I’m sharing this here mostly due to the “official” labels. Excerpt from the text:
“Starting today, we’re beginning early testing of placing a visual indicator on certain profiles to provide proof of authenticity, reduce impersonation, and increase transparency across the platform,” a Reddit admin (employee) wrote in a post. “This is currently only available to a *very* small (double-digit) number of profiles belonging to organizations with whom we already have existing relationships, and who are interested in engaging with redditors and communities on our platform.”
At least for me this looks like a really poor attempt to attract content creators into the platform, while shifting its focus from the content created and shared by the users to the users themselves, as in more typical social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok). It’s bound to fail - what made Reddit desirable for the users was the content that they shared among themselves, unlike in Twitter where a few personalities can “anchor” the rest of the userbase.
I think companies hosting their own instances, locked down so only employees can be mods, is a smart idea for companies. Instead of giving editorial control, and ad revenue, to a third party, they get to retain control over their brand without intermediaries while still being part of a larger community for discoverability.