Today, Explained - The last real place on the internet

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Reddit is one of the last remaining websites where people are still talking to people. But brands and AI bots want in. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. The logo of the Reddit app can be seen on the display of a smartphone. Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've been talking about the proliferation of AI slop on the internet for a while. Remember the time Sean got fooled by Puffer Pope? Today explained, Sean Ramos for him. This past Saturday, against my better judgment, I was scrolling the feeds, liking the tweets, and then I saw something glorious. Cool Pope, Papa Francis, and an epic white puffer. He's got the cross dangling over the jacket. It was AI, of course.

There is a readout, Reddit. Real humans talking about literally everything. Information for humans by humans, jealously guarded from AI slop by humans. Except humans may be losing the battle for Reddit, the last real place on the internet. Ahead from Fox. Recommendations can't be amazing.

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Today Explained. Mia Sato writes about technology for the verge, including a recent piece about Reddit trying to fend off non-human users. It started when Mia noticed something on the platform. She is very into skin care

and to determine what to buy next. She often goes to Reddit to see what real people, not bots or influencers or marketers, think about a product. So the Skin Care Subreddit that I mentioned in my story are actually subredits that I often read because I want, you know, unfiltered or true opinions about products before I buy them.

How is this mask for dry acne-prone skin? How can I get rid of my dark circles? Would I be a good candidate for microneedling? And I go to Reddit for skincare recommendations quite a bit. And I suspected that if you are a skincare brand and you want people to be talking about your product, you will go to these subreddits. Because some of these subredits get like one and a half million viewers a week.

You know, they're doing crazy numbers and very, very, they have a very committed and active community. So I was like, if I were a brand and I wanted to market myself, I would probably post on Reddit. Huh. And I was curious how the moderators

of these skincare subreddits were handling that. Because also marketing firms had told me, like, yeah, all our clients, they really want to know how to crack Reddit. It's really hard. They want to figure out Reddit. And so I talked to a subreddit moderator who does one of the skincare subredits. And she gave me a ton of detail about the amount of spam that they were getting.

The unfortunate thing is it does mean I end up being more suspicious of smaller brands, even though I would love to see more small brands out in the world. And she sent me one example, which was a thread. of someone asking about a certain acne spray, like a spray that people use for acne treatment. And the person who posted it asked, like, magic molecule hypochloris acid spray. Is it really that good?

Recently, I have seen a lot of good reviews about this product. Any of you tried? Do you recommend? What's your take on this? And, you know, it got like dozens of answers. Some people said, Yes, it's one of my favorites. I spray it on after I cleanse my face they go in with my toner and serums.

You know, there said, No, I've used a range of brands, including magic molecule. Buy the cheaper brands. They all were the same. But one of the answers was from just a random account that said, I haven't personally tried magic molecule specifically, so I can't compare. Sorry.

But I have been using a similar hypochloric acid spray from Honeydew Labs, and I've honestly really liked it. And if you are reading that comment, you probably would think nothing of it. But what you don't see unless you click over to the profile and do some digging, is that this random account had actually, over the course of, you know, several days, maybe even months, and across different skincare subredits, had been recommending the same product over and over and over.

And using very, like, specific terminology saying, one thing I've noticed when comparing products is that Honeydew Labs uses, a 0.02% hypochloris acid concentration, and it's also accepted by the National Exema Association, which made me feel a bit more confident trying it on sensitive skin. It was very controlled messaging. And, you know, of course, the moderators were like, what normal person is going to go across different subreddits and keep pushing this product for no reason? And so that is sort of one of the ways that this new type of spam on Reddit takes shape. which is brands pretending to be normal users on Reddit.

And this for Reddit moderators is something what? I'm thinking they can't individually suss it out immediately or wouldn't be happening. Are they doing the search themselves to try to figure out, like, is everything on here real? How are they dealing with this? They have a bunch of tools. Like some of them are auto moderator tools where basically a bot will look at, at every submission that comes through and move some things to a filtered folder where moderators can look at. But one of the funniest things that several moderators actually told me was it keeps

shitless of companies that they think have spammed them in the past. So the skincare subreddit told me about this. A weight loss subreddit moderator who I interviewed also said this, they have a running list in the background where if they think you've spammed or astro-turfed, their community in the past, they keep all those brands names, and now they have, basically, if you mention that brand name, your posts will automatically get filtered out. Wow, okay. And, you know, the moderators are trying to send a message. Like, if you spam us, all of the posts that even are not your spam will get filtered out, and we will take a closer look at them. So it's really like, you know, they're pretty strict with it. Some, the moderators have

I spoke to, said that they've really seen an increase over the last six to eight months, maybe. I can give you a couple of the numbers that Reddit has released publicly because Reddit has said also that they know that this is a growing problem. So the company said that it removes 25,000 spammy posts and comments a day. They block something like 23 million spam views. And they also tackle sort of like spam upvote. So that's, you know, a way on Reddit sort of signal agreement. But Reddit knows that it is kind of a new era of spam. And they've said that they're using LLMs and other AI-powered moderation tools to try

to catch this stuff better. Let me ask you something. And maybe it comes down to what Reddit is and always has been. But I will go on Instagram. I will go on TikTok. And my feeling is, I don't spend a ton of. of time on these sites. But my sense is like half of it is just like crap that's trying to sell me something. It might not be real. It just all feels pretty garbagey to me. I feel like when you

wrote this piece, you were saying there are stakes here to Reddit being the thing that like must kind of stay pure, must stay away from this. What is it about Reddit that makes it important important that Reddit has so far managed to resist this. I think one part is the concept of like influencers doesn't really exist on Reddit in the same way that it exists elsewhere. Yeah. And if you are an influencer, there are very few places that you can post without getting in trouble.

