This Week in Reddit: Reddit Moderators Evolve

Welcome to this week’s edition of ReddVisible.

See what you missed from the last edition:

Alright, let’s jump right in to this week’s Reddit headlines….

This Week in Reddit

Here are some of the top stories about Reddit this week:

• Hitting the Front Page of a Top Subreddit: An example of the type of quality content that can play on Reddit.

• Big Media vs Influencers: A good - if contrarian - take on what the fall of “big media” can look like. But how does Reddit fit into this?

• The Future is Forums? Greg Isenberg is all in on forums (like Reddit).

• Why Reddit is the Internet’s Last Great Hope: This feature from Fast Company (paywall - sorry) hints at why Reddit is the last bastion of the open web.

Decentralized Reddit = No Easy Templates

I’m frequently asked questions like “what’s the best way to post on Reddit without coming off as promotional”.

I wish I had an easy answer for this.

Part of the magic - and frustration - of Reddit is that each community is governed differently. Some lightly. Some heavily. Some not at all.

This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature! Subreddits are like little laboratories for community governance.

One of the side effects is overzealous keyword warrior moderators. All that power can go to their heads.

Tyler raises a great point here. Nobody likes blatant “spam”, but self promotion is an incredibly subjective standard that maybe misses the larger point.

Reddit does need content and they do need creators to create higher QUALITY content. But since nobody is getting paid by Reddit in this equation, moderation teams will need to evolve their approach to remain relevant over the long run.

I’m increasingly seeing large, well-run subreddits strike a more nuanced middle ground.

Look at how the 3.5M r/recipes subreddit handles it:

They’ve probably realized that to attract the best recipes, images, and content, they do need to offer opportunities for contributors to benefit. In this case, they have a specific, but clearly enumerated, process for posting recipes AND adding links.

This both avoids the worst spam, while attracting the best content, and providing more interesting, relevant and valuable content for members.

I’ve seen other communities where you must add a “promotion” tag to your post. I’ve also seen “free link Friday’s” where you can link to your brand in a specific thread.

My bottom line: I’d much rather take Reddit’s decentralized, creative chaos… with the infrequent power hungry moderator, than Google or Facebook’s arbitrary centralized iron-fist. A true “free market” for communities, creators, and users.

Reddit Software & Tools

The Reddit ecosystem for tools, software, and related apps is particularly underdeveloped for the #3 platform in the world.

I’m tracking the new tools that pop on my radar here:

• NotifyGPT: Not specifically a Reddit tool, but Reddit is one of it’s strongest use cases for social listening.

• KWatch.io: An all source UGC social listening and monitoring platform, includes Reddit.

• GummySearch: The first dedicated Reddit intel suite I’ve seen, great for monitoring communities, tracking keywords, and doing more advanced keyword research.

• Karmalyzer: I’m an early user of this “Reddit health” app. Still early, but I love the concept of monitoring this.

• RedditInsights.ai: Found this one, a good way to group and approximate topic interest from Reddit. A super scraper.

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I’m “all in” on Reddit right now as the fastest way to acquire users and build community.

As such, my course is a fluid, evolving project. I’m adding new modules weekly!

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That’s it for this week!