Millions of people turn to Reddit for firsthand recommendations and reviews of consumer goods. Now, the platform is leaning into its role as a destination for shoppers in a challenge to more traditional outlets that publish product reviews and roundups.
The company is launching Reddit Reviews, a built-in product reviews hub for consumer goods that are frequently discussed on the platform. The reviews feature collects and analyzes threads and comments across subreddits that discuss specific products, pulling the information into one product page. To start, it will cover 10,000 items in the electronics, health and beauty, home and garden, and fashion and apparel categories.
“Lived experience shows up across Reddit communities: in r/skincareaddiction, people share
what they’ve tried for dry skin, and in r/espresso, baristas and home brewers compare their
setups,” the company writes in a press release. “Reddit Reviews uses AI to both organize these conversations where people describe their product experiences, and to surface the nuance, context, and connection to the original conversation.”
Product reviews pages include a list of comments where the item is discussed, pros and cons, and an overall sentiment rating (positive, mixed, negative, etc.). Conversations can be sorted by certain attributes — filtering for comments that discuss the noise cancellation feature of headphones, for example — allowing shoppers to drill down precisely what they’re looking for. Users can also view curated category-level pages to find similar items frequently reviewed on Reddit, filtering for price and other attributes. Some item pages will include links to retailers where items can be purchased. (Reddit says it won’t get a cut of sales from these links, and merchants can’t pay to be included in the reviews hub..)
Shopping and product research has become a core part of Reddit: The company told The Verge in August that 40 percent of conversations on the platform were commercial in nature. There are communities for general product categories like skincare and clothing, as well as more specialized subreddits like r/BuyItForLife, r/PetiteFashionAdvice, or r/NYCbitcheswithtaste, where users ask for recommendations for everything from therapists to work tote bags.
Reddit has been used for shopping purposes for years, but having the company formalize it through product pages raises the stakes. It puts pressure on outlets like Wirecutter that specialize in product recommendations as well as more general news outlets (including The Verge) that publish reviews. Reddit also positions itself as a human-driven check on AI, which some consumers use to research items they’re interested in.
As shoppers have flocked to Reddit for product recommendations, so too have marketers. Brands and agencies have recognized how valuable positive Reddit comments have become and are trying to covertly promote their products on popular subreddits, to mixed results. Moderators told The Verge they’ve discovered brands attempting to astroturf positive reviews and sentiment for everything from beauty products and weight-loss apps to musicians, hoping to be seen by consumers browsing the platform. Earlier this year, Reddit said it was evolving its spam detection tactics to crack down on “highly subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype.”