Reddit Co-founder: We basically faked our first users.

**legal disclaimer** you can only say this if you have succeeded or else you will get sued into oblivion by your investors

Faked creating the company too. They don’t even mention Aaron Schwartz who did basically everything

fake it until you make it in a literal way lol

This is unfortunately needed due to human nature (social proof bias, and how scarce independent thinking really is). Even Wayne Dyer used to travel across the country to buy his own books. This artificial boost made the libraries push them forward which started the momentum.

It’s all fugazi

But doing the same on Reddit today will get you banned

There was a company like this. I've forgotten the name. But it faked user numbers. Then it sold for a large amount. Then, they got sued for the fake users.

The grift runs deep in silicon valley 😂

and he says it all proud like he was super smart...

They built a fake solution for a very real market demand

Large part of LLMs are trained using data from Reddit btw

And VCs will fund them but not those who have real true auditable 100k users in 24 months of our operations, pedigree is missing with us, so!! We are the Outliers.

I'm pretty sure most of Reddit is still fake users.

me liking my own tweets.. just need to get that momentum going

i think it makes complete sense tbh their product is all about discussions and getting people to post into a platform no one is using is very difficult it's a community-led product - the only way to kick start is by yourself and close circle

this is true for a lot of folks. some succeed others go to jail lol

Fake it till ya make it baby

Reddit faked users Fireflies faked AI Now they’re all heroes I hope the world doesn’t cry when these “testimonies” create a new generation of lying founders

Social proof is quite essential to most B2C businesses, particularly social networks. Even when Facebook was getting a lot of organic traction, there were “real looking” accounts keeping up convo in groups.

Now AI can do that instead. Anyone can start social media with thousands of users.

Good on them. That is what so many businesses do. The take away shop with family and friends of family there getting free meal or half price just to make it look popular. it's always been the way. Mates sending in reviews.

Nothing has changed

the wash trading OG

Authentic startup growth is messy. Faking early users, building MVP, then the magic happens when real users arrive. The playbook: speed > perfection, learn from real usage, iterate like hell. That's how winners scale

Reddit is a giant circle jerk of mentally ill moderators. Let it die.

That is solidly fraud yet he’s now rich famous and exited.

user farms were the og airdrop

but when I do it I get shadow-banned ...

Yikes 😳

Why doesn’t wiki mention him in Serena’s page at all. But she’s boldly on his

fake it till you make it

Fake it till you make it.

So, he did fraud and because it was successful, it’s not illegal? This clip should be admission of a crime that many other CEOs have been thrown in jail for, except they got caught before their plan worked.

Now it’s just AI👀

Fake it till you make it