Reddit Blocks 23M Spam Views a Day: Why Astroturfing Reddit for GEO Keeps Getting Harder

This article is also available in Chinese: 中文版.

Many teams working on cross-border marketing and GEO (generative engine optimization) are asking the same question. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers cite Reddit all the time, so will a brand show up in those answers if it posts, comments and upvotes more on Reddit?

On July 6, 2026, Reddit published a set of anti-spam numbers. It now blocks about 23 million spam views per day before the spam reaches a person, catches about 25,000 new spammy posts and comments per day, and has revoked nearly 2 million inauthentic votes per day over the last three months. As a result, mass posting and fake user discussions are less and less likely to work on Reddit. Brands should first study the real discussions that already exist on Reddit, and then take part under a transparent identity.

Key points

• Reddit says its new automated systems reduced users’ exposure to spam by about 20% from January to March 2026, and that it revokes nearly 2 million inauthentic votes per day.
• Reddit’s defense has three layers: the platform’s automated systems and Safety team, moderators’ filtering tools, and every user’s votes. Accounts are checked as soon as they are created, and suspicious accounts must verify that a human is behind them.
• Both OpenAI and Google get Reddit content through the Reddit Data API. Peec AI analyzed 30 million sources cited by AI search engines and found Reddit was the most-cited domain.
• Mass posting, mass commenting, vote manipulation and posing as ordinary users each run into a specific Reddit defense. In the US market, posing as a customer to recommend your own product may also break the FTC’s rule on fake reviews.
• A safer approach is to research existing Reddit discussions first, feed users’ questions into your site content, FAQs, comparison pages, product pages and support material, and then answer questions under a public identity.

What numbers Reddit published

On July 6, 2026, Reddit published How We’re Keeping Reddit Real and Safe in the AI Era. The post says Reddit has been fighting bots for 21 years, and that in recent months it upgraded its automated systems to use AI to detect manipulated and spammy content. Since the new systems went live, Reddit reports the following:

• It blocks 23 million spam views per day before they reach a human user.
• It catches about 25,000 net new spammy posts and comments per day.
• Over the last three months, it has revoked nearly 2 million inauthentic votes per day.
• From January to March 2026, users’ exposure to spam fell by about 20% compared with the prior three months. Overall exposure to spam accounts fell by a further 10–15%.

A “spam view” is one instance of a user seeing a piece of spam. Reddit counts blocked views, which is a different number from the count of removed posts. Reddit also states its goal in the post: to decide whether content is harmful before it reaches the community, because its most effective work happens before anyone sees a post.

The same post includes numbers on hateful and violent content. Reddit now applies automated enforcement to all English text on the site, with more languages coming. The average time from detection to enforcement is under five seconds, enforcement actions are up more than 200%, users’ exposure to this content is down more than 40%, and false positives (legitimate content removed by mistake) are down more than 40%. These numbers matter less for brand marketing, but they show that Reddit’s automated systems can now make a decision about a piece of content within seconds.

For practitioners: Reddit's exact wording

The TLDR of the post: “By deploying advanced AI tools, we’ve reduced user exposure to spam by 20%, revoked nearly 2M fake votes daily, and slashed our enforcement time on hateful or violent content from hours to under five seconds.”

The list in the body:

• “Blocking 23 million spam views per day before they ever reach a human user.”
• “Catching ~25K net new spammy posts and comments a day.”
• “Reducing spam exposure for our users by ~20% from January to March 2026, relative to the prior three months and an additional 10–15% drop in overall spam account exposure.”
• “Revoking nearly 2M inauthentic votes per day over the last three months.”

Two caveats apply. First, the 20% is a quarter-over-quarter comparison against October to December 2025, not a year-over-year one. Second, Reddit published these numbers itself. They have not been audited by a third party, and the measurement method is not public.

How Reddit detects astroturfing

Reddit’s post describes three layers of defense: the platform, the community and the users. A fake account can be stopped at every step, from sign-up to posting to collecting upvotes.

Platform layer: checks start at sign-up

The first layer is Reddit’s admins and Safety team, who enforce sitewide policies with a combination of automated tooling and human review. Reddit says its Safety team is one of the company’s largest, with dozens of experts dedicated to preventing and removing violating content.

The platform layer does four things:

1. It looks at signals when an account is created, so that suspicious actors are stopped before they can post.
2. For accounts that do post, it uses large language models (LLMs) to catch subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype. Reddit says older systems used to miss these patterns.
3. It asks suspicious automated accounts to verify that they are human. Reddit announced this on March 25, 2026. 9to5Mac reported that the verification options include passkeys, which can be completed with Touch ID or Face ID. Verification does not apply to every user. It is triggered only by account-level signals such as unusually fast posting. Legitimate automated accounts must disclose that they are bots.
4. It revokes inauthentic votes, nearly 2 million per day.

