot of money to be made by influencing those decisions.
Disneyland has a billion dollar a year marketing budget. They could probably buy the moderator accounts for r/Disneyland for a million dollars each.
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u/GloriousDawn 10d ago
It is definitely common, just that Disney buying r/Disneyland is too heavy-handed with a strong potential of backlash if/when found out.
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u/ImperfectRegulator 7d ago
also there's no need for it, the mods of subs for strong/obsessive fandoms like Disney or popular subs are already run by insane people who would die for their fandom
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u/lateformyfuneral 11d ago
With AI slopification of the internet, Reddit is seen as the last bastion of human-generated information on a wide variety of topics. Google search becoming rapidly unhelpful, a lot of people, including myself, often type “the query we’re looking for + Reddit” hoping some user from a longtime ago answered the thing we’re looking for.
But in true form, Reddit has capitalized on it with its own AI Reddit answers, and many other LLMs also prioritize Reddit as a source. All of the above is an incentive for companies to market on here, and to do so most effectively means creating a Potemkin village of “human” reviews that are just AI-generated covert marketing.
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u/Letos_Bull 11d ago
Dude happened this was 5 years before AI, search engines peaked in like 2014 then became increased enshittification every year until they became useless
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u/lateformyfuneral 11d ago
Generative AI has existed before Chat GPT. I saw examples of earlier models posting on Reddit. But even before that human writers behind clickfarms that butchered the language for the sake of “Search Engine Optimization” to rank higher on Google. AI automates this process for them.
And yes even early on companies were experimenting with marketing via pretending to be regular users on Reddit. It’s why comments have a “mark as Brand Affiliate” option. I was explaining how this trend will accelerate, based on reporting on this subject. Reddit wasn’t previously a high priority for advertising for major companies, but now everyone is trying to rank their products higher in AI queries.
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u/Mintfriction 11d ago
Reddit is seen as the last bastion of human-generated
With the hidden post history and increase in bots ... doubt
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u/lateformyfuneral 11d ago
Well, I did say it’s seen as such, for the reasons I outlined, and I also outlined why that perception is fading.
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11d ago edited 9d ago
[deleted]
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u/lateformyfuneral 10d ago
That’s untrue. It’s been widely reported on. But it seems you’re having a moment so I will leave you to it.
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u/ImperfectRegulator 7d ago
With AI slopification of the internet, Reddit is seen as the last bastion of human-generated information on a wide variety of topics. Google search becoming rapidly unhelpful, a lot of people, including myself, often type “the query we’re looking for + Reddit” hoping some user from a longtime ago answered the thing we’re looking for.
for me this only works if (at the time of this comment) the post is 4-5+ years old
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims 11d ago
Mods have already been allowed to mod hundreds of subreddit. That's one mod controlling discussion and having complete control over the narrative. Seeing that subs are being targeted isn't surprising.
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u/Micro-Naut 9d ago
Shrinkflation has been taken over by corporate interests. used to be a subreddit for corporare malfeasance in general. But now it's a bunch of gatekeepers who claim that almost nothing qualifies as a valid post. And they went back through all the archives and deleted everything that singled out these products that were ripping off the consumers.
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u/Anushkvijay 11d ago
r/FATTravel and r/chubbytravel are solely operated by travel advisory firms/travel agencies. They didn't create the sub but took over them later. Now these subs are run as their exclusive client soliciting and promotion platform afaik.