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Comment by meddlepal | Hacker News Reader

I basically always go to Reddit now for reviews... even if companies are astroturfing their as well, there's usually more honesty in the reviews than whatever is on the vendor's site.

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If you are going to Reddit then they are going to Reddit.

If they're going to Reddit, they'll have to put in a lot more effort than just using bots to post fake reviews.

For some subreddits like r/BuyItForLife, it's not about the number of upvotes. Some people just gravitates toward old fashion goods.

Yes but one Reddit comment has a lot more weight right now because of the ease of astroturfing, so it doesn’t need to be a Bot. Someone posts a Swiss Army knife and someone else might say, “I love my Swiss Army Knife that my grandfather left me. Oddly enough my aunt thought it was lost and bought me a knockoff from Amazon and it actually works better than my grandfather’s knife.”

Then someone replies saying “what was the brand?”

Then the person replies with a picture of the knife with the lettering in tatters saying “QUINIPO” or one of those Chinese brand names.

Boom

with Reddit tho you can look through a users post history to see how likely they are a bot.

I'm not saying its perfect by any stretch.

And there is a market for buying up old Reddit accounts for that. People cultivate karma on Reddit accounts posting about cats and memes and then sell them to brands looking to appear authentic.

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