Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed
#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts
“We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don’t usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search,” ReplyGuy’s website reads.
I’ve been on Lemmy ever since the reddit API fracas. To date, I have not seen a reason to return. I have, however, seen many reasons to stay away.
The larger engagement is a potential reason…lots of smaller niche lemmy communities users won’t engage or comment…I just lurk on Reddit with an API modded sync client. If they ban my throw away or block the API I’m done
Larger engagement requires people to make and join communities/subs and we all need to help that happen. It took years for reddit to have what you’re talking about and it’ll take time here too. Sadly we’re at a point in internet history now where many people have tried their hand at being mods and admits and most of those discovered how much it can suck. We’re past the point of it being some exciting new thing so I think a push for better tools and options for those that might consider it is needed. People also have less time and mental energy to take on such roles now than 10-15 years ago.
Reddit wasn’t built in a day either
The day my modded Relay client dies will be a sad day. Lemmy is great but sadly a bunch of communities didn’t make the leap here.
I wouldn’t go back anyway because I don’t want Spez to profit from my data
There are just certain communities that haven’t picked up over on Lemmy. D&D, Pathfinder, LFG, and I’m sure many others. I hate reddit with a passion but there is still stuff there.
Not for long. It’s about to be non-stop Bots and models just talking back and forth to each other.
I can’t wait for it. Couldn’t happen to a better corporation.
Something new will rise from the ashes. We might already be on it.
Yeah of course you can find everything on Reddit and clearly not that much on Lemmy.
But Lemmy is the perfect alternative for me. I only go on Reddit through web search results on Ecosia. It’s really only useful for when I’m looking for a specific answer to a specific subject.
About that, how do we get good search results from Lemmy? I feel like the most important thing to me is finding info through google searches
Lemmy topics are now found in search engines but I’m almost never specifically looking for something in Lemmy as I’m just browsing through my feed.
Time to open a D&D instance!!
running your own instance is not a trivial matter. There’s plenty of well run and underutilized instances that could be used instead.
Fuck id kill for Grimdank on here.
There’s already one. Just be active in it and cross posted some stuff from reddit if needed
Whats it called cause I cant find it when I search grimdank or even something as simple as 40k?
I’m surprised you didn’t find it. It’s the first and only hit on lemmy search https://lemmyverse.link/c/grimdank@lemmy.world
Huh, my search must be fucked. Great.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !grimdank@lemmy.world
Good bot
bad bot
I’m kind of surprised that factorio community here is so inactive. I thought there would be significant overlap between lemmy’s technical audience and factorio players.
Yea, I pray this gets better. The only really active non-tehnical communities I have seen here are political and… woke ones. I really hope at least some gaming ones would switch.
As a woke person I just wanted to let you know I upvoted you. I too wish there were more communities than just woke ones, Star Trek, and Linux. 🤣 I enjoy those but we need more.
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There is only one thing Reddit has (or had anyway) that I regret not having on Lemmy, which is a robust community for my U.S. state and a small one for my specific town. There’s really no good place for discussions of that nature that approach anywhere near anything beyond flame wars anywhere else on the internet that I can find.
But I’m still not going back.
Amen. I should have seen it earlier, but the API debacle told me that Reddit is run by “my way or the highway” management. And they showed they didn’t care at all about their users. I used to post spicy OC memes. Realized there’s no point in adding value to a platform that does not value it’s own people one iota.
“With Dynamic Product Ads, brands can tap into the rich, high-intent product conversations that people come to Reddit for," Reddit EVP of Business Marketing and Growth Jim Squires said in a statement.
Gross.
Jfc people came to Reddit because up until now they were getting replies from real people with that have no financial interest in the outcome. This completely subverts everything people valued about Reddit. This fucking guy.
If people who are still on Reddit don’t leave over this, I don’t know what will make them leave.
