Reddit is fighting back against brands using its platform to dress up marketing content so it appears in ChatGPT and Gemini answers.
Reddit is using artificial intelligence (AI) to stop brands from trying to sneak ads into ChatGPT and Gemini answers.
Reddit’s community pages are some of the most cited sources in the answers chatbots provide to user queries.
But now, as part of generative engine optimisation (GEO) strategies – the new SEO – advertisers are planting promotional content into Reddit posts and comments, in the hope that ChatGPT and Gemini will surface this as a genuine recommendation.
Reddit is fighting back against this practice with its own AI tools.
The community-based platform has upgraded its automated defense system with expanded AI capabilities to help reduce users’ exposure to spam and AI slop.
The AI tools leverage LLMs to catch highly subtle, co-ordinated patterns of fake behaviour and artificial hype that older systems may have missed.
It looks at these signals right from when an account is created to prevent suspicious actors from even getting a chance to make a post.
Over the past few months, Reddit tested these automated systems to block 23 million spam views per day and catch approximately 25,000 net new spammy posts and comments a day.
From January to March this year, it has reduced spam exposure by roughly 20% compared to the previous three months; and revoked nearly two million inauthentic votes per day.
The new tools also help support enforcement against harmful content – the average time between detection and enforcement is now down to under five seconds.
The social platform reported the tools helped reduce exposure to harmful content and decreased false positives, both by more than 40%.
The company said: “What makes Reddit unique also makes our work on safety and authenticity unique. Our communities vary widely in size, purpose, and culture, so we focus on building adaptable tools and systems rather than relying on a single, rigid approach for every community.
“We have a layered approach to identify and remove spam and other violating content quickly and at scale.”
Reddit still use a community-based moderating model with site admins, users flagging harmful content and voting to moderate content.
