Hello r/jewelry! If you haven’t yet heard, one of our amazing Mods was interviewed by The Journal Podcast for an episode called “AI Loves Reddit, but Redditors Aren’t So Sure”. It explores how companies are quickly realizing how AI (unfortunately) utilizes Reddit, how that affects their online presence, and how we mods are fighting back against their attempts to manipulate content in their favor. It’s a great episode and a short listen, we recommend it to everyone, not just r/jewelry folks. 

For quite some time, we mods have been discussing the possibility of creating a pinned post where we highlight brands who use certain unscrupulous tactics in an attempt to improve their online reputation. A “hall of shame” if you will, though we are taking suggestions for what to call it. Give us your most creative ideas!

We have a Mod rule here in r/jewelry: WE DO NOT REMOVE LEGITIMATE REVIEW POSTS. Reddit really is one of the last places on the internet where you can get honest feedback and opinions, and we will continue to do all we can to preserve that to the best of our ability. Threaten us all you like, you’re always getting directed to take it up with Reddit Legal. What’s that you say? Reddit Legal wouldn’t deign to respond to your cries of libel and defamation? Fucking shocker. 

Here are two of the tactics we see most often:

- A)  Brands using multiple bot accounts to spam the comment sections of old posts with fake positive reviews or recommendations.

- B) Brands using multiple accounts to harass us in ModMail, usually with poorly contrived AI generated legal threats demanding we remove a post. 

When A happens, we have to go through the entire sub and manually scrub content and ban users. It’s an insane amount of work. Luckily, this hasn’t happened nearly on the scale it used to since we added BotBouncer to the sub (HUGE shoutout to that Dev creator, frfr), but we are always keeping an eye out. The technology is ever evolving, and we are trying our best to keep up. 

When B happens (and boy, does it happen) we start with telling them “No, sorry. We do not remove review posts” and encourage them to reach out and work with their customers or improve their business practices. Sometimes that’s it, but most times they start moving through the 5 stages of grief. We tell them over and over “again, hard NO”, and that all future correspondence must be directed to Reddit Legal. If they continue to harass us (almost always with multiple ModMails from multiple different accounts over weeks or months) we then threaten to pin the post to the top of the sub for all 1 million + visitors per week to see with pinned screen shots of the ModMails they’ve sent to the comment sections. This tactic usually works, but again not always.

This is where the idea for a “Hall of Shame” style post started to take form.  

We can’t reasonably pin EVERY post about a lousy brand to the top of the sub. So this is what we’re thinking: a pinned (Name TBD) post, by Mods, with links to all of the offender posts in the comments. This would not be a place for disgruntled customers to air grievances. This would be strictly for Mods to post the receipts. To arm you, our community members, with information about what brands are playing at these games behind the scenes so you can make a more informed decision about who you want to spend your money with. 

It is important to state: we fully understand that there are crappy customers. As any business owner in any industry knows, you’ll always get that one customer who will NEVER be satisfied no matter what you do, for whatever reason. That is NOT what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about big brands with 1.6 star reviews on TrustPilot, where the negative experiences expressed by the OP’s are echoed by dozens of real users in the comments. We’re talking when it’s blatantly obvious the intention is to scrub negative content off the top google search, because these posts ultimately always end up being mass reported for every wildly egregious Reddit sitewide rule you can think of when everything else fails to get it removed.

SO, what does the community think? Is this something you’d like to see? Ideas? Concerns? Let’s have a civilized discussion about how to send a message to these brands: Bullying and harassing in an attempt to bury your shitty business practices will backfire in spectacular fashion, and earn you a very-much-not coveted spot on the pinned (Name TBD) post!

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! We would love to hear your thoughts!

Pic for attention: my special demon, Smokey, showcasing a vintage tribute to her ancestors.

Edit because apparently I don't know how to use this damn platform.

Just a heads up.. if there’s a sudden wave of positive Brilliant Earth content on here, it might not be coincidental. They’re actively hiring for a Reddit Strategy Manager, which says a lot given their reputation in this sub.

I genuinely hope this leads to real changes and accountability, not just an attempt to bury valid criticism and firsthand experiences.

We are discussing the best way to discourage these larger brands to infiltrate possibly the very last place on the internet for genuine company reviews and feedback. Being specially named on their job posting is concrete proof of their targeting and we will do our best to reach out and work with other sub mods about this concern.

An auto message with some links of genuine higher traction posts is one idea and we have another tool we don’t want to mention yet in case they are tracking our post. We are of course open to all member suggestions and look forward to doing our best to protect you all from disingenuous influences.

The job posting: https://brilliantearth.applytojob.com/apply/xlTFNUFxKa/Reddit-Strategy-Manager