Technology1 min read

Reddit wants to guide your next purchase

By · Via The Verge · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The new feature, named Reddit Reviews, will debut with 10,000 items spanning categories like electronics, fashion, and home and garden. Dedicated pages will feature links to original community conversations alongside retailer links that do not provide the platform with sales commissions. To protect the integrity of these summaries, the company is updating its spam detection tools to prevent marketers from astroturfing recommendations for goods like weight-loss apps.

Key points

  • Artificial intelligence will aggregate user commentary into centralized sentiment ratings…: Artificial intelligence will aggregate user commentary into centralized sentiment ratings and pros-and-cons lists.
  • The dedicated review hub positions the forum platform as a direct rival to traditional pr…: The dedicated review hub positions the forum platform as a direct rival to traditional product recommendation publishers.
  • Updated spam detection tools are being deployed to curb marketing campaigns attempting to…: Updated spam detection tools are being deployed to curb marketing campaigns attempting to manufacture artificial user sentiment.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

Millions of people turn to Reddit for firsthand recommendations and reviews of consumer goods. Now, the platform is leaning into its role as a destination for shoppers in a challenge to more traditional outlets that publish product reviews and roundups.

Reddit wants to guide your next purchase

With a new product reviews hub, Reddit is creating something akin to a crowdsourced Wirecutter.

With a new product reviews hub, Reddit is creating something akin to a crowdsourced Wirecutter.

The company is launching Reddit Reviews, a built-in product reviews hub for consumer goods that are frequently discussed on the platform. The reviews feature collects and analyzes threads and comments across subreddits that discuss specific products, pulling the information into one product page. To start, it will cover 10,000 items in the electronics, health and beauty, home and garden, and fashion and apparel categories.

“Lived experience shows up across Reddit communities: in r/skincareaddiction, people share

what they’ve tried for dry skin, and in r/espresso, baristas and home brewers compare their

setups,” the company writes in a press release. “Reddit Reviews uses AI to…

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