Your competitor is astroturfing on Reddit. What you can do about it.

October 2026 · 7 min read

For SaaS teams

You’ve seen it. Every “which tool should we use” thread in your category has a reply recommending the same competitor, often within an hour of posting. The accounts are new, or they’ve only ever talked about that one product. The praise uses suspiciously similar phrases. And it’s working: those threads rank in Google and turn up in AI answers.

It’s frustrating, and the temptation is to fight fire with fire. Don’t. There are better options, and they don’t put your company at risk.

Step 1: Look for patterns, and treat them as signs, not proof

Astroturfing means fake grassroots: promotion made to look like independent users. On Reddit it usually shows up as a pattern across several threads rather than in any single comment. Things worth noting:

• New or near-empty accounts that arrive in a buying thread with a confident recommendation.
• Single-topic accounts whose history is mostly or entirely about one product, across several communities.
• Copy-paste praise. The same feature list, the same turn of phrase, or the same “I switched from X and never looked back” story in different threads.
• Coordinated timing. Several accounts replying to a new question within a short window, or new threads asking for recommendations that are answered by the same group each time.
• Insider tone. Replies that read like someone close to the company, with nothing saying so.
• Odd voting. A brief, generic recommendation sitting far above detailed answers from long-standing community members.

Be careful with every one of these. New accounts are often real people who signed up to ask a question. Some customers really do love a product enough to talk about it a lot. Employees sometimes post without realising how it looks. Any single sign is weak. A cluster of them across many threads, over weeks, is stronger, but it’s still not proof. You can’t see account data, IP addresses or payment records. Reddit and moderators can see much more than you.

Record what you see as you go: links to the threads and comments, account names, dates and times, and screenshots, because comments get edited and deleted. Write it up neutrally, describing what you observed rather than what you think it means. That record is what makes the next steps work.

Step 2: Don’t copy them

If your competitor seems to be getting away with it, why not do the same? Several reasons, any one of which is enough.

• It breaks Reddit’s rules. Rule 2 asks people to post authentic content into communities where they have a personal interest, and it bans content manipulation, including spam and vote manipulation. Accounts and links get banned, sometimes a whole domain.
• It can break US advertising law. The FTC’s endorsement rules and its 2024 ban on fake reviews and testimonials both apply to undercover promotion, including when an agency runs it.
• The evidence is permanent and public. Reddit communities are good at spotting coordinated behaviour, and they archive it. A thread exposing a company’s fake accounts can rank for that company’s name for years, and gets cited by AI assistants long after the campaign ends.
• It destroys the asset you want. The point of being on Reddit is that buyers trust it. Getting caught faking it is worse than not being there.

If an agency has pitched you a version of this (“aged accounts”, “seeding”, “we upvote the right comments”), that’s the same thing with a service fee. Walk away.

Step 3: Report to the subreddit’s moderators, with evidence

Moderators are the first and usually best route. They know their community, they can remove content and ban accounts, and they generally want vendor spam out as much as you do.

Send a message to the moderators of the subreddit through modmail rather than to an individual moderator. Keep it short and factual:

Example modmail (adapt to your situation):

Hi mods. I work at [your company], which competes with [competitor], so I’m flagging that up front. Over the last six weeks I’ve noticed a pattern in recommendation threads here that may be coordinated promotion. Several accounts with little other history have recommended [competitor] with very similar wording, often shortly after the thread was posted. Links and timestamps below. I may be wrong about some of these, and I’m not asking for action on our behalf, just passing on what I’ve seen in case it’s useful.

[list of links, dates, account names]

Saying up front that you’re a competitor matters. Moderators will work it out anyway, and saying so up front makes the report credible. Then leave it with them. Don’t chase, and don’t take it public if they don’t act the way you’d like.

Step 4: Report through Reddit’s own tools

Reddit’s site-wide rules cover spam and content manipulation, and there are two routes:

• Report the content itself. Use the report button on the post or comment and choose the closest option, such as spam. Reddit’s help centre points people to the report button for potential spam.
• Report to Reddit’s admins for wider patterns. Reddit’s help centre describes a web form for reporting potential vote manipulation, and its policy on disrupting communities says reports from users, moderators and internal systems are combined to judge whether behaviour breaks the rules.

Ban evasion (banned accounts coming back under new names) is handled differently: Reddit only reviews ban evasion reports from the community’s moderators. If you suspect it, tell the moderators rather than filing it yourself.

Don’t expect to hear back about outcomes. Reports are signals that add up, not cases with updates.

Step 5: In the US, consider the FTC

If you believe a competitor is publishing fake reviews or endorsements to US buyers, you can tell the FTC. Its consumer guidance asks people to report suspicious reviews to the platform first, and to report to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov as well.

Set expectations properly. The FTC doesn’t respond to individual reports or act on any one complainant’s behalf. Reports go into a database that law enforcement uses to spot patterns. It’s a legitimate step, not a fast one, and it’s worth taking only when you have a clear, documented pattern. If you’re considering anything beyond that, talk to a lawyer.

Step 6: Don’t accuse them in public

This is the hardest one. When you’re sure, it’s tempting to post the evidence, reply “this is a shill” under every comment, or let your team say it on LinkedIn.

Don’t. You could be wrong about some or all of it. Accusing a named company or person of fraud in public, on evidence that’s suggestive rather than conclusive, risks a defamation claim. Even when you’re right, it looks like a competitor attacking a competitor, and the thread becomes about you. Reddit communities tend to side against the company that starts the fight.

Leave public calls to the community and the moderators. If regular users spot the pattern and say so, that carries far more weight than anything you could post.

Step 7: Out-compete them honestly

Reporting deals with the worst of it. What actually changes your position is being better in the same threads.

• Answer the questions properly. Astroturfed replies are thin: a recommendation and a few adjectives. A detailed answer that explains trade-offs, says who each option suits, and admits where your product isn’t the best fit is more useful to the person asking. Over time, useful answers tend to rise in communities that value them.
• Be someone the community knows. An account with years of useful answers in a subreddit carries weight that a burst of new accounts never will. Regulars recognise each other, and so do moderators.
• Be in more than the recommendation threads. Answer technical questions where your product isn’t relevant. That history is what makes your occasional mention credible.
• Make it consistent. Astroturfing tends to come in bursts. Steady, genuine participation over months outlasts it.
• Watch the AI answers. If the astroturfed threads are being cited by assistants, you’ll want to know. The method in how to measure your AI visibility shows which threads drive the answers in your category.

If a coordinated pile-on has turned into criticism of your own product, see what to do when a negative Reddit thread ranks for your brand. And for deciding who should do the ongoing participation, see Reddit presence vs Reddit Ads vs doing it yourself.

Sources: Reddit Rules · FTC, Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking · FTC, Final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (August 2024) · Reddit Help, Spam · Reddit Help, Disrupting Communities · Reddit Help, What is ban evasion? · FTC Consumer Advice, How to report suspicious online reviews · FTC, ReportFraud FAQs. This article is general information, not legal advice.