“Coordinated behavior” means several accounts working together to create a false impression. For example, several accounts take turns praising the same product in one thread, or a group of accounts upvotes one comment within a short time. Each account looks normal on its own, but the pattern shows when you look at them together. Reddit uses LLMs to find that pattern.

Community layer: moderators’ filtering tools

The second layer is moderators. Every Reddit community (subreddit) has volunteer moderators who enforce community rules and platform rules, and who use Reddit’s AI-powered tools to detect low-quality contributors. Reddit names three tools:

• Reputation Filter catches posts and comments from likely spammers.
• Crowd Control restricts low-trust accounts in a community, for example new accounts or accounts that are rarely active there.
• Ban-Evasion Detection identifies banned users who come back on new accounts.

Many communities also have their own rules. For example, they limit how much self-promotion a user can post, ban links to the poster’s own site, or require a minimum account age before posting. A brand account that passes the platform layer can still have its posts removed or be banned by moderators for breaking community rules.

User layer: votes decide visibility

The third layer is every user. Anyone on Reddit can upvote or downvote content, and votes directly affect how visible the content becomes. Reddit says low-quality or manipulative content is quickly downvoted, which reduces its visibility. Users can also report content that looks harmful, spammy or inauthentic.

The three layers complement each other: the platform handles cheating at scale, the community layer enforces each community’s own rules, and users catch what the first two layers miss.

For practitioners: the two sitewide rules that matter for marketing

Rules 2 and 5 of the Reddit Rules apply directly to brand marketing:

• Rule 2: “Abide by community rules. Participate authentically in communities where you have a personal interest, and do not spam or engage in disruptive behaviors (including content manipulation) that interfere with Reddit communities.”
• Rule 5: “Be authentic. You don’t have to use your real name, but do not intentionally mislead others or impersonate an individual or entity in a deceptive manner.”

Mass posting counts as spam, vote manipulation counts as content manipulation, and employees posing as ordinary users to recommend a product can be treated as intentionally misleading others. On human verification, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman described passkeys this way: “They actually require a human presence, like a human has to touch, or do or look at something, so that actually just proves there’s a person there.”

Why Reddit became a key source for AI search

Reddit is now one of the most important sources for AI search, for two reasons. AI companies have signed data deals with Reddit, and Reddit ranks first in AI search citation data.

OpenAI and Google both get Reddit content through the Data API

On May 16, 2024, OpenAI and Reddit announced a partnership. According to OpenAI’s announcement, OpenAI gets access to the Reddit Data API, which provides real-time, structured and unique content from Reddit. OpenAI uses it so that ChatGPT and new products can better understand and show Reddit content, especially on recent topics. The deal has two other parts: Reddit builds new AI features for redditors and moderators on OpenAI’s models, and OpenAI becomes a Reddit advertising partner.

Earlier, on February 22, 2024, Reddit announced an expanded partnership with Google. Through the Reddit Data API, Google gets access to new and constantly updated public posts and comments on Reddit. Google can use it to display Reddit content across its products, improve its products and services, and train models more efficiently. Reddit added that the partnership does not change its Data API terms: content accessed through the API cannot be used for commercial purposes without Reddit’s approval.

So, in addition to ordinary web crawling, ChatGPT and Google have a dedicated data channel for Reddit content. When a Reddit discussion changes, both companies can get the update fairly quickly.

Reddit is the domain AI answers cite most

Search Engine Land reported on a study by Peec AI, an AI search monitoring tool. Peec AI published the original study on March 31, 2026. It analyzed 30 million sources directly cited by five platforms in the US: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews. The ten most-cited domains, in order, were Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Forbes, G2, Yelp, Facebook, Medium and Techradar.

Peec AI also found that Reddit ranked first or second on every one of the five platforms. The platforms do differ. Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews cite more social and review content such as Facebook and Yelp, ChatGPT cites more editorial sites such as Forbes and Techradar, and Perplexity cites G2 for B2B questions.

Platform	Top 5 cited sources
Google AI Mode	YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp
Google AI Overviews	YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium
Gemini	Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, Medium, PCMag / Forbes
Perplexity	Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, G2
ChatGPT	Wikipedia, Reddit, Forbes, Techradar, LinkedIn

It is therefore no surprise that marketers are focusing on Reddit. For GEO, Reddit’s value is its large volume of real user discussions: product experiences, complaints, comparisons, alternatives, buying advice and after-sales feedback. AI systems can easily treat this content as third-party context for understanding a brand, such as how users rate it, how it compares with competitors, and who it suits.

