Companies Seed Reddit to Influence AI Answers
In June 2026, 404 Media reported that vendors in the peptide and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) markets had seeded r/biohackers, a subreddit with roughly 830,000 members, with coordinated promotional posts designed to be scraped by AI systems. Moderators responded by banning new standalone posts about peptides and HRT, citing sustained pressure from companies using the subreddit for answer engine optimization (AEO). "As AI search engines increasingly pull answers from Reddit, companies are using us for AEO," the moderators wrote, per 404 Media.
