[Announcement] Reiterating our stance on promotional content
It has come to our attention that a vendor has been offering rewards to customers contingent upon them posting about their keyboards on social media, including this subreddit. This practice is not strictly forbidden but we feel we must reiterate our position with regards to promotional content as a result, since these posts have almost entirely violated our spam policy.
Stated plainly: If you are in any way conveyed a reward contingent upon you posting here, it is a promotional post and must be clearly flagged as such.
This means that the post should state in its title that it is promotional, by including the prefix [promo], you should not use "[Ad]" in the title as this is reserved for vendors and vendor affiliated accounts to directly market their products. This requirement has been updated in the rules.
This extends also to some non-contingent rewards, for instance being sent a model for free. Even if this gift did not come with a requirement of posting about it, the fact you've received a free item will bias your position and should be clearly stated up front. Feel free to provide further information to establish your credibility, such as stating there was no requirement to post a positive review or that the vendor did not have editorial input, but you must lead with the disclaimer, don't end with it.
If in doubt, add a disclaimer, it never hurts to be more transparent than you are required to be. Alternatively message the moderators, titles cannot be edited after you post so you will need to re-post if your post is removed for violation of this rule.
We're not against commercial promotion on this subreddit but we believe any time you're being advertised to must be stated clearly, any attempt to mask promotion as genuine, authentic community post is an infraction of the rules and will be removed if uncovered.
If you see any posts that you believe to be illegitimate, the quickest way to bring it to the attention of the moderators is to report it, so please report offending posts, do not report them if they comply (have [promo] in the title), if you want to see less of this content you are still free to use the downvote button and promote (upvote) content you find more valuable.