Brands have realized
that the website that's most often cited by ChatGPT
and Google's AI search is Reddit.
So they're manipulating Reddit by posing there
using sock puppet accounts.
What they do is they ask ChatGPT something super generic
like what does vitamin E do?
And then they see what ChatGPT returns.
They see the Reddit threads that it pulls up.
And they either start their own Reddit threads,
or they go into those threads
and they post comments that include links
and support of the brand that's trying to boost themselves.
The problem has gotten so bad
that the biohacking community on Reddit
has totally banned all discussion of peptides,
which are injectable amino acids,
because all of it is just manipulation by brands.
In a post announcing the ban of
a moderator of the biohacking subreddit said
quote as AI search engines increasingly pull answers from Reddit,
companies are using us for AEO.
On top of that,
there's been an explosion of peptide interest and AI usage
flooding the sub together.
This has put a serious pressure on content quality.
Here's what AEO looks like.
There's this company called Red Rover
that offers AEO and SEO for companies.
On its homepage it says
quote rank No. 1 on search and get cited by A I.
A I. Agents that mass publish content to help you rank on Google Chat,
G P T, and Reddit.
Quote an army of agents publishing blog content and Reddit post
that solves both SEO and AEO at scale.
The Reddit moderator that I talked to
said that he worries that this is the beginning of the dead internet.
And he said, quote,
there's this sadness I feel of this one place on the internet
that was so human
is sort of eroding and becoming bogged up with artificial
AI driven content. I think that's super depressing.