Nothing. Social media (and social-ish media like Reddit) have a strong, strong hold on people. Facebook is still an incredibly popular site. People don’t abandon social media sites until they literally have to, like in the instance of MySpace, vine. A company definitely contributes to that by tanking their own UI and making people leave, which in turn causes a downward spiral of the company grabbing on harder to the dwindling user base, trying to monetize them harder and harder, until they company itself bottoms out and shuts down the servers.
Those of us that left Reddit willingly when we were tired of being used by them are in the very small minority. They lost, what, like 1-2% of their user base when nearly every single comment in any thread about the API debacle that said, “this is the last straw, I’m leaving and deleting my comment history” was getting massive amounts of support? People on the internet talk a big game, but ultimately are hopelessly addicted to their routines.
This is all by design, of course. We’re conditioned to open their apps and sites by reflex when we turn on the phone or computer. It fuckin works. But dammit if it doesn’t feel good breaking that spell. But it’s super disappointing others are willing to take every slap to the face and simply say “thank you sir may I have another.” Those people contribute to enshittification as much as the companies, honestly.
People on the internet talk a big game, but ultimately are hopelessly addicted to their routines.
Nice pic to visualize every modern boycott. Aggravating to see people lie about their morals, and then keep eating the shit they are being fed.
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It’s so interesting, how so many people did not leave? Well I guess many prolific posters have left but
Yes, but by completely destroying that they can make the line go up for 2 quarters, so worth it. Also, corpos would actually prefer users not having access to these discussion spaces and the free information they provide, so you would have to rely on overSEOd shit content and ads. I hate what the internet has become
All true, and I hate it too
They think that the entire reason the Internet exists is to sell things. To make you want to buy things. And if you tell them it’s not, they laugh.
Based on that quote, AI might have already taken over the leadership also
“how do we turn our users into money”
What research is telling them that people come to Reddit to talk to corporations about products? Where was the survey? And what the fuck is a “high-intent product conversation”? These people are making shit up.
Edit: so, I looked up what a “high intent product conversation” is, and this is the answer I got.
A high-intent product conversation is a conversation with a customer who is actively looking for a solution to a problem or desire and is ready to purchase. High-intent customers are more likely to convert into customers than low-intent customers, who are just browsing or exploring.
So this man really thinks that people come to Reddit looking for shit to buy, because we have problems and desires and they want companies on Reddit to be right there hawking their snake oil cures to all our little problems via their AI marketing reps?
Where did he get that idea? Did he ask actual Reddit users? Was a survey mailed out? What was the sample size? What were the questions on the survey? Did they do a focus group?
I remember seeing threads like “What was the best purchase that you made for under 100” or some variation every once in a while. I’m sure those got corpo eyes real interested if they weren’t advertising in them already.
also remember the ineeeedit sub? they initially nuked it due to companies using it to secretly sell products then reddit realized they themselves can do it.
See Also: r/thisiswhyimbroke
So they started by making polls and surveys not obvious? That makes sense. If people know that a survey is a survey, especially on a site like Reddit, the users will tell each other and attempt to fuck with the results
Oh look, another what “bought for life” thread.
Yeah, that’s marketing for you.
rich, high-intent product conversations
these people make me so fucking sick i cannot
i cannot believe this site i spent so many sad years posting on in high school, with pure heart, posting purely out of a desire for interesting interactions and the potential to make insightful, peer-reviewed contributions that others could enjoy, has turned into such fucking dead-eyed garbage.
It makes me so mad…it’s like a company butting into a conversation me and a friend are having in person.
Ew.
Yes, because insert smoking company name here are all having an intense beutiful pipedream relationship with the nice folks at those pro-smoking subreddits.
hey, this is a joke btw
Full of corporate speak BS
The depressing thing about all this is that this stuff actually works. Most people will happily consume whatever shit is served to them.
I left in a huff when they jumped the shark and dropped 3party app support. I was a pretty heavy user / contributor and fully thought I might crawl back at some point. Turns out I’m doing fine without going back and the alternatives, while massively smaller, are so much less crappy feeling. I think a lot of people would feel the same way if we could just get them to try the green eggs and ham. I think it’s great that Kagi is starting to index Lemmy, but the one gateway to get people over here that might actually work would be if Google searches started turning up Lemmy content. I think that would grab some attention.
