⚫ When Competitors Become Mods

When Competitors Control Your Subreddits

Codesmith, a coding bootcamp with 70 employees, lost 80% of its revenue after a competitor became a Reddit moderator. According to legal filings reviewed by The Verge, Michael Novati—co-founder of rival bootcamp Formation—controlled r/codingbootcamp while systematically posting negative content about Codesmith, deleting positive mentions, and banning defenders for "astroturfing."

Reddit threads now dominate Google results for brand searches. When prospects googled "Codesmith," the #2 organic result was a Reddit thread titled "Codesmith is an enormous waste of money" from the subreddit Novati moderated. ChatGPT cited the same threads, amplifying the narrative across every information channel.

Other bootcamp founders publicly defended Codesmith as legitimate. One competitor noted "plenty of other schools that are questionable" weren't getting scrutinized. Another said they "never minded losing to Codesmith" because students got real outcomes. Competitive warfare using Reddit's governance gaps, not vigilante justice cleaning up a bad actor.

Reddit's moderator system has zero transparency around conflicts of interest. No disclosure requirements. No accountability beyond Reddit Admins intervening in extreme cases—which happens rarely enough to be effectively never.

Reddit has 100,000+ active moderators doing work that would require thousands of paid employees. Implementing conflict-of-interest oversight means either paying moderators—impossible at Reddit's scale—or enforcing rules on volunteers, which triggers mass resignations that break the platform. Reddit picked option 3: handle conflicts only when they become legal liabilities. That's not negligence. It's the only economically viable option.

So competitors can capture moderator positions in your category's key subreddits with no real recourse. You can't work around this with better content strategy. This is structural vulnerability.

Before investing resources in Reddit, run this 20-minute audit: Check who moderates your category's key subreddits. Google their usernames, review post history for competitor affiliations. Search "[your brand] site:reddit.com/r/[subreddit]" to see what's ranking—that's what prospects actually see. Search within those subreddits for your brand name to check if positive mentions disappear or negative threads dominate. Multiple moderators with industry ties should raise immediate red flags.

One client discovered their main competitor moderated 3 of their 5 critical subreddits before launching a $50K campaign. That 20-minute audit probably saved them from a smaller version of Codesmith's fate.

If you discover hostile moderation, the honest calculation: if competitors control 3 of your 5 key subreddits, you're not competing on equal footing.

You have three realistic options. Diversify across 5-10 smaller communities where competitors haven't established control—but this spreads 100 hours across 10 communities instead of 3, diluting impact. Create your own branded subreddit, which needs 18-24 months before ROI appears. Or accept that Reddit organic isn't viable and redirect resources to Reddit ads or other channels.

The decision depends on your competitive position. Market leaders with budget should build branded subreddits—you're creating a moat competitors can't replicate. Challengers with limited resources should diversify across smaller communities, even if ROI is lower. If competitors already locked down your top subreddits, redirect resources elsewhere.

I'm still trying to figure out whether brands that discover competitor moderators should go public with it. Transparency could pressure Reddit to act. But it might just alert other competitors to the strategy. I haven't seen enough cases to know which approach works.

What I'm watching: Whether Reddit implements any meaningful moderator oversight as these cases accumulate. Right now they're treating this as one-off legal incidents rather than systemic risk.

I'm skeptical they'll act proactively—nothing in Reddit's history suggests they address governance issues before they become PR disasters. My bet? First successful lawsuit by mid-2026 forces some performative disclosure system.

Though I could be wrong about the timeline—Reddit's legal team might deflect longer than I'm giving them credit for. And even if lawsuits succeed, fixing the moderator system might be economically impossible without destroying the platform's cost structure. Maybe I'm overstating the risk, but Codesmith probably thought they were too.

🔍 This Week in 📰 Reddit

💰 Reddit Ad Costs Surge 1000% in 10 Days

Multiple advertisers report estimated CPC jumping from $0.12-$0.16 to $0.80-$1.60 within 10 days for identical campaign setups, with Reddit confirming the spike is real but not explaining why. If you're running Reddit ads, your Q4 budgets just got a lot tighter—and your Q3 performance metrics are now meaningless for forecasting.

r/RedditforBusiness

📊 Success Metrics That Actually Matter on Reddit

Marketing strategist outlines Reddit-specific KPIs beyond vanity metrics: upvote rate signals resonance better than raw count, comment quality shows engagement depth better than volume, post longevity indicates staying power better than initial spike. A post with 20 upvotes and 15 substantive comments often drives more business impact than one with 500 upvotes and zero discussion.

LinkedIn

🎯 Reddit's SEO Dominance Is Now Quantified

Semrush data shows Reddit ranks for 264 million keywords in U.S. search results, with 32% showing commercial or transactional intent. Any Reddit contribution—positive or negative—is now potentially visible to every prospect searching Google for product recommendations.

Semrush

The Citation Collapse That Exposed Real Strategists

Reddit marketing communities just watched citation rates crash from 29% to 5% in three weeks. Panic followed.

The ones freaking out? Brands chasing ChatGPT mentions—optimizing posts for AI citation instead of real community impact. The calm ones? Teams who’ve been building trust and relationships on Reddit for 6–12 months. They barely noticed.

The drop wasn’t about quality. Google simply disabled a “num=100” parameter that powered citation trackers. A technical blip wiped out an entire cottage industry overnight.

Here’s the difference:

• Tacticians optimized for dashboards (“47 citations this month”).

• Strategists optimized for authority (“trusted voice in the category”).

The first group played a brittle game built on reverse-engineering LLM behavior. The second built a moat that compounds.

If your Reddit strategy depends on being cited by ChatGPT, you’re building on sand. Real ROI comes from:

1. Investing 10 hours/week building genuine community presence.

2. Owning a branded subreddit or consistent comment identity.

3. Understanding that 2024 Reddit posts shape 2026 AI training data.

Ignore the panic. Citation collapse isn’t a platform shift—it’s a filter. The tacticians are gone. The strategists just got a head start.

🎮 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:

• GummySearch (my favoriate tool right now): The first dedicated Reddit intel suite I’ve seen, great for monitoring communities, tracking change detection (fast-growing communities at different tiers), tracking keywords, and doing more advanced keyword research.

• 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.

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

• Pulse: This ones new this week and I haven’t tested it too much, but could be an interesting. More positioned to brands marketing on Reddit (connects via Reddit API).

• Subreddit Traffic Tracker: This is an interesting new find that helps optimize post and engagement timing based on when specific communities are most active on Reddit.

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Need help engaging as a brand on Reddit?

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That’s it for this week!