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Amazing to see the machine politics online influence operations glom onto this thread like nobody’s business.

It’s not just on Reddit, but Reddit seems to be coming up a lot recently, and is worth revisiting considering the implications.

Companies have been spamming Reddit with inauthentic content to push peptides in order to manipulate results by AI chatbots that scrape the content.

Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search Jason Koebler · Jun 3, 2026 at 10:29 AM Peptide companies have been doing AI-engine optimization by spamming the biohackers subreddit to manipulate ChatGPT and Google. “As AI search engines increasingly pull answers from Reddit, companies are using us for AEO. On top of that, there’s been an explosion of peptide interest and AI usage flooding the sub. Together, this has put serious pressure on content quality,” a post by the moderators read. AEO is AI-engine optimization, and it is an evolution of search engine optimization where brands and marketing companies attempt to create content that they hope will be scraped by large language models. Manipulating Reddit with bots, sock puppet accounts, and human accounts that are paid to promote brands has become a core strategy of firms that do AEO, because Reddit has become one of most-often cited sources by popular AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search. For example, a company called RedRover offers AEO and SEO for companies; on its home page, it says “rank #1 on Search and get cited by AI: AI agents that mass publish content to help you rank on Google, ChatGPT, and Reddit—driving traffic to your site from every corner of the internet.” “An army of agents publishing blog content & reddit posts that solves both SEO & AEO at scale,” RedRover advertises.

Of course this isn’t the first time a medical product has been the subject of some kind of meme stock scheme, like was tried with the Novavax vaccine, and many wellness products are promoted using dubious marketing and tricky regulatory dodging, like any number of nasal sprays marketed without good evidence for covid, are deceptively pushed on social media. And cryptocurrency sometimes games the information space with buzzwords. All these things get promoted on Reddit and the other platforms. And it’s common for forum moderators to be pushed to the point where they just have to ban talk about something altogether because inauthentic advertising is pushing in, often under the guise of “personal testimonials”. But it seems like the AI Engine Optimization really is trying to scale beyond the already ridiculous gaming of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and with error-prone AI this can’t be anything but more messy.

Tinuiti is reporting that Perplexity AI is citing Reddit less in recent times. And that Gemini is citing Youtubes more. Though I don’t even understand who really wants regurgitated Reddit posts or Youtube video content anyway.

Tinuiti on Linkedin May 2026 “The Al search landscape is shifting fast. In the latest edition of Tinuiti’s Q2 2026 Al Citation Trends Report, Andy Taylor breaks down the massive shakeups happening across the Al landscape over the last quarter. Key takeaways you need to know: Perplexity pulls back on social: Social media citation share has dropped, with Reddit seeing a massive decline from 25% in February down to just 7% in April. Google doubles down on YouTube: Google-owned Al tools are doing the opposite, with YouTube citation share more than quadrupling for Al Mode and doubling for Al Overviews. Amazon dominates e-commerce citations: Amazon’s footprint is growing steadily, jumping to a massive 19% share on Microsoft Copilot this April. What do these shifts mean for your brand’s visibility in Al-generated search results?”

Side note: Tinuiti, a company that specializes in PR and online marketing operations, was founded by a guy who’s now a top official appointed by Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania government and was found in RTK emails acting like a concierge for AWS data center plans.

I am sometimes sent links to various things by other people, and sometimes that’s on reddit, and I checked out this post, which was clearly labeled “vent”, and it was someone who is avoiding covid and described feeling let down by a friend who basically overstated the level of caution they use, and then they were found being less than cautious when it comes to covid and the myriad of contagious stuff that’s going around perpetually year round anymore. Considering this was in a subreddit dedicated ostensibly to being in the pro-precaution camp, it seemed notable to me that the most upvoted replies were people chastising the OP, telling them it’s a you problem, giving unsolicited and peculiar self-help advice on not demanding so much from friends, (like not making you sick?). The post certainly didn’t give the impression they were demanding much of anything, but every post where the OP tried to clarify and defend themself against these mischaracterizing replies, that were basically accusations of overreacting or something, the OP’s defending and clarifying remarks had been downvoted into the negatives so much they almost always hidden. Everyone offering the OP any kind of kind sympathy, or saying hey that stinks, or just hey what a shame that everyone’s really at risk… All of those were also being downvoted, and downvoted enough to offset the upvotes of agreement, to the point they were mostly located down the bottom of the thread, and sometimes hidden! I don’t think this is just happenstance or authentic interaction on the internet.

Peptides are the investment speculative rage right now, especially with a snake oil friendly administration in charge of regulation in the U.S.

Marketplace Tech May 26, 2026 Startups are betting on a legalized peptide market Zara Stone, tech culture reporter at The San Francisco Standard, explains how startups are gearing up for potential FDA approval of compounded peptide drugs this summer.

There are serious risks of side-effects with peptides, including potentially speeding up cancer. Buyer beware.

The Conversation - Peptides: performance‑boosting, anti‑ageing drugs or dangerous snake oil? Published: August 1, 2025 9:28am EDT Once confined to elite labs and obscure bodybuilding forums, these amino acid chains are now flooding wellness spaces, social media feeds and online marketplaces. Although they are marketed as “next-generation biohacks” and “research chemicals”, many peptides are not approved for human use and lack basic clinical testing. Still, their popularity is growing – fuelled by testimonials, influencer hype and the seductive promise of turning back time. But beneath the surface of glossy marketing and fitness fantasies lies a far more sobering truth: many of these substances operate in a medical grey zone, with unknown long-term risks, questionable manufacturing standards, and in some cases, life-threatening side-effects.

Anyone considering this the invisible hand of a free market is confused. It’s the hiding in plain sight hand on the scale, paid for by big corporations and billionaire tycoons. The wellness industrial complex has been larger than big pharma for years now. Some predict the health and wellness industry will be worth over $11 trillion by 2034. The fossil fuel industry is predicted to be over $11 trillion by 2032. The AI industry is predicted to be $4.8 trillion by 2033. But Ed Zitron certainly doesn’t believe the AI industry will be worth that, and I agree, it sure looks like a bubble. And it’s not even worth saying how much crypto thinks the crypto industry is worth. All these industries pour loads into marketing, PR, advertising, and influence operations. Fossil fuel has been caught doing deceptive community infiltration operations, and private spies more openly known for military contracts, have been doing clandestine work for corporations for years. A lot of influence operations use forums, such as one crypto company that even detailed in their S-1 SEC form that their business model was based on training up influencers by creating communities on discord.

On the local reddit for the city where I live, if anyone criticizes any of the retail businesses in the town, or if anyone posts anything in support of unions, or gives any details about labor issues or poor working conditions in any of the businesses in the city, their posts so often are downvoted into the basement and hidden. It’s uncanny and happens pretty quickly. Any posts on the side of workers, or any posts that do anything but praise local businesses just happen to get multiple downvotes within a few minutes? Does that seem authentic or fake?

I’m not really saying anything new here, but the truth is that for a lot of people this will be news, because a lot of people just don’t know how this stuff works. And it’s frankly a pity anyone should have to, but it’s a matter of safety at this point. I don’t think anyone wants astroturfed PR and online influence campaigns to be running our communities, our society, do we?

TNW - Astroturfing Reddit is the future of political campaigning - July 11, 2017 - 1:23 pm Matthew Hughes “Right here is where things get a little sketchy, as Hack PR decided to look into gaming Reddit to bring some momentum to their campaign. “I knew that if I could get one of my links to the top of Reddit Politics, I would have a pretty good chance of making the idea spread, so I set that as my goal: Get to the top of Reddit Politics within 24 hours.” What it did next was simple. A Hack PR staffer published a link to a Washington Times article about the campaign, who then purchased every single upvote package on Fiverr.com, for a total cost of $35. The post soon blew up and became the most popular article on r/politics. Hack PR also anonymously spammed over 20,000 media contacts with a link to the Reddit post. Each time a publication covered the news, it would repeat the same process with the Washington Times article.”

I’m continually confirmed in my belief that it’s best to get to know people one on one, and focus on involving oneself in small groups of no more than a dozen, if you want to have meaningful communication with other humans. Everything isn’t about an audience, and authentic relationships don’t scale. There are no shortcuts to organizing, just pitfalls. Social media engagement isn’t the same as civic engagement.

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. doi:10.1086/225469 Imagine, to begin with, a community completely partitioned into cliques, such that each person is tied to every other in his clique and to none outside. Community organization would be severely inhibited. Leafletting, radio announcements,or other methods could insure that everyone was aware of some nascent organization; but studies of diffusion and mass communication have shown that people rarely act on mass-media information unless it is also transmitted through personal ties (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955; Rogers 1962)

Those data center power plants at Scrubgrass & Panther Creek in Pennsylvania are burning tires & coal waste solely for printing cryptocurrency, and there's a ton of marketing confusing the issue.

Greg Beard’s involvement is on both sides of public and private, being the director of loans in the US Dept. of Energy while at the same time as being celebrated for founding these data center power plants in Pennsylvania and continuing to be an investor so far as we know, is an egregious conflict of interest that apparently some people see as something to celebrate.

Image is a screenshot of a post on x dot com by Dak Nakamoto at daknakamoto, the post reads quote “dollar sign KEEL (in all caps) powering the AI future with prime PA power sites from the Stronghold era. Few remember Greg Beard (at gregoryabeard) built them. Now Director of DOE’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing, he knows the assets intimately. Policy, financing & infra aligning at the top (with those who know)… dots connect. (Eyeballs emoji).” unquote. and it includes screenshots of profiles of Greg Beard, Panther Creek & Scrubgrass cryptocurrency printing data center power plants that burn fossil fuels in Pennsylvania. The post is a quote-tweet of another tweet-thread also referencing dollar sign KEEL.

