The Scoop: Reddit disinformation campaign upends London dining

It’s common to think of disinformation campaigns as complex efforts heralded by world governments or shadowy organizations, seeking to advance nefarious agendas and subtly manipulate us all.

But in at least one case, it involved a group of Redditors fed up over long lines to purchase their favorite sandwich.

The Wall Street Journal shares the bizarre story of how Angus Steakhouse, a tourist trap restaurant comparable to Applebee’s, suddenly topped Google searches for the best restaurants in London. It all started with Reddit user Flonkerton_Scranton sharing his frustration over long lines at his favorite sandwich cart after influencers started touting it as London’s best.

So, London Redditors banded together to create a new “best” sandwich in London: those at Angus Steakhouse, which sports five locations in London and is “byword for tourist-trap mediocrity,” according to the Journal.

The conspirators began flooding online review sites from Google to Tripadvisor with fake praise, one claiming they loved the steak sandwich despite being vegetarian. The campaign bore fruit: The Journal said that Angus appeared in the top 10 Google search results for “best steakhouse in London,” though PR Daily could not replicate this search, save a Reddit thread that offered a thread of unanimous praise.

Angus Steakhouse confirmed that they’ve seen a bump in diners  since the campaign began. “We enjoy a good joke as much as the next person and appreciate the creativity and humor that sparked this love-bombing,” said CEO Paul Sarlas.

Why it matters: It all sounds very funny. Annoyed Redditors steer hapless tourists to anoverpriced restaurant. No one really gets hurt.

But the implications are far-reaching and frightening.

This incident shows just how easy it is to manipulate the algorithms that drive the modern internet. Reddit has become more important to Google search results in the last year: the two companies struck a deal that allows Google to train its AI on millions and millions of user-generated Reddit posts, which also appear to give it exclusive access to surface Reddit posts in search results. So Redditors – or bad actors posing as Redditors – can do quite a lot of damage to the web in the name of humor.

We’ve seen this in the past with the far-reaching impacts of meme stocks, or stocks that Reddit has decided to pump up. They can roil markets and turn companies on their head. And all of this can leave PR pros scrambling.

Even in the relatively benign case of Angus Steakhouse, people going to the restaurant expecting to eat the best steak sandwich of their life and instead getting one that’s “a hellish, tough, teeth-testing beast,” as a London restaurant critic dubbed it, can create problems. Beyond the disappointed reviews sure to follow, this creates a bad situation for restaurant servers and staff who now must deal with confused, angry customers.

Unfortunately, there is little way to counter this. Once a group of people put their mind to overwhelm the algorithm, there are few safeguards in place. And no restaurant is going to chime in with “actually, we serve mediocre steak at inflated prices, don’t come here expecting the best.”

But a strong social listening campaign can help serve as an early warning sign that can allow communicators to put together strategies to help formulate strategies for responses, flag front-line workers and help weather the storm until Redditors get tired and move on to their next big joke.

Ensure those Google alerts are up to date and that your social listening software includes Reddit. Consider creating a Reddit account for handling customer service issues as well – it’s often considered hostile to brands, but being a positive, responsive presence might head these issues off before they blow up into major meme campaigns.

Editor’s Top Reads

• Documentarian Christopher Rufo isn’t angling for a spot in Donald Trump’s administration. But he may still have a major impact in shaping federal policy around DEI for the next four years, the Wall Street Journal reports. Rufo, who has targeted both companies and universities for diversity hiring practices, is perhaps best known for uncovering plagiarism by former Harvard President Claudine Gay, which was one of several factors leading to her resignation. Now, he’ll present a plan to President-elect Donald Trump on how to withhold federal money from universities if they do not end certain DEI practices. “It’s time to really put the hammer to these institutions and to start withdrawing potentially billions of dollars in funding until they follow the law,” Rufo said. Universities and companies have seen for the last several years that DEI is changing and needs new branding and new tactics to survive. With the election of Trump as president, the urgency for those changes has ratcheted up significantly.
• The McRib is back, a periodic reintroduction to processed pork patties that garners massive headlines around the world. The latest return, which is accompanied by the sale of half gallons of sauce, shows the power of scarcity as a PR strategy. “If (the McRib) was something that was on the menu year-round, I think it would be one of those products that would probably be toward the lower end of McDonald’s menu items,” David Henkes, senior principal at food industry research and consulting firm Technomic, told CNN. But by trotting out the item periodically, the restaurant brings a thrill of excitement and nearly 13,000 headlines in the last week alone. McDonald’s obviously has a larger bully pulpit than most brands, but is there a way to incorporate a limited-time aspect into your PR?

New research from Google Workspace and the Harris Poll finds that nearly all Gen Z knowledge workers are using AI in the office – and most Millennials too. The survey found that 93% of Gen Z and 79% of Millennials use at least two generative AI tools at work each week. Eighty-eight percent said AI helps them when a task feels “overwhelming, while 88% also believe AI helps “strike the right tone in their writing.” With such strong adoption among the leaders of tomorrow, it’s certain that AI will be a lasting force in the workplace. It’s up to companies to strike the right balance between empowering workers to use these tools and setting responsible guardrails to protect the organization’s data and integrity. And it will be up to communications departments to ensure both internal and external audiences understand these rules.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Bluesky or LinkedIn.