Many, many subreddits have explicit rules saying you may not self-promote here and we will ban you if you do. That is a totally different environment than Instagram, where sort of the expectation is that someone is selling you something. These are the wide-leg stockings from Alfred Gaten. These things are freaking wide-leg. They have these nice big long pockets. I love these. You need to keep your face hydrated.

That's what keeps wrinkles away. And that is why I love this calcium bomb stick. I cannot live without it. It is a staple now. The other part that makes Reddit unique, I think, is that for better, for worse, and deserve it or not, Reddit in the minds of people using the internet has come to sort of be associated with real opinions or real people, which is funny because the platform is anonymous, you know. Most people are using just a random username, not their full name.

So it's kind of stumbled into this reputation of being filled with real helpful opinions and perspectives. And, you know, Reddit has deals with certain AI companies. where they allow LLMs to be trained on their, you know, just troves of Reddit data of real people having conversations. And so I think, you know, over the last few years, as Google Search feels like it's gotten worse and people have gone to places like Reddit to answer their questions,

like Reddit's stock literally has skyrocketed as being a place where you can find information where people aren't trying to sell you something all the time. Or are they, right? Like, that's kind of the part that I wanted to understand. Does Reddit actually have to become overrun with marketing, fake posts, people saying, oh, you should definitely buy this skin care because they're getting paid to say that, for this to be a big problem, or does it just have to get to the point where I am suspicious

that I'm not talking to an actual person on Reddit and I start doubting the platform itself? Yeah, I mean, I think for me personally in the course of reporting this story, I was like, maybe I shouldn't buy things based on a recommendation from Reddit, you know? Like, it's a real kind of a new type of problem and a new way of looking at a platform. As it relates to sort of AI search too, I was thinking about, you know, if these chatbots love to cite Reddit so much for their answers, can the AI systems detect when something is spam? can they detect when a comment is coming from a brand or the person who left that comment,

if you go to their account, they're always promoting that product. And I am not convinced that Google's Gemini or ChatGAPT can suss out when something is promotional and when it isn't because I've written about this before and I know that they can't. So, yeah, it's a strange thing where I think kind of the deception on one platform ends up trickling through other places as well as the Reddit thread gets cited by search features and LLMs. Have you changed your buying habits based on what you're seeing now on Reddit? I feel like I'm just way slower to buy things. I'm just like, let me keep this in my head, let me put it on my wish list, and do some research to see, you know, what other people,

what real people think, and also make sure that they have like a good return policy. That was the verge of Mia Sato. When we come back, AI. AI companies love Reddit, AI companies rely on Reddit. AI companies may destroy Reddit. We're going to explain. Support for the show comes from Chime, whether it's vacations, dinners, concerts, or whatever your preferred summer fun activity is.

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So Mia, in the first half of the show, we were talking about how Reddit has always felt like an important and valuable site platform because you are talking to a real human being. And there is something kind of magnificent about that, I got to say. It turns out it is not just me and you that feel this way. It is also the AI companies that recognize something magnificent is happening. What's it worth to them? Why do they care? You know, AI needs to know how people talk.

These poems are just patchworks of my life. In order to make it, right? Because the models are using vast troughs of information. of people writing and speaking and singing. It's your birthday, so I know you want to ride out. And acting. How could you say that? I thought you loved me!

And, you know, appearing on video. Sigma, are you Sigma? If you are, that's a good thing, because Sigma means the best. In order to create its outputs. So data of people disagreeing, of reasoning, of recommending things is incredibly, incredibly useful.

And think about a platform like Reddit, you can find conversations about just about anything. And between many, many different people. So that raw text is very valuable. The other thing is, this is maybe getting a little into the weeds, but when you search for something, you know, you see the sort of citational links appearing in like chat GPT and whatnot. Those LLMs need something to point back to. And often there is something on Reddit for them to point back to. to. And we know from data that they love to point back to this platform. It is incredibly helpful,

maybe perhaps just because of all the different types of content that is on Reddit. There is data that was compiled for The Verge, for the story that I worked on, that showed that in May of 2006, across several different LLM tools, so like ChachyBT and Gemini, and Google's AI mode and perplexity, the number one cited domain was Reddit. They were citing Reddit more than Wikipedia. They were citing it more than the New York Times. They were citing it more than sort of repositories of scholarly articles. And that tells you something, right?