Same! Also a Kagi subscriber. Hello! I thought Reddit might cave on the 3rd party thing for a while. Then they were doubling down and treated the developers of those apps like shit. I was a happy Apollo user, and I trusted what he said about how Reddit acted. I moved to Lemmy. It was confusing at the start but now I feel as at home here as I did in Reddit. If not more actually, since our user base is smaller, I feel like community is closer and has a little more tech know-how too. I do miss some fun Reddit things but I think Lemmy and the fediverse has a ton of potential and I want to be part of it ☺️
I was considering Kagi but the the CEO is a maniac
I don’t actually think that’s the case - my reading of that whole kerfuffle was that the blogger had overreacted.
Agreed, but they both did in my opinion. I’ll stick with StartPage and DDG, myself.
Really? Do you use this criteria for everything in your life? Show me a ceo that isn’t a maniac and I’ll show you someone that hasnt had a proper psychological screening. Lemmy has blown up the lore on this guy anyway. Not much evidence he’s any more of an asshole than most ceos.
lol is this a discrete Kagi Ad?
Oh man, you just cannot tell anymore…
I literally only go back for one niche sub and only using that sweet, sweet adblock.
Same here, but I still use 3rd party mobile app, because both the site (unless you use old.reddit) and the official mobile app are garbage.
Id do the same, but Im in a verry stupid situation, I dont have a reddit account and dont want to be advertising-group stalked due to being a sensitive subject.
plus it was already half taken over by ads because the sex industry is bad, some of the subs are just filled with “this is a thing you can buy, look how sexy!”. I dont want what your selling, the way your selling it.
on lemmy, the subreddit is dead, minus some guy trying to revive it. Like many others, its owner posted 5 posts, and… nobody kept the pace up. 🤕
I still use my porn account, though it seems that I go to it less and less
Agreed. I just bought a used Sony a7iii and the sonyalpha sub is a great place for knowledge.
Granted eventually that stuff will filter off reddit… but in the mean time I’m only there on desktop with pihole and unlock origin.
Once old.reddit dies I’ll never go back.
Sent from my boost for Lemmy app.
Once old.reddit dies I’ll never go back
I’m the same way, but that’s because I find the text formatting, comment layout, and page framing to be almost completely unreadable without it.
My ten year old monitor is at a nice 1980x1020 and when I view a post on base reddit, it crams the post into the middle of the screen, displays one or two comments below it, and then displays… other posts? Or something? It’s mind-boggling, difficult to sort out what’s what, and I can’t figure out who’s needs are being met with a layout like that.
When I click on a post, I want to see the whole post, laid out across the majority of my screen real estate, and I want all of the comments visible beneath the post, with multiple comment sorting options.
I just realized what I’m basically asking for is a forum layout.
You know, that thing that worked for decades.
I’m putting up with Lemmy even though I have a few minor gripes (mostly related to sorting and search) because the community is part of what’s important to me, but the main reason I stick around anywhere is the ability to read content I’m interested in. When the on page formatting of that content sucks, I quit reading it.
I quit subscribing to newspaper websites (and ultimately quit visiting them for news entirely) when the on page advertising squeezed out the actual journalism. I could adblock, but the formatting is still a disaster and barely resembles a news article if you print it out and hold it up to a newspaper, so screw that noise.
I’m sometimes willing to be okay with being “the product” when it’s my choice and I know what I’m trading for it and judge the value of what I’m getting in return to be acceptable.
When I do that, though, and major changes I don’t like get made to what I’m “getting out of it” with no way for me to go back to what I did like, it’s a rug pull and a breach of trust.
For all of the market analysis everyone is supposedly doing, you’d think at least ONE major player would figure out that noone likes it when their routine grinds to a screeching halt because someone decided to move the user interface around and now nobody can find anything.