For practitioners: limits of this citation data

• The data covers the US only. Results may differ by country and language.
• It counts sources that were directly cited. That is not the same as the clicks those sources received, or their weight in shaping the answer.
• Peec AI sells an AI search monitoring tool and the study also promotes its product. The set of prompts it sampled is not public.
• Peec AI itself notes that industries differ a lot. In hotels, for example, Booking.com and Airbnb are often cited more than Reddit. Check the data for your own industry instead of applying the overall ranking.
• Peec AI also notes that both Google and ChatGPT have gone through periods of citing Reddit less, and this could happen again. Relying only on Reddit carries risk.

Why mass posting keeps getting harder

The traditional SEO playbook for Reddit is getting harder to run. That playbook includes mass posting, mass commenting, mass upvoting and fake user discussions. Reddit has said clearly that it checks for suspicious signals at account creation and uses LLMs to catch subtle coordinated behavior, artificial hype and manipulation.

The table below maps common tactics to the Reddit defenses they run into:

Tactic	Defense it runs into	Likely result
Registering new accounts in bulk to post	Signals at account creation; human verification; moderators’ Crowd Control on new accounts	Accounts restricted; posts hidden or collapsed
Several accounts echoing each other and praising one product in a thread	LLM detection of coordinated behavior and artificial hype	Content removed; accounts banned
Buying upvotes or bumping threads	Nearly 2 million inauthentic votes revoked per day	Votes voided; visibility drops back
Coming back on a new account after a ban	Moderators’ Ban-Evasion Detection	New account identified quickly
Hard-sell posts or link-only posts	Reputation Filter; community self-promotion rules; user downvotes	Filtered, removed or buried

Even if some content gets past these checks for a while, the result is unstable. Revoked votes, removed posts and banned accounts all wipe out the effort that went into them. Once a post is removed, users can no longer see it on Reddit, and AI systems that search Reddit in real time are unlikely to cite it again.

Brands selling into the US also face legal risk. On August 14, 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The rule bans creating, buying and spreading fake reviews, including AI-generated ones. It also bans reviews by company insiders that do not clearly disclose their connection to the business. Employees or agencies posing as ordinary customers on Reddit to recommend their own products may fall under these provisions, and the FTC can seek civil penalties against businesses that knowingly break the rule.

This has a direct lesson for cross-border brands and GEO: brands can no longer treat Reddit as a posting channel. Reddit works more like a public space where users decide whom to trust. A brand can influence it, but it cannot force the outcome.

For practitioners: the relevant FTC provisions

The rule is 16 CFR Part 465, the Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, approved by a 5–0 vote on August 14, 2024. Two provisions matter most for Reddit marketing:

• Fake or false reviews: the rule bans creating or spreading fake consumer reviews or testimonials, including ones attributed to people who do not exist or who have no real experience with the product. The FTC explicitly names AI-generated fake reviews as a target.
• Insider reviews: the rule bans reviews by officers and managers that do not disclose their connection to the business. A business can also be liable for undisclosed reviews by employees or agents that it asked for or encouraged, when it knew or should have known about the missing disclosure.

Whether the rule applies to a specific Reddit post depends on whether the content amounts to a review or endorsement of the product, and on the poster’s relationship with the company. This section only points to the risk. Ask a lawyer about your specific case.

A safer approach: listen first, then answer

The safer approach has four steps: research the discussions, break them into questions, feed those questions into your own pages, and then take part under a transparent identity. The order matters. A brand that has already answered users’ questions clearly on its own site has material to point to when it joins a Reddit discussion.

Step 1: Find existing discussions for each search scenario

Start by checking which Reddit discussions already exist for brand, competitor, review, alternative, vs, worth it and problem searches. You can add reddit or site:reddit.com to a Google search, or use Reddit’s own search.

Search scenario	Example query	What you learn
Brand	brandname reddit	Users’ overall impression of the brand and any recurring complaints
Competitor	competitor reddit	What users praise and criticize about competitors
Review	brandname review reddit	Real experiences, how long people used the product and in what situations
Alternative	competitor alternative reddit	Why users want to switch and what they switched to
Vs	brandname vs competitor reddit	Which factors users weigh most when comparing
Worth it	is brandname worth it reddit	Price objections and reasons for hesitating
Problem	brandname problem reddit	Quality issues, after-sales issues and common misunderstandings

Then ask the same questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, and note which Reddit threads the AI answers cite and how they describe your brand. Peec AI gives similar advice: find out which sources AI cites most in your own industry first, because the overall ranking may not apply to you.

Step 2: Turn the discussions into the questions users actually care about

As you read, record the exact wording, the thread URL, the upvote count and the date. Then group the comments by topic, for example sizing runs large, battery life, the return process, or the price gap with a particular competitor. Write each group up as one user question and note how often it comes up.

Highly upvoted comments show that many users agree with a view, and they sit near the top of the thread, where both readers and AI are more likely to see them. So deal with highly upvoted negative feedback first.

