How should /r/pics tackle the issue of self-promotion of small businesses, if at all?

Hi all, I am making this post to get some public opinion. Replies are greatly helpful.Basically.../r/pics gets hundred of submissions a day, and a post on the front page gets thousands if not millions of clicks.This is an interesting situation for us. We love seeing amazing and new original content, and the stories of redditors. It inspires many of us, and its not uncommon to see us chatting about our favorite posts of the day when not spamming /r/partyparrot gifsI'm sure you've seen it before, but we often get a lot of posts about a redditors new business, or success story, or something along those lines, and we recently have been discussing these posts.The prosthese posts are often cool and unique, and offer insight to a lot of redditors on the creation of product in a unique wayIt's OCThey are highly upvoted, usuallyThey are personal, and are a cool way to connect with our community!The consMany of these posts are not exactly natural. We see many, many of these posts ended up being a purposeful advertising tactic, though we don't learn until months later. This makes us feel as if you were deceived.In extreme cases, vote manipulation occursAt the end of the day, it can be considered spam in many situationsNo one really likes underhanded adsContent is very blog like - While we don't mind captions, there is often more text than image. We remove blogs, but "blogs" in an imgur album get a de-facto passGrey-areaSpecial deals / discounts for redditorsFunding (talented?) redditorsNot technically against reddit rulesWe wish to encourage OC, but don't want to allow self-promotion. Both go hand in handBefore going on, I also want to explain something elseThe one link "rule"We don't have it in the sidebar, but generally, we only allow any content creator, like photographers, artists, or small business owners, to post just a single link to their content in a top level comment. The link must also be at least one click away from an actual shopping page.What this meansCreators cannot reply to everyone with links to their siteCreators cannot link directly to a storefrontCreators can only have one comment with their site / source in it, and it must be top levelWhy?This greatly curbs spam and is general attitude toward all the above posts. As long as the one link rule is met, we are happy.The solution...?And that is why we come here, simply because we want input from the community itself on this issue. Should we just keep on keeping on? Should we be more strict? Perhaps more loose?Option ABan these posts entirelyProsCompletely eliminates the issueConsCan punish content creatorsIs really strictNot all of these posts are malicious, this heavily punishes the non-mal postsDifficult to fairly enforceOption BJust keep doing what we are doingPros / ConsWell, this is what led us to this discussionOption CRemove the restrictions entirelyProsMore content creationConsGreatly increased spamGreatly increased manipulationEveryone and their mother might just tryReddit spam rules require some enforcementOption XYou help us decideAnd this is where you come in. We have our 2 extremes and our do nothing option. Now we need help figuring out how to proceed. Please, tell us your ideas, this is an open forum. Feel free to just discuss as wellTL;DRSome people (but not all people) abuse /r/pics to self promote their business in a pseudo-malicious manor. What do?

Micky Videos 2015

How should /r/pics tackle the issue of self-promotion of small businesses, if at all?

Written By allthefoxes