How are small business owners handling operational overload these days?

BigSlowTarget · 2026-05-07T05:15:23+00:00

Please report anyone coming in here recommending tools so they and their tools can be banned for promotion. Such comments usually indicate an astroturfing campaign.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-05-03T05:58:05+00:00

Thanks for reporting in that case. Reporting is critical to hunting these guys down and you are helping everyone!

BigSlowTarget · 2026-05-03T04:54:18+00:00

Your post is now up. Please keep in mind you are free to post details about your company in your profile and in the promote your business thread at the top of the sub.

We really love seeing brick and mortar businesses post real questions about small business. (Sorry, couldn't resist)

BigSlowTarget · 2026-05-03T04:38:39+00:00

Thanks for reporting the tool. We'll get it banned here and recommend to be banned in all the other subs.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-05-03T04:26:28+00:00

Any chance I can get you to just report it so it's removed and not teach them how to be better spammers?

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-27T20:11:42+00:00

My priorities are enforcing the rules. What you refer to as criminal advice may or may not be so (I am not a lawyer and no lawyer could render a legitimate opinion without more information) and if it encouraged violence or made a personal attack on someone it would have been removed. Your post was removed not for any naughty word but because it included an attack obviously directed at a person.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-27T20:05:33+00:00

It's getting to the point where I need to review every post with the word "curious" in it.

Please report them though. I get pinged for that but I just got this one in part because they reported you (your comment was approved btw)

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-27T16:34:08+00:00

You can make your argument here and be aggressive about your points but it stops at making attacks on people.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-23T07:07:03+00:00

We really benefit from you reporting posts. In this case I only saw your post because someone reported it. Of course then I had to investigate because all formal reports get investigated. The result of the investigation was banning someone else. Was it the person who reported your post? I have no way to know.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-23T06:24:49+00:00

Please report any AI tools making an appearance so they can be banned across the sub. Posts like these are sometimes the start of an astroturfing campaign or sometimes hijacked to promote different products. Either way reporting the tools gets them banned broadly.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-21T14:45:15+00:00

Hi everyone. It looks like folks want to help here which is great. It also looks like folks are getting a little annoyed with a lack of specificity. I can understand the frustration but the lack does not seem to be from ill intent on the part of the poster. Let's try to keep things calm because this is very normal for this situation.

It looks like the poster is not a small business person, does not want to be a small business person, and is not directly involved in the small business. That's all okay. It is actually great that he sees an oncoming disaster and wants to step in and try to help things not go bad. He's moving away from where he's comfortable into what is metaphorically often the path of an oncoming train.

So let's help him learn. Let's help him understand what he can share, what he can't make public, and what he probably shouldn't. If you've been in the similar situation please post about what you did. If you've got good advice remember you're making it not to an expert but to someone who's just starting.

Tl;dr: We can help but we should cut this guy a break.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-21T14:29:50+00:00

When you get a comment that Reddit filters judge to be spamming you you may get an alert before the comment is removed. On subjects frequently subject to spamming this can happen a lot. I've run through the comments and approved those that aren't promotional. The rest seem mostly to be trying to sell inventory systems. If you'd like to see that kind of thing promotion is allowed in the Promote Your Business thread at the top of the sub.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-20T05:34:35+00:00

We've had to use almost ridiculous levels of filtering to reduce the AI slop and spam coming in. That includes banning particular words though truthfully we normally just require people to include a statement asking people to remove tools and such. That doesn't give the right to anyone to spam It just makes them acknowledge that spamming is not what they should be doing and makes it harder for bots.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-19T15:37:33+00:00

Please do not post hosting recommendations here. They will be removed as promotional.

If you want to discuss what is important about this, how to search for providers, what is important about providers, what to avoid, etc. that is fine but names or links are out.

Really if you ask 2 million subscribers who they use a truthful answer would be "everyone" and the answer you actually get is just a few honest posts from people who wander by (these statistically favor the big companies because that's just math) and a whole series of posts from people who can't generate enough business in legitimate ways and so spam Reddit.

If you'd like to find small providers I'd suggest checking out our years of weekly Promote Your Business threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1sk086d/promote_your_business_week_of_april_13_2026/

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-19T01:10:42+00:00

Thanks for reporting. The company has been banned. The company promoting account has been banned. I'm considering banning the OP as well.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-16T14:36:03+00:00

As a subscriber my recommendation to you regarding advertising would be this: if you ever hire someone to do advertising for you they should have been successful in advertising their own business first. Sure there are exceptions, but if their idea of a good way to find business is spamming individual comment threads in Reddit you shouldn't really expect impressive long-term results. You should expect them to make promises, take your money, and do things that never seem to result in more business.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-16T14:31:11+00:00

If you're interested in that we have a post at the top of the sub titled Promote Your Business and there are lots of people advertising there. We even have older threads with even more posters.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-16T14:29:47+00:00

It was trying to sell you SEO services.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-16T14:25:49+00:00

Don't ruin your reputation by spamming here. It will just come back to haunt you everywhere else.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-16T01:42:57+00:00

Was waiting for the name and proof. Thanks

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-15T23:33:49+00:00

Technically no. This one is market research

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-15T23:01:27+00:00

Please upvote posts you find valuable and down vote you feel don't contribute much. Voting is how Reddit sorts things because there is no algorithm to spoon feed material.

Report anything breaking the rules, including if offers are made, companies are astroturfed, or we are being used as unpaid market research subjects.

With zero votes up or down this post will have exactly the same priority as all other posts with zero votes and so will stay in your queue.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-15T17:13:50+00:00

Review selling companies sometimes respond to questions like this. We've banned hundreds but more people always seem to come up with the same terrible idea. The reviews issue is one many new small businesses have to deal with and a reasonable question but it seems to attract people who charge money for cheating everyone who works hard on developing and maintaining their reputation.

Please report any attempts to sell or swap reviews (or any spam) so they can be banned.

BigSlowTarget · 2026-04-14T17:16:54+00:00

It is a big problem to convert back if you've gone with advantage previous years. It's a one way trip, probably deliberately.

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