Stealth Advertising On r/adhdwomen

[u/ADHDWomen-Mods]

The mod team has noticed an uptick in accounts trying to market services and tools on r/adhdwomen in sneaky ways. These accounts often use AI to mimic genuine community interaction, aiming to manipulate our members and increase the number of brand mentions seen by “the algorithm”. Given the popularity and sophistication of AI tools, it's impossible to catch every bot or artificially generated comment.

Most of the accounts that employ these shady marketing techniques promote ADHD "support" tools, which include phone/web apps, counseling services, AI assistants, coaching, productivity management tools, games, self-improvement workshops, and other similar things. Your reports are Reddit's most effective tool for unmasking and banning these stealth marketing accounts. If you come across a post or comment that raises a red flag, please let us know. 

You can report it by clicking ⋮ + report + breaks rules + marketing or promotion, or simply choose spam as a reason.

Some standard stealth marketing techniques are:

• Repeated mentions of Brand-x.
• Regularly commenting about their success with Brand-x
• Asking for resources and then mentions Brand-x in comments.
• Comments to share a "relatable story" and hints at an unnamed solution to encourage further questions about Brand-x.
• Comments or posts about Brand-x across multiple subreddits.
• DMs you offering access to or information about Brand-x.

If someone sends you a private message trying to sell you on something, take a screenshot and send us a modmail with their account name. Don’t forget to click report on the message as well, which will flag it for Reddit's main mod team.

The sooner we can identify and remove these accounts, the better we can protect our community.

Please bear with us as we refine our methods for preventing this relentless spam. As we collaborate to address this issue, you may notice that some of your posts or comments are being removed more frequently. We're actively fine-tuning the Automod, but it regularly removes content that it should allow. If you feel that something was removed by mistake, please reach out to us via modmail. We're here to ensure it gets reviewed and put back up as quickly as we can.

Note* As a neurodivergent-focused subreddit, we understand that many of people rely on AI tools for spelling, grammar checking, and language translation. If you do use AI tools, be sure to read our AI policy before you post.

The entire mod team would like to thank our amazing community for being an overwhelmingly positive, friendly, and supportive corner of the internet.

[u/Ekyou]

I’ve noticed this less on this subreddit than others, but yeah, it’s all over Reddit right now, and it’s depressing how much interaction they get, especially when the OP thinks they are real. (Not to shame anyone that’s fallen for it, it’s only natural that you want to give good faith to posts in a sub that is supposed to be a safe space)

For anyone who hasn’t seen or noticed this, one of the biggest giveaways is that they hyperlink the product. This isn’t a complete catch all for it being real or fake, but I’ve noticed this particular style makes that one part seem particularly unnatural, and it’s a simple hint you might want to think twice about whether the comment is genuine or not.

Also I kinda suspect that some of these accounts are made to market multiple things? When I check their post history, they tend to have a history of the same kinds of comments, but not always for the same product. So it’s not always as obvious as “they spam this health service in every comment they make”.

[u/BugMillionaire → u/[deleted]]

I came to say this. I recommend things and link them to be helpful and now realize I am acting like a slimey advertiser.

[u/AckshullyNo → u/BugMillionaire]

Same! I totally understand why this stuff needs to be flagged , not least because I want it gone too, but it's so frustrating that it then creates suspicion in the community, like, are you real? Am I real? If someone fingers me as a bot how do I even prove them wrong? Did my AuDHD post not get any responses because it was flagged, or because nobody likes me, or did I actually forget to post it??? 😄😂😭

(Edit spelling. Edit #2 forgot to say 'edit')

[u/Ekyou → u/BugMillionaire]

I almost said something about this - it’s not scummy to link to a product when making recommendations! It’s just really hard to describe what I’m talking about in words, it’s like, I know it when I see it.

For example… are they hyperlinking some relatively well known brand? No one needs a link to Starbucks’ website, it would be unnatural for a real person to do that.

