Burger King is just the best
When I decided to check Reddit today, I was greeted with the banner you see above (in thumbnail version) and a post telling me how clever Burger King is. At the time of this writing (4:22pm CT), a TIL post regarding a Burger King promotion is ranked number 5 on Reddit's front page with 7075 up-votes. The “content” was posted approximately 6 hours ago and and was ranked #1 on the front page within 2 hours of being posted, with 6,500 up-votes. At one point it reached over 11,000 up-votes and remained in the #1 spot for approximately 4 hours.
The top 500 best comments are full of praise for the Whopper, Burger King or how funny the promotion is. The words “Free whopper” are mentioned in 3 of the top 5 comments, or their child comments. Whopper is mentioned 57 times if looking at the top 500 comments, and this isn't counting any comments below Reddit's threshold for hiding them. Additionally the comments are full of people relaying their fond memories of this promotion and how utterly hilarious it is. Keep in mind this promotion happened 8 years ago.
The top majority of the top comments are from users with an account age over a year. However, Reddit accounts can be bought/sold and a simple google search of “sell my reddit account” will confirm this. Additionally you can check out http://www.redditsecrets.com/buy-reddit-accounts. There are even individuals out there who have armies of bots, posting Reddit content with substantial Karma, that are aged over a year. (Like a fine wine?) An example of this is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1361227.0. These accounts will then be sold to marketing agencies to promote their products/services on the Reddit platform. This phenomena is not just exclusive to Reddit, it happens across all major social platforms.
The problem as I see it
The content, posted from an “organic” user, is clearly an ad for Burger King. The number of votes it received in the short amount of time, in addition to the sheer amount of time it stayed in the number one spot is quite telling. It's still on Reddit's front page. The first thing I saw when I logged into Reddit today was a big Ol' ad telling me how clever Burger King is, and there is no disclosure telling me it's an advertisement. The advert is presented as organic and so are the comments. The only mention that this may be an advertisement is buried under mountians of praise for this promotion. While there were definitely users who provided genuine comments in this post, they were encouraged to do so by the advertisers. These type of “organic” advertisements happen all over Reddit, everyday. If an ad is an ad, tell us. Don't try and hide it.
All hail Steemit
Steemit promotes good content from genuine users. It does not allow for adverts pushed onto it's users as genuine content, and any attempt from a user typically does not gain much traction here. I hope this site and community continues to grow and flourish. If the past few months have been any indicator, it will and I'm glad to be apart of it.
Link to Burger King website that the Reddit post references. Warning: Pop-ups and ads on the site, possibly malicious. http://www.sogoodblog.com/2009/01/07/whopper-sacrifice-ditch-10-friends-get-a-free-whopper/
*At the time of this writing the 2 links mention in the post were safe to go to, but I cannot vouch for them beyond that.
About the author: I graduated from the University of North Texas this year with a B.S. in Sociology and a Minor in Marketing, after a stint in the US Army. The minor is a result of realizing how disgusting marketing practices are and switching majors. So I know just enough to be pissed, but not enough to really do anything.