Step 3: Feed the questions into site content, FAQs, comparison pages, product pages and support material

Send each question to the page where it belongs:

• Site content: turn questions users keep asking about how to use or choose the product into guides.
• FAQs: give questions with a clear answer, such as returns, shipping and warranty, a short and complete answer each.
• Comparison pages: turn the factors users care about in vs and alternative threads into comparison tables. State clearly where your product is weaker than the competitor.
• Product pages: add the specs, sizing and use cases users often ask about to the product description.
• Support material: give the support team the most frequent complaints and how to handle each one, so everyone answers the same way.

After this, when an AI system reads a question on Reddit, it can also find a clear answer on the brand’s own site. When the information on both sides matches, AI describes the brand more accurately.

Step 4: Take part under a transparent identity

If a brand takes part in Reddit, it should use a transparent identity to answer questions, explain the product, acknowledge its limits and add useful information. It should not pose as an ordinary user and push links. In practice:

• Use an official brand account, or state “I work at [brand]” in employees’ profiles and replies.
• Read the community rules first to check whether brand participation and links are allowed.
• Answer specific questions, for example by explaining how a feature works or walking through the return process. Post a link only when it adds information.
• Acknowledge the product’s limits, for example “this model doesn’t suit larger sizes” or “we fixed this issue in the next batch.”
• When handling complaints, offer a concrete fix. Do not delete posts, flood the thread or argue from alt accounts.

Transparent participation works more slowly than mass posting. But answers left under a public identity are less likely to be removed by anti-spam systems, and they do not expose the brand to the risk of being caught astroturfing.

What this means for you

The focus of GEO is moving from manufacturing mentions to building trustworthy third-party context. AI systems cite Reddit because Reddit holds real user discussions. If a brand manufactures those discussions, Reddit’s anti-spam systems will remove some of them, users will downvote some of them, and the rest will make Reddit a less trustworthy source.

Reddit’s latest numbers are a reminder for everyone working on AI search optimization. Third-party sources of trust will matter more and more in the AI era, but the more important a platform becomes, the less suitable it is for cheap, mass-produced tactics that pollute it.

In practice, you can work through this checklist:

1. Every quarter, use the seven query types above to check Reddit discussions about your brand and your competitors.
2. Ask the same questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, and record which threads the AI answers cite.
3. List the frequent questions and highly upvoted negative feedback from those discussions, and assign them to site content, FAQs, comparison pages, product pages and support.
4. When the brand takes part in Reddit, use an official account or employee accounts that disclose who they work for, and follow community rules.
5. Stop registering accounts in bulk, mass posting, buying votes and posing as ordinary users. If you sell into the US, also consider the legal risk under the FTC rule.
6. Do not rely only on Reddit. YouTube, LinkedIn, review sites and industry forums are also near the top of AI citation sources.

Appendix: evidence list

Claim	Source	Date
23 million spam views blocked per day; about 25,000 net new spammy posts and comments caught per day	Reddit official post	2026-07-06
Nearly 2 million inauthentic votes revoked per day over the last three months	Same	2026-07-06
Spam exposure down about 20% in Jan–Mar 2026 versus the prior three months; spam account exposure down a further 10–15%	Same	2026-07-06
Signals checked at account creation; LLMs used to catch coordinated behavior and artificial hype	Same	2026-07-06
Three layers: platform, community (Reputation Filter, Crowd Control, Ban-Evasion Detection) and user votes	Same	2026-07-06
Hate and violence enforcement under five seconds; enforcement up 200%+; exposure and false positives each down 40%+	Same	2026-07-06
Suspicious accounts must verify they are human; passkeys are one option	9to5Mac report on Reddit’s announcement	2026-03-25
Reddit’s sitewide rules ban spam, content manipulation and deceptive impersonation	Reddit Rules 2 and 5	Current version
OpenAI gets real-time, structured Reddit content through the Data API for ChatGPT and new products	OpenAI announcement	2024-05-16
Google gets public Reddit posts and comments through the Data API to display content, improve products and train models	Reddit announcement	2024-02-22
Of 30 million AI-cited sources, Reddit was cited most and ranked first or second on all five platforms	Peec AI study, reported by Search Engine Land	2026-03-31
The FTC bans fake reviews, AI-generated fake reviews and undisclosed insider reviews	FTC press release; 16 CFR Part 465	2024-08-14

References

1. Reddit: How We’re Keeping Reddit Real and Safe in the AI Era
2. OpenAI: OpenAI and Reddit Partnership
3. Reddit: Expanding our Partnership with Google
4. Search Engine Land: AI search engines cite Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn most: Study
5. Peec AI: Top domains cited by AI search: Analysis based on 30M sources
6. 9to5Mac: Reddit will soon make ‘fishy’ accounts verify their humanity
7. Reddit: Reddit Rules
8. FTC: Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials