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HN cites it as a first-hand admission from a founder of how Reddit seeded content with fake users, in threads on bootstrapping user-generated sites.
A short clip from Udacity's Web Development course in which Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman describes how Reddit grew early on. He explains seeding the site with content from fake accounts.
“Steve Huffman talks about this in his Udacity course on web development” (HN, 2014)
In this video Steve, co founder of Reddit, mentions some tips, steps they did, like own account creation and submitting links on the fly... [this video]
Reddit co-founder shares tips on seeding initial content
It's a complicated line sometimes to walk. Reddit for example faked their user base to get started, and have admitted such, here: [this video] This is a common approach to demonstrating a product early on when there's little to no traction. If users show up and it's a ghost town, they will leave.
Part of the Udemy course Huffman was offering he said this [1] And honestly, it doesn't bother me all that much. I see it like an engine needing a big spray of gasoline and a spark before it can run. Just because it didn't start with pistons running doesn't mean it's a bad engine. I see it more as faking it till they made it, and it worked. They were their own biggest fans. [1]: [this video]
Huffman describes seeding Reddit with fake accounts
>That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them. This statement appears thoroughly contradictory, unless you're using an unusual definition of either appeal or attract. IMHO most people are going to see those words having almost the same meaning in the context you used them In 2012, Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder, was honest enough to attribute Reddit's initial ability to attract new users to their fake user strategy first of all [1]. Even while they were doing that, he said, they still needed a few months to get the site self-sustaining so they could stop faking user engagement. In that talk, Steve Huffman never even mentions influencers. Paul Graham didn't write about Reddit until 3 or 4 months in, after they had retired the fake user posting, though I agree with you influencers and friends must have been a help [1] [this video]
Huffman attributes early growth to fake user strategy
true, but sounds incomplete! check this video's [this video] , it's called "Growing Reddit - Web Development" and in the description, they say "This video is part of an online course, Web Development. Check out the course here: [link] ." but can't find it in the Intro to backend course [link]
Video from Udacity web development course about growing Reddit
Reddit is a little different as their intention was to populate the platform with content in the early days [1], not to mislead investors with fake metrics. Mind you that Huffman and Ohanian did this manually, while founders today can use LLMs to fill their platforms with bots that can interact "naturally" with users. I wonder how many are already doing it. [1] [this video]
Founders explain manually populating Reddit early on
While this is absurdly conspiratorial, there is a grain of truth to it: early on in Reddit's history, the admins created fake accounts and posted on them to boost engagement[0]. More recently, after the blackout and user exodus, /r/de noticed a bunch of new German-language copies of popular English-language subs being created with a bunch of autotranslated comments[1]. So Reddit's administration is not above creating fake accounts and content to juice numbers. How much of Reddit's engagement is faked is up for debate - I suspect it's less than we think. However, it'd be really funny if, say, when Reddit IPOs, someone at /r/WSB catches onto this and triggers a bunch of people shorting the stock. [0] [this video] via [link] [1] [link]
Source for Reddit admins creating fake accounts early on
Pretty much zero content except for the video mashable did not make: [this video] (which is cut in the worst way possible, all pauses were removed and it is really obvious. Feels like hectic verbal hiccup.)
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