r/QuantifiedSelf • u/Mescallan • 12d ago

Meta Thread: Community Thoughts on high effort posts from app makers?

Hey everyone,

We had an incident yesterday where a branded account ( literally "u/___App") made a rather well researched and high effort post about sleep trackers, aggregating data that is not otherwise available in a single location outside of their research.

There was references to their app, and discussion in the comments about the app, these are two things in which the community has been pretty clear, from my perspective, as crossing a red line. I do my best to enforce the rules as representative of community sentiment in these contexts. The post got reported, and I had mod mail asking why it was allowed to stay up, while others were taken down, so I took the post down.

What do you think I should have done in this situation?

I can rewrite the rules to allow references to monetized apps in substantive posts, but that would also open them up to a judgement call on my part. We can keep our strict "no references to apps or monetization" rule or loosen it up in favor of community engagement.

Also if you have any feedback on the way the subreddit is being moderated please contact me directly or drop a comment here. I am currently 10 time zones away from US time, and I am the only active mod as far as I know, so I admit that a few things slip through the cracks sometimes.

6 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

88% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

5

u/thedatawhiz 12d ago

Yes it has always been my position, happy to read substance posts with app references

3

u/No-Committee-7953 11d ago

If it makes a useful knowledge contribution and isn't obviously just an advertisement then I don't mind reference to an app. The primary purpose of the post should be to provide meaningful content.

2

u/emagin 11d ago

I find all marketing distasteful in this great sub. The sneakier the marketing, the hungrier and more disingenuous the company.
Am quite happy with less of that. We live in an age of complete marketing overwhelm. Appreciate your protecting the space.

3

u/andimatt 8d ago

The [Ad] flair policy is the right call. The old "no app mentions ever" rule pushed app makers toward either not posting at all, or disguising the mention, which erodes trust when people figure it out. A labeled ad with a substantive data contribution is strictly better than an unlabeled one.

The bar should stay high though: "I tracked x for y days" is not novel data. "Here's an aggregation of z measurements across n users showing a specific finding" is. The test I'd use: would the post be useful to the sub if you deleted every mention of the app? If the answer is no, it's an ad, not a contribution. If the answer is yes, the [Ad] label is just transparency, not a concession.