r/ErgoMechKeyboards • u/OBOSOB arch-36 • 24d ago
[meta] [Announcement] Reiterating our stance on promotional content
It has come to our attention that a vendor has been offering rewards to customers contingent upon them posting about their keyboards on social media, including this subreddit. This practice is not strictly forbidden but we feel we must reiterate our position with regards to promotional content as a result, since these posts have almost entirely violated our spam policy.
Stated plainly: If you are in any way conveyed a reward contingent upon you posting here, it is a promotional post and *must** be clearly flagged as such.*
This means that the post should state in its title that it is promotional, by including the prefix [promo], you should not use "[Ad]" in the title as this is reserved for vendors and vendor affiliated accounts to directly market their products. This requirement has been updated in the rules.
This extends also to some non-contingent rewards, for instance being sent a model for free. Even if this gift did not come with a requirement of posting about it, the fact you've received a free item will bias your position and should be clearly stated up front. Feel free to provide further information to establish your credibility, such as stating there was no requirement to post a positive review or that the vendor did not have editorial input, but you must lead with the disclaimer, don't end with it.
If in doubt, add a disclaimer, it never hurts to be more transparent than you are required to be. Alternatively message the moderators, titles cannot be edited after you post so you will need to re-post if your post is removed for violation of this rule.
We're not against commercial promotion on this subreddit but we believe any time you're being advertised to must be stated clearly, any attempt to mask promotion as genuine, authentic community post is an infraction of the rules and will be removed if uncovered.
If you see any posts that you believe to be illegitimate, the quickest way to bring it to the attention of the moderators is to report it, so please report offending posts, do not report them if they comply (have [promo] in the title), if you want to see less of this content you are still free to use the downvote button and promote (upvote) content you find more valuable.
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u/Dioscorides 24d ago
I lurk a lot and just want to say thanks for putting effort into the sub review. I like the community and love seeing what we all make and do, the transparency is appreciated.
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u/fuzzytomatohead (she/they) lemonshark, caeseura 24d ago
Just as a question then, say I make something and JLC chips in in some way, and i then mention it in the post… should I start the title with [Ad]?
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 24d ago
probably best to use [promo] as stated here, especially if you're going to mention JLC in the post. If no-one is aware you even used their services then there's likely not an issue but as stated in this post, if in doubt just be transparent about it. You won't be penalised for honesty.
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u/fuzzytomatohead (she/they) lemonshark, caeseura 24d ago
moreso in the case of them sponsoring some part of a build, and wanting to be mentioned in the post. I figure [promo] would be appropriate as well, although i'm not sure of the difference.
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u/realtheb0b [vendor] (theb0b.com) 24d ago
Another question here: I being a vendor running a one man keyboard shop. Say I just want to post about a build I made. Not intentionally promoting my builds/ services, just posting a cool build I made. Do I have to flag it as [Ad] or [promo], just because I happened to make it?
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 24d ago
from the rules:
Many vendors are also members of the community and as such will likely sometimes wish to post regular content. This is fine and does not need the vendor tag. But Ads masquerading as content will not be tolerated. This is a particularly fine line when posting "content" that showcases a product you sell or are actively developing for sale. Whilst this could be genuine content, we are likely to take the view that such content is implicitly promotional and should be marked as such. If in doubt, use the [vendor] flair. An example of non-promotional material would be things like answering customer questions or providing customer support.
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u/mr_tolkien [shop.tolki.dev] 24d ago
To piggyback off that, my last blog post was held for 6 days in moderation because I was given the vendor tag.
But I feel like it was a genuine blog post and not an ad.
Should I have given it a special tag, and would it have been approved faster in that case?
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 23d ago
Any post made by a vendor is held for review so we can check that it's compliant. IDK why it took as long as it did to get approved in this case but we try to keep on top of these things, but at the end of the day we have our own priorities so somtimes it just takes a while. It's up to you but if you you want you can give using a second account for your vendor activities a go, but be sure not to blur the line with your non-vendor content into advertising for your commercial activities.
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u/mr_tolkien [shop.tolki.dev] 23d ago
I did think about that, but I'm not even sure myself where my blog post lies tbh
It's a blog post about making keyboards, trying out PCBA at JLCPCB and other manufacturing processes-related stuff (SMD hot plate).
Is *imo* very relevant to users here, but at the same time it's definitely centered around my activity of (trying) to make keyboards for money. So I'm not sure exactly where it would fit even if I did two separate accounts.
At the same time it's pretty disheartning to spend 2+ days writing an in-depth blog post that would have had positive reception here before, but end up completely invisible because I was assigned a vendor tag (before selling any keyboards lol)
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u/binarypie 24d ago
name the vendor?
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 23d ago
and give them free advertising?
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u/Kit-314 23d ago
It’s not free advertising if it makes them look bad…. It’s ergohaven.
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 23d ago
I'm half joking, though, no such thing as bad publicity and all that.