Like, that is very, very valuable for when people ask these chatbots questions and want answers and want a link to somewhere to go look at it. Are AI companies actually paying Reddit for the information, like for the ability to look and stuck it all in? They do have licensing deals. They are paid for the data. What has been the response from Reddit users to learning that AI is training on their question about, you know, how to find a great eyelid cream? I think overall there is, at least from the moderators I've spoken to, there is a real feeling of their communities being invaded, especially with AI slop. They feel like there are more AI generated comments and posts on the communities, and they don't like it. Many of them, you know, have very strict rules around no AI content whatsoever.

We have had a flood of AI content being posted over the last few months on this sub. As of today, we have updated the subreddit rules with the following. No AI. We do not allow AI generated content or AI tools to be posted on this sub. Recommendations of AI, mentions of specific AI tools, and post primarily about AI will all be removed. I spoke to a moderator of a music subreddit. And he told me, like, yes, we have record labels secretly coming in and pretending to be users. But the biggest threat to our community is AI-generated slop that is coming in. So I think there is, in general, a feeling of, like, we don't want to read spam comments that were written by AI.

We want to read comments from real people. But, like, can we stop this flow of spam? Can we keep it a healthy, helpful community? You know, those are people who do these jobs mostly unpaid. They're volunteer moderators. So a lot is resting on their shoulders and their ability to keep things fresh and helpful. Okay, I understand AI companies sucking the data off of Reddit and like looking through it and being like, oh, when a person asks for advice on, you know, how to get to a marathon start line, this is how they're going to do it. This is how a person talks. But you're telling me that AI is also on Reddit, like, leaving messages itself. What is the point of that? I think a lot of them in the context of the piece I wrote is, like, AI marketing slop.

So at least the moderators kind of suspect that brands are deploying bot farms, basically, to promote, like, this random moisturizer or, you know, this weight loss app or whatever. It is about selling stuff. Often, yes. Reddit, interestingly, told me that 40% of the conversations on the platform are commercial in nature, meaning, what should I buy? Doing research about products, reviews about something I did buy. 40%. That is a huge amount for a place that is like presumably person-to-person discussion. A lot of the conversations that are happening is about what should I buy. So I found that to be incredibly fascinating and might explain some of the sort of marketing slop use cases that the subreddit moderators are seeing. Okay, so if AI is pointing to Reddit posts as like the definitive answers to search queries,

how do I get from X to Y in the shortest amount of time possible, that seems like it's even more incentive for anybody who has something to sell you to get their name on Reddit, to try to spam Reddit threads as much as possible in order for people to be, I don't know, reading about them or seeing people engage with them. Is that from the perspective of a marketer, is that right? Is that what's going on? A hundred percent. Absolutely. And part of it is like, can we go into these popular subreddits and like, you know, talk to users secretly or transparently? Another tactic that some brands have opted for is actually like spinning up their own subreddit that they run themselves. Huh?

No. Which is kind of... Which I think in a lot of people's mind sort of defeats the purpose of Reddit. You know, they want to hear from unbiased sources, not from the brand that you're trying to get an opinion on. But that is certainly happening. And, you know, some marketing firms are like recommending clients do that in order to maintain control of their message on Reddit. Okay, so the sad question at the end of the day becomes, Reddit is so awesome because it is full of real humans. Increasingly, brands, companies would like

to make it full of slop and advertisements. Do you think that all of this could ruin the thing that makes Reddit so useful to AI? Like, I'm imagining AI now training on other AI and marketing slop. Yeah. I know that's been a concern that, you know, researchers and journalists and stuff have put forward, like what happens when the AI is training on AI generated content. I think beyond that, though, the content doesn't have to be AI slop for it to be unhelpful. It can be written by a PR person somewhere, but be untrue. And that, I think, is also not valuable to people. To people, or to the tools that they use. I think what makes Reddit appealing is this idea that you get a bunch of people in a room

and you can ask them any specific question and someone could have an answer for you or a perspective. But when those people get replaced with tightly controlled, carefully edited, carefully worded, marketing copy, I would just read a press release. Why would I read Reddit to get that information, you know? And so I spoke with someone at a PR firm, and his perspective was like, in order to crack Reddit, you need to be really, really honest about what your brand can offer and what it can't, which sounds wonderful. I would love for that to happen.

Yeah. But I think that is wishful thinking, and that's not what is always going on. I think what ends up really hurting the platform and all of the sort of tools that are trained on it is that when users start to lose trust in what they're reading, I spoke with a moderator of an indie music subreddit on Reddit. And what they found was they noticed that indie record labels were secretly hiding among the community and only promoting their artists when people would ask like anyone have a music suggestion. And when you find something like that and when you tell the community that, people start to be a little on edge.

They start to feel like everything they read that, that is positive about something is secretly paid promotional content, is marketing, is astroturfed. And I think that is a really bad place to be as a data provider to AI companies, but also as a society generally. Like, I don't want to feel like everything I read is fake.

But I think a lot of people feel that way. Mia Sato writes about technology for The Verge. Hadimawagdi produced today's show and Jolie Myers edited. Patrick Boyden, David Tadashore engineered, and Gabriel Dunatow was on facts. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.