Some Gamers Are Clinging to a False Conspiracy About Paid Reddit Posts to Justify Their Hatred for Marathon

Earlier today, some of the most vocal members of the gaming community started buzzing about a supposed “‘Reddit Task’ Content Farm” linked to Marathon. The claim is that Sony and Bungie have been allegedly compensating individuals through a sketchy Discord server to generate positive posts about Marathon on Reddit. “There is a ‘Reddit Task’ content farm for Marathon,” asserted one user, Pirat_Nation, among several others who jumped on this narrative. But the truth? It’s simply not true.

The source of this rumor? A Reddit post featuring several screenshots from a Discord server, with some details obscured, showing the server admin promoting Marathon-related tasks. One of the posts reads, “MARATHON LAUNCH DAY REMINDER: Starting tomorrow, Marathon assigned tasks can now be claimed every 6 hours. Take advantage of this reduced cooldown until Monday 6:00 AM.”

In essence, it seems they’re allegedly paying users to create and amplify positive Marathon content on Reddit, a tactic known as astroturfing. This is serious business; in many places, astroturfing is illegal and can lead to significant penalties from regulatory bodies. Sony and Bungie would face serious consequences… if this were actually true.

Upon examining the screenshots, which I’ve saved just in case the original poster tries to erase their “evidence,” it’s clear they poorly cropped out the server’s name in the search bar. By overlaying Discord’s font with the text they tried to hide, I discovered that the server in question is called “Reddit Circle.”

Reddit Circle is associated with TaskPost, a platform that claims to facilitate Reddit posting tasks in exchange for cryptocurrency. After creating a TaskPost account and joining their private server via the TaskPost website, I gained access to Reddit Circle and reviewed the posts in question.

Interestingly, none of these posts actually mention Marathon at all. It appears to be a fabricated story aimed at stirring up negativity towards Sony and Bungie. This seems to be part of a broader campaign by certain users on social media who are fixated on Marathon’s player count. It’s no surprise that the original poster also shared this misinformation in the “GamerGate Discussion” subreddit, where it was predictably accepted without question.

Additionally, I included timestamps of when the posts were edited on Discord in my screenshots. It seems the creator thought that using edited posts would provide a fallback excuse if their claims were challenged, suggesting that the server owners modified the messages to remove references to Marathon. However, these edits occurred within the same minute of posting.

And just for those curious about how someone could create such a convincing fake screenshot, I’ve made one myself. It’s quite straightforward: log into Discord on your browser, open Inspect Element, and type whatever you want.

Maybe the folks on social media should leave the investigative work to actual journalists in the future, don’t you think?