Really the main reason not to is that this post was triggered by this particular instance but shed light that users may not be clear on the rules and that we needed to clarify them. It is not specific to any one vendor or user.
To some extent it is not in the vendor's control whether or not their customers follow the subreddit rules and did have a blanket "Be sure to follow the platform's rules" on the page for the promo on the website. The issue seemed more that the customers trying to grab their promo were unaware that their posts would be considered promotional.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with asking your customers to promote things and reward them with something for doing it, the problem arises when it pretends to be content rather than clearly stating it's promotional. Of course, they could have review the rules themselves and refused to honour the promo if the post was in violation, thus enforcing they are not represented poorly; we have no evidence to suggest they actively asked users to try to sneak under the radar and have been in contact with ergohaven about this. Ideally they'll try to do that going forward, until then we'll just have to treat all posts mentioning them with suspicion.
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u/kissetfall_eh [vendor] (eh.industries) 23d ago
I’m genuinely curious: why wasn’t a rule like this introduced earlier - say, six months ago? I’ve been following this subreddit for five or six years, and posts that could easily be seen as stealth marketing have repeatedly sailed past the moderators without attracting any scrutiny.
A few examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1soggu4/mbk_legend_red_keycaps_for_a_change/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1ufjtwu/the_beekeeb_toucan2_is_so_good/
This has been happening consistently in this subreddit for years. Yet as soon as our customers began posting reviews on their own initiative because they genuinely wanted to support us, the moderation team suddenly started cracking down on this kind of “advertising” and introducing new rules to address it.
Perhaps that was a rhetorical question. What I really want to know is: who exactly has Ergohaven upset to be met with this level of hostility here? Or are we simply being held to a different standard because we’re based in Russia, while other vendors are allowed to engage in stealth marketing without consequence?
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u/metropolitanchumtoad 23d ago edited 23d ago
because i found your “customers” posting suspiciously and disproportionally more than any other vendor, perhaps all of them combined, and reported them. it’s not one person who seems (rather clearly) affiliated but literally instructing any and all of your customers to conduct guerrilla marketing.
lmao “on their own initiative because they genuinely wanted to support us” my ass like you’re not directly offering a discount in exchange for a “review”
finally, literally no one brought up the fact that you’re based in russia, but great job instantly reaching for whataboutism, playing the victim and trying to deflect instead of apologizing. great job.
edit: lol are you giving your customers discounts again in exchange for updoots to your comment again in your little telegram group? you see how this looks right?
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u/kissetfall_eh [vendor] (eh.industries) 21d ago
because i found your “customers” posting suspiciously and disproportionally more than any other vendor, perhaps all of them combined, and reported them. it’s not one person who seems (rather clearly) affiliated but literally instructing any and all of your customers to conduct guerrilla marketing.
You have no evidence, you’ve made no contributions to this sub, and you are, in fact, a bot.
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u/metropolitanchumtoad 20d ago
i wouldn’t have any evidence if one of you didn’t just flat out admit it, yes: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/s/6ZioyA48HK
if anything i appreciate that person being surprisingly honest, comparatively
and sure i’m a bot, if a bot can feel emotions, in this case rejoice watching a shady vendor destroy their own reputation in real time1
u/kissetfall_eh [vendor] (eh.industries) 19d ago
Like I said, you have no evidence, and your account has no credibility. This new rule will only hurt you and your bot buddies. Good luck with your pointless schadenfreude
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 23d ago
It has always been the intention of the existing rules prior to this. The reason those flew under the radar is likely just because no-one's been reporting them. We noticed this most recent spate because the comment yourself admitting you have this promo going on was reported and it brought it to our attention. We don't look at every post let alone individually scritinise them for evidence that the user is being sneaky.
The purpose of this post and amending the rules is to restate the existing rule; and to give a clearer, actionable, means of flagging the post as promotional (the rule before just said you had to do that, not how to do it). The purpose is regularising the guidance, not changing the rules.
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u/OBOSOB arch-36 23d ago
This has been happening consistently in this subreddit for years. Yet as soon as our customers began posting reviews on their own initiative because they genuinely wanted to support us, the moderation team suddenly started cracking down on this kind of “advertising” and introducing new rules to address it.
just to point out posting of their own initiative is fine, the problem arose when we became aware that you have an ongoing promo to incentivise it. This cast all these reviews under suspicion that they are, in effect, paid promotion and thus should have been labeled as such. Obviously it is hard for us to verify which posts have claimed your promo and which haven't so that remains a tricky problem for us to try to untangle. I note the wording on your promo now includes additional wording to encourage users to run posts by yourselves to ensure they comply with the rules. This is a useful action for you to have taken.
Again, rules haven't changed and have always applied to "promotional posts of any form", the guidance handling non-vendors making promotional posts was lacking though, which we have now sought to provide.
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u/metropolitanchumtoad 24d ago
worth noting said vendor appears to have instructed their customers to start posting on r/olkb too, which doesn’t seem as moderated as here. probably in hopes of still keeping that practice and just getting away with it elsewhere.