Ask HN: How can social media companies combat product astroturfing?

3 points

2 years ago

I was browsing the Whoop subreddit when I noticed a particularly suspicious chain of comments in a format similar to ones I've seen before, where a product with an oddly generic name is linked using Markdown and the comment seems vaguely human like, but the commenter's profile clearly indicates that all they comment about is the product. Here is an example of what I mean:

https://www.reddit.com/r/whoop/comments/1ebvrld/whos_actually_paying_60_for_bands/lew1age/

This comment seems pretty real when you look at it, but then this is the user's profile:

https://www.reddit.com/user/AtmosphereNational96

My question is this: how can social media companies possibly counter this level of astroturfing? What can the average consumer do to prepare themself against this propaganda war?

3 comments