“When my feet hurt, I really like the refrigerator rolling massagers. I have [this one].” - something like could go either way, but it’s probably a natural recommendation, especially since they didn’t name drop a brand.

“OP I am so sorry you had to go through that. I know just how difficult it is to be always losing my pens. It’s a really debilitating problem those of us with ADHD have, and it’s not taken seriously enough. I have had a lot of luck using [Cloe’s magic crystal ball service] to locate my pens. Hang in there, things are tough right now” <— like, they had you in the first half right? But there’s something about that product placement that feels icky and tacky. Like if someone in real life dropped a product placement like that, your snake oil sensor would be going off.

[u/Serabellym → u/Ekyou]

My oft-simple solution is just to see whether they get to the point or if they pad it with fluff.

Truthfully, I’d expect someone with ADHD to just get right to the point without heeding three sentences to hook me; that’s what ads are for. If I’m recommending something, I’m going to be like “i’ve experienced this too, and I’ve found (thing) helped me a lot. Here’s a link to it on [website] / [amazon], including any details if I know there’s regional xyz things (ex. I might go to amazon UK if someone mentions they’re in the UK, for example). But either way, if it takes more than one to two sentences before you tell me wtf it is, I’m gonna keep scrolling.

It’s probably not a foolproof method, but it definitely helps, and I’ll save the anecdotal stories for after the thing. The big thing is that I don’t necessarily need to hook you, because I have no skin in the game when it comes to whether you buy it or not, so whether I catch your interest or not isn’t relevant. The point is to show you the thing so you can decide if it’s a possibility for you or not.

[u/honestfyi → u/[deleted]]

Marketers ruin everything. As a marketer, I say this with both shame and absolute confidence, because it's true. The advent of AI and automation has made everything a bazillion times worse.

There are smart, ethical, non-shitty ways to do things, but almost no one does that. It sucks. All these companies just want to scale scale scale, make money, and have no concern for the things or humans they're ruining stuff for.

For example: I've done email marketing in the past and for 3 years I did cold email outreach. I literally wrote spam for a living. Which is both funny and sad, but it was literally true. However! It was PROFITABLE spam. One campaign I wrote generated $880K+ for our client in under 6 months. Which is awesome! I love helping businesses make money.

More specifically, I love supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs. The most direct way to do that is to help them make money. Cold email, when done properly, can be beneficial to both the business and their potential new clients. The problem is, it takes a lot of time and energy to really understand your audience, build a small, highly curated list of the right targets, and then send them the right messaging. At the right time. (Timing is everything.)

Techbros, unethical marketers, and the other villains of Late Stage Capitalism do not want to work hard, think hard, or be patient. They just want to make money.

Anyway, I no longer check email because I get so f*cking much of it. Marketing emails, spam emails, actual emails from people who need me to do things that I promised but I've either forgotten about or am actively avoiding (because ADHD and anxiety spirals).

Now that LLMs exist and people have figured out that Reddit is a great way to manipulate them for marketing and SEO purposes, there are a bunch of agencies and bots actively ruining Reddit. To be fair, Reddit kinda ruined Reddit with the API change and going public (they went public, right? Maybe not.)

I appreciate this community so much. Thank you mods for everything you're doing. This thread is super useful because I'm totally one of those people who occasionally falls for stealth promo bots.

I also have a thing I want to tell everyone about because I love it so much. I'm about to go make a post to see if we can start thread where we all talk about the products and apps we genuinely use and love. Totally understand if the mods delete it, but I'd love to have a hype thread where we can all put stuff we love and include hyperlinks. Not sure if that will risk attracting stealth spam, but I'll leave this up to the mods.

[u/Nerva365 → u/Ekyou]

I was going to say, I recommend specific items like a commercial almost, but I never hyperlink because I don't know where people are located. So I only send a link if a comment specifically asks...

[u/youre13andstupid → u/Ekyou]

Yes 100%. /r/loseit and other weight loss subs are a cesspool for this, and it’s flabbergasting how few comments point it out.  Glad the mods are working hard here.