Reddit will let advertisers sponsor your post

Reddit needs to earn money, and one that it's planning to do that is by letting advertisers put their cash behind your posts. In an interview with AdAge, co-founder Steve Huffman explained how his website is going to attempt to be as big with brands as Facebook. The way it works will involve companies searching Reddit for pieces of what advertisers like to call "viral content." Let's say that you spend a weekend making a giant replica of a Taco Bell hot sauce packet, and the fast food chain spots your artwork. Taco Bell could then hand Reddit some cash for it to spread the post around different subreddits and increase its visibility. The user that made the original post needs to consent, of course, and won't get any financial compensation, but will get a lifetime's supply of Reddit Gold, worth $3.99 a month, for free.

If there's a problem with all of this, it's that Redditors, in the words of Huffman himself, "don't like being bullshitted." He goes on to say that his site often sees advertisers and brands getting called out for their tactics or communications that seem cynical. Then there's the fact that, if a Reddit thread gets very popular, there's a more than 70 percent chance that someone's going to mention Hitler. Because if there's one things that brands love more than anything else, it's being associated with that guy.