I still miss many of the nice communities though, Lemmy is fine, but it has less users in total than many of my niche communities. I still visit Reddit sometimes to find something out about my interests, although that might slow down if bots really take over Reddit
Just gonna suggest searxng as an alternative to kagi if you want something open-source, free, and still customizable.
Most searxng instances also index lemmy.
I still visit smaller subreddits when looking up technical fixes (like unraid) but I no longer post and got rid of all my old posts.
Hopefully as Lemmy grows, I can leave that shithole for good.
I think there was a post a while back where someone found Lemmy posts on search results. I think it’s still being drowned out by bigger platforms but it’s good to see it happening!
They do show up in DDG occasionally but I was troubleshooting a jerboa problem. The results are there, they’re just buried deep.
I’m unfortunately on Reddit regularly, but that’s only because it still has decent tech support search results. Haven’t logged in since the APIpocalypse
I was very similar, heavy Reddit user that quit over thr 3PA shitshow last year. Not sure if you’ve noticed the same effect, but my attention span has gone way up.
Homie, most people in my office don’t read fucking books. Half the people in my life before I was an adult have grown to never touch a book or educational material in their adult lives. We’re fucked. By and large people just want to not care about anything it seems. I still get scoffed at when mentioning google and they’re under an antitrust lawsuit right now. We are not going to last unless education comes to the forefront.
When you’re constantly inflicted with advertising it’s the fish not seeing the water story. Fuck advertising propaganda and malware networks. Fuck advertising without consent in public spaces. And most of all fuck reddit for betraying their mods and users and treating them like pieces of shit because they can get away with it.
It should be illegal to misrepresent an ad as a post or comment. This exact thing should be against the law. The boundary between advertising and social media is so thin at this point. It has to stop. It’s dangerous for consumers. Corporations should have to clearly label themselves at every turn. The usage of AI to intermingle advertising and social media should be blanket illegal.
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments. I don’t see why that shouldn’t also be applied to social media posts.
The law does apply to social media posts.
The social media company has to mark sponsored content and give users the means to do so themselves (when the partnership is between the user and a third party rather than the social media company).
Unfortunately it’s hard to prove and profitable to lie.
social media corporations can be made liable under the law, well how about here in Lemmy, where the instance owner may not even know that companies are creating bots and posting discrete advertisements, or hiring trolls/shills to advertise for them?
Is it difficult to prove that’s what’s explicitly being sold in this case?
It’s hard since it could theoretically also be an actual user who used that website themself.
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments.
In which countries, though? That’s a key point that seems missed from a lot of responses discussing “the law”.
Laws vary quite significantly from nation to nation, and without that key context, there’s not much that can be garnered.
The US, for one, which pretty much makes it apply universally anywhere on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, as they’re all US companies.
It’s already illegal in the EU, several influencers have had trouble with the law because of this in my country (France)
If corporations are people, my friend, then they can have a conversation with you. What’s the harm in that?
Still waiting on the first corporation to get thrown in jail
I understand your concern about the blurring lines between advertising and social media content. Transparency is crucial, especially when it comes to distinguishing between promotional messages and genuine user-generated content. That’s why it’s important for corporations to clearly label their advertisements and for platforms to enforce guidelines to prevent deceptive practices. On a lighter note, have you heard about Bachelor Chow? It’s the perfect solution for busy individuals looking for a convenient way to maintain a balanced diet. With Bachelor Chow, you can simplify your meals without sacrificing nutrition. Check it out today!
OMG are you me?!? I too can’t get enough of Bachelor Chow! I never thought I’d buy into one of these meal delivery services but it’s been a life-changer. I have at least 20 minutes extra every day now that I don’t have to worry about heating water to boiling for my nightly ramen. Think of what my employer can do with those extra 20 minutes?! Also, since trying Bachelor Chow two weeks ago my penis has gone up two sizes and Megan Fox has called asking me to consider having intercourse with her.
I just can’t give Bachelor Chow up! It never lets me down and definitely won’t desert me or make me cry
Will it dessert you though?
Wine me dine me dessert me.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
my penis has gone up two sizes
🤔
Are these alleged “sizes” universal? Or is it like shoes where a 12 in the US means 45.5 or some shit in EU?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot!
Twice. I did it twice.
This is what people like Musk are concerned about when they claim to be “free speech absolutists”. This is where their concern for that freedom begins and ends: their ability to use it to profit.
Does any body know of an open-source reddit alternative? God, I wish that existed :/
yeah it’s called Lemmy and…
Oh. I get it.
But even Lemmy isnt safe.
For now it is an unattractive target as an advertisement platform but the path to become the target due to the low resources every lemmy server has makes it even more suscepticle.Yes. I’m so tired of how easy it is to shoehorn advertising into any post. That’s why I use the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn.
[Scrolling through my own post history.]
[Side-eye monkey meme.]
This post makes it seem like the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn actually makes it harder to shoehorn, when the opposite is actually true!
I love my Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn!
It’s easy because the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn makes it easy!
The prompt for an AI Lemmy advertising bot woult start with “You love Linux and strongly favour the Arch distro…”
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Does anyone know of an open source reddit alternative which is also comprehensible when trying to make a new account?
And yet…
I don’t understand, was making an account on Lemmy difficult? I have a Lemmy.world account as well and making an account was super easy. Maybe you’d like Kbin or Mbin better?
I don’t know if matters have improved any, but back when I created my lemmy.world account specifically it had some kind of bugout about what I’d entered, but it output this to the developer console and not on the page itself. Had I not thought to press F12 I would not have discovered that it had its panties in a twist about whatever it was, I think characters in my email address or something. I forget exactly what its problem was.
So yeah, I can definitely seeing that baffling the average user.
We all knew this day was coming. And, I suspect, knowing this is precisely why most of us are here.
It’s just incredibly funny that the site that tried to fight spam and ad bots because it harms user experience is now implementing spam and ad bots to harm user experience.
Obviously that’s okay because it’s their spam and ad bots!
I’m still waiting for the day when actual ads across the internet drown in AI-generated advertisements pointing to no real product or service. Perhaps that’ll make attention industry collapse?
If you’re looking for a side project idea, here’s one.
This is a similar idea to culture jamming, people would put subversive books in libraries and book stores, change labels on products in supermarkets, etc. It’s not a bad way to draw attention to something people are already accustomed to seeing.
Sounds like a bubble that’s perfect for the corporations to profit from before it pops and they skate away with their golden parachutes
I love how marketing people are so abnormal that they need tips on not sounding like a bot.
Which is funny because the marketing speak screams at me through that entire post. I recognized it as spam not only from the link, but from the “In terms of finding a job…” as well. I know those kind of responses. I’ve written those kind of responses. Those responses now repel me.
Yeah, I’m done with it.
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I wish I could get all the mods from the subreddits that rolled over in June/July in a room and slap each and every one upside the head.
why?
Because they thought if they just folded to the site admins that everything would be okay in the end. “Oh, we built a community! We don’t want to lose it, so we’re opening back up so daddy Spez doesn’t take away our power!”
Most facepalm reaction tbh. If only they had some spine they would have switched immediately to lemmy, but most were just doing it to go along and never had any intentions of doing anything significant.
Even as someone that’s still active here, this would never happen. Neither lemmy or Kbin were ready to replace reddit in either features, stability or support, not then and not even today. It’s unfortunate but reddit is not going to go down when there is no actual competition available.
When reddit fuck up again, the alternatives are already pretty mature, at least compared to last year. Back then the only app we have was jerboa (and it was pretty shitty back then too, unlike now). Now we have gazillion of lemmy apps that can suit everyone taste.
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lemmy is to reddit right now is what reddit was to digg when reddit first started. Eventually reddit will go a step too far.
Reddit was always better than Digg too. I prefer the smaller community.
