/r/Movies 2021 State of Affairs: Self Promotion and Spam. If you have your own app/blog/YouTube channel/website - read this!

We posted this last year as well but I guess with the pandemic we're just seeing a torrential wave of new YouTube channel spammers, banning 1-2 per day. Some of them that have good content too, and it's annoying af for us because it's not difficult to promote your own stuff here - it's just that you can't be an account that only exists to promote your product. Hell, we literally banned the official Netflix reddit account because we hold everyone to the same standard.

By the /r/movies definition, which is slightly more loose than the reddit site-wide definition:

Spam is when you submit from one source so much that more than 20% of your total submissions come from it.

The users have a real wishy-washy attitude toward spam. Literally anything that is OC is reported as "spam," but that doesn't mean it gets removed or breaks any rules. Users are okay with self-promotion as long as users like the content, basically, but the rules have to apply to all, regardless of user reception. Can't say, "Oh 74% of my submissions are from MovieGenius9000's youtube channel, but I get upvotes so it's allowed." Not how it works, karma will not save you. And once you're banned, that account is gone forever. We do not unban spammers. We have nearly 20 mods, we're not super interested in tagging you guys and making sure you kept your promises. Accounts banned first, and if the site gets spammed again - the source website goes on our blacklist. Nothing has ever come back from our blacklist.

The general outline:

• If you're gonna self promote, only 1 out of every 5 submissions can be be self promotion: Pretty self explanatory.

• You need to participate in /r/movies as a regular user: Don't just submit 4 random links just so you can circumvent the previous rule, and don't just comment on your own submissions. You need to participate in other threads that have nothing to do with you.

• Adhere to all of our other rules: They can be a minefield, but you get used to them soon enough and we're always around if you have questions.

• This dank meme: If you do this, you're basically holding up a target for an immediate ban.

• Always remember the classic Reddit quote: "It's cool to be a reddit account with a business, but it's not cool to be a business with a reddit account"

• Selling stuff in this sub is prohibited under any circumstances: If your OC is a movie resource or a website that has ad revenue that's fine, but you can't ask for donations or traffic or PayPal or Bitcoin and if you are posting fan art you are not allowed to link to a source where any work is for sale.

• If your OC is just repeated blogspam from bigger outlets, it will be removed: Major film new sites will always take priority over websites simply paraphrasing articles, even if you submit it before the original article gets submitted by someone else. If the article begins with "as reported by [insert other publication]," just submit the other publication.

This all sounds doom and gloom, but in all seriousness we encourage and appreciate your OC, but please be aware that there are rules that you need to follow first. None of this is personal.

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This section is What to do if you were banned for spam and you're a content creator

We might've linked to this post when we banned you. So what now? What can you do?

Make a new account and play by the rules. That account that was just banned? It's burned forever in /r/movies. Make a new account, one that doesn't serve as an advertisement for your YouTube channel or website or whatever, and just be a normal redditor. Link to cool stuff you found, talk about it, talk about other people's submissions. Then, once every five submissions, link to your own work.

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Just to cover some recent attempts at "but I'm playing within the rules!" nonsense

1. Spamming your product in comments will also result in a ban.

2. Yes, it's still spam even if your YouTube channel or App is free or not monetized.

3. Deleting previous spam submissions and reposting them doesn't erase the first time you submitted them. Being sketchy is putting a target on your back.

Submitted May 22, 2021 at 12:24AM by girafa https://ift.tt/3yu7lNE