Of course these posts are chock full of keywords and names and buzzwords and “cashtags”. Perhaps in order to manipulate aggregators of social media posts. The scrapers for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or AEO (AI engine optimization), or various aggregators collecting information that is used for stock trading decisions, sometimes in automated stock trading. This type of thing is widespread now. And in fact, a top official in Pennsylvania state government, appointed by Governor Josh Shapiro, is Ben Kirshner who is the founder of Tinuiti, a company that specializes in these sorts of PR and online marketing operations, and Ben Kirshner has been found in revealed Right To Know request emails, along with other executives in PA state government, to have been acting as something of a concierge service for AWS in their data center plans in Pennsylvania.

Image is a screenshot of a 2 post tweet-thread on x dot com by jimbobmcflam at jimbobmcflam the post reads: quote “(Dollar sign KEEL in all caps) reasons to be bullish: 1. Hasn’t re-rated yet like (dollar sign CIFR) (dollar sign WULF) (dollar sign hut) 2. Scarce near-term 2027 power 3. Prime locations - Panther Creek arguably the best of all sites owned by BTC miner pivots 4. Strong balance sheet - $533m liquidity 5. Scubgrass priced at ZERO ½” unquote. The second post reads: quote “6. Vera Rubin 7. Gregory A. Beard Missed anything? (by the way) I still think the other 3 names mentioned are going to at least 1x this cycle - $25b - $40b, which will be another reason to be bullish for (dollar sign KEEL in all caps) as it plays catch up to these names.” unquote.

This isn’t even AI, and breaking down the data center to “pivot to AI” is reportedly not as easy as people looking for AI investors make it seem. So it’s just about printing crypto and jazzing crypto, that’s all it’s for is people wanting to make more bitcoin for their own funny money asset speculation.

AI and crypto players always seem to be celebrating conflicts of interest in Pennsylvania. AI Strike Team, fiscally sponsored by Team Pennsylvania Foundation, was noted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in January 2026 to be celebrating as a win what most would view as corruption: the appointment of PA’s US Senator Dave Mccormick’s wife, Dina Powell Mccormick, to the position of President of Meta.

Scrubgrass and Panther Creek in Pennsylvania provide no value to the public, while polluting where Pennsylvanians live, while qualifying for some kind of green type recycling tax credits in the Pennsylvania Tier II Alternative Credits program. An “alternative energy resource” could mean coal or burning tires apparently. These terms are tricky because “recycling” could also mean burning plastic, and “clean energy” isn’t necessarily renewable energy, it could even mean fossil fuels maybe in some tricky Community Benefits Agreement.

Of course Donald Trump famously said “clean coal”, and in May 2026 at a public meeting in Pennsylvania, the ex-con data center developer who did jail time for fraud related to data center development, Simon Tusha, he called methane gas “clean”, saying in a video from a May 2026 meeting in Pennsylvania quote: “Natural gas engines are really, really clean.”

And apparently he hasn’t gotten the news about the grave health effects shown regarding gas stoves in homes. Wow.

Stanford Report May 3rd, 2024 Gas stoves emit unsafe levels of nitrogen dioxide “I didn’t expect to see pollutant concentrations breach health benchmarks in bedrooms within an hour of gas stove use, and stay there for hours after the stove is turned off,” said Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Professor Rob Jackson, senior author of the May 3 study in Science Advances. Pollution from gas and propane stoves isn’t just an issue for cooks or people in the kitchen, he said. “It’s the whole family’s problem.” Among other negative health effects, breathing high levels of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, over time can intensify asthma attacks and has been linked to decreased lung development in children and early deaths.

Video of Simon Tusha saying at a May 2026 meeting in Pennsylvania quote: “It burns clean. Like do you have a natural gas stove? Okay. Do you have anything in your stove that keeps it from killing everybody in your house. I know I’m trying to explain to you that natural gas is a completely different type of chemical transfer. Now we do have scrubbers if necessary. So a scrubber will take the exhaust and if there’s anything in it, it will clean it out, but natural gas, you really don’t need that.”

With people like this in charge of these data centers, I would be careful trusting what they mean by clean energy, even if some reporters and politicians seem to use use “clean energy” and “renewable energy interchangeably.

AI Doomers are almost worse.

This interview by Tech Policy Press with the CTO of Mozilla is more evidence that it's true that executives are suffering from AI psychosis, this guy is not well. I can't even pick a quote to share, because it would be the entire transcript, because Raffi Krikorian just gishgallops from one fanciful fantasy take on AI to another, clutching to stuff that's already been widely rejected. It was dizzying listening to it, and I kept listening like someone who can't take their eyes off a disaster happening in front of them. 

WARNING: Podcast interview contains unsubstantiated claims & false speculative confusion.

Why the AI Policy Debate Should Focus More on the Harness and Protocol Layers - Justin Hendrix / Jun 3, 2026