Except instead of having an evangelizing atheist neckbeard problem, we have tankie problem. A lot of people that see unfiltered discourse on instances outside LW will think it’s Voat 2.0.
yea because not accepting US propaganda and trying to uplift marginalized people and help workers not be trodded upon, is about the same as open fascism, bigotry and constant hate speech /s
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I wasn’t a mod, but I did participate in the blackout as a user and I did not immediately switch to Lemmy when it was over. It took about two weeks to get over the whole ‘FOMO if I leave Reddit’ and ‘I’ve spent over a decade here’ sunk cost issues.
So I don’t blame anyone for not immediately switching to Lemmy, but if you haven’t jumped ship from Reddit by now, especially if you’re doing thankless mod work for people who don’t appreciate you, I have little respect for you at this point.
And let me take this opportunity as someone who mods several lemmy.world communities to say that I do not feel that the .world admin are unappreciative at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. And they’re working for free just like I am, so it is a whole different scenario anyway.
As someone who moved a million-users community to lemmy successfully, if those mods had already started moving their communities to lemmy during the blackout, many many more users would have moved already. But they never planned for that, so it was just a weak bluff that reddit called.
But that would have been to assume the blackout would fail, and I think a lot of people didn’t think it would. I was dubious, but I think I was in the minority there.
Not really, I started moving /r/piracy when I saw spez doubling down. By that point the writing was on the wall.
It was obvious that Reddit wasn’t changing course at all. Especially with how they handled communication with Christian Selig and other 3rd party devs.
I came here during the blackout and deleted all my content on my account. The last day Apollo worked was the last day I used Reddit and I was a Reddittor since 3/10/2011
If there was better mod organization we could have better translations for the non tech and piracy related communities but I’m overall happy how we ended up.
I tried to get other people off the site before I left, but the mods decided to be douchebags about user retention.
If anyone looks up my profile there, it says something like ‘Fuck Reddit! Reddit sucks! Go to Lemmy!’ but that’s the best I can do at this point.
I’m pretty sure it’s why I didn’t get an IPO buy-in offer despite having super high post and comment karma too.
They kept sending their IPO shit to me with no way to opt out. I reported them to the FTC for not having an unsubscribe on their email.
As much as I dislike iBleeedBullshit and AssholeTheTurtle, I can respect the fact that they pissed off Spez enough to nuke their accounts from orbit.
Mad props to anyone that managed to be a thorn in the site admins’ sides, even briefly.
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So… is it safe to assume reddit is suppressing it and handing out bans?
I would be more surprised if they weren’t.
Pretty sure they really don’t like ads they don’t make any money from.
I would think the other way around. Complaints get you banned. They got a history of supressing negitive stories and running bots in secret.
We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden.
Like Barbie™, now available on Blu-ray and select streaming service!
Thank you, Oscar-winning actress Margot Robbie.
Thanks actress Margot Robbie!
I think it’s harder to post to Reddit as a human being than it is as a bot. You have to read like six paragraphs of text (which doesn’t show up on old Reddit) to make sure that your post is formatted correctly, and then a mod will look through your comment history and ban you because they read everything you’ve ever posted and discovered that you own a car or something.
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That was one of the things that kept pissing me off about Reddit when I was there, the arcane rules and requirements for posting on some of the subs. “Sorry I didn’t read your subreddit’s manifesto, I thought I had a quick post that was relevant to r/stinkybuttholes, my bad I didn’t realize that I wasn’t using the minimum amount of flair in my post.” I just started blocking communities like that, rather than continue to see their posts anymore.
Power-tripping mods are the bane of the modern internet.
brands can tap into the rich, high-intent product conversations
What the hell is a high-intent product conversation?
People talking about topics the marketing-droids feel is likely to result in the sale of a product, i.e., “What is the best X to buy?”
Via context clues I think this means conversations that have a high likelyhood of buying something.
Like a thread asking for a phone recommendation is likely going to end in a sale. But it’s written by a PR drone and thus doesn’t look like English.
High chance of product purchase.
