Calling them “free-form ads,” Reddit said the new advertisements are its most native format ever, designed to look and feel like community content shared by real people.

The ads, meant to mimic the site’s megathreads, will enable advertisers to utilize a variety of formats in one post, including images, videos, and text.

According to numbers from Reddit, free-form ads got 28% more clicks than all other types of ads on the site and saw a jump in community engagement.

The next time you see an interesting post in your Reddit feed, take a closer look - because it might just be a paid advertisement.

  • Ohi@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    You plant shit seeds, you get shit weeds.

    If it’s one thing I learned from the last BS they pulled during the protests last year, it’s that their actions will have little impact on reddit user behavior. People will complain and express outrage, but the vast majority of users will just sit back and take it like good little AI trainers.

    I for one will not be one of them. When they removed mods from communities that were in protest, that’s enough for me to stay clear going forward. As much as I miss the content, it warms my soul every time I think about the ad revenue they’re missing out on by my own personal decisions to not consume it.

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Honestly your mental health has almost certainly improved since leaving that place.

      Their algorithms are designed to pump engagement and outrage. They want you either scared or angry and it sucks.

      Lemmy has less content, but is also less addictive and less toxic. Yes it’s still social media, it still has shit bags but the numbers are far better.

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Lemmy has less content, but is also less addictive and less toxic. Yes it’s still social media, it still has shit bags but the numbers are far better.

        Although part of that could also just be due to the size of the place. Lemmy’s still absolutely tiny compared to Reddit, and like a lot of social media’s early days, it’ll likely only get worse as more people move in.

        Early Reddit would have been pretty cosy and non-toxic, that would only come in later.

    • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      Entirely agreed, though I wish there were more of a joint effort between Lemmy and Kbin communities to find novel ways of getting more redditors to switch over to the Fediverse. Wishful thinking perhaps, though it’d be nice to have more active communities around here.

      • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The biggest problem with lemmy is that we don’t have a good way to search for info.

        Usually I do shit like “reddit monitor recommandation”, and I’ll get some thread where I can read opinions.

        We can’t do they with lemmy 😐

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I never went back to /r/programming after they forced it open with new mods.

      I checked reddit every now and then after that, until I read a piece of tragic news that really shocked me and left me sad for days. Then I realized that reddit just stopped being a fun place - the whole point I started visiting it in the first place. Never went back, never looked back.