Monetizing a site based on user created content is not easy—just ask Tumblr—but Reddit thinks it may have found an answer. Starting August 4, Reddit will allow advertisers to sponsor posts created by regular users that happen to mention their brand.

Here is Reddit’s official explanation for how the new sponsored posts will work:

• A redditor creates a post with brand-relevant content
• A brand notices the post and indicates to our sales team that they’re interested in promoting the post
• Our sales team reaches out to the author of the post to get explicit permission to use the post as part of a promoted user post
• If permission is given, a promoted user post is created by copying over the content and votes of the original post into a new promoted user post. (The comments will link to the same thread.)
• The original post will remain where it was originally uploaded. The promoted user post comment section will link to the original comments section.

This may sound great for advertisers, but Reddit’s user base is notoriously anti-corporate and resistant to obvious advertisements. In fact, the site even has /r/hailcorporate, a popular subreddit with nearly 70,000 subscribers that is dedicated to calling out companies who sneakily advertise their products on Reddit. The company is quick to note, however, that sponsored posts will be clearly labeled.

“Reddit users don’t like being bullshitted,” Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a recent interview with Ad Age. “Reddit is a platform where you can call people out on it. And a lot of traditional advertising feels like we’re being taken advantage of and nobody likes that. But when advertisers come with honest intentions we see a much higher level of engagement with the brand. We don’t see hostility and we have valuable connections.”

While Reddit says that posts can only be sponsored with a user’s permission, there is one potential problem with this system: The content submitted by users does not necessarily belong to them. For example, anyone can submit a link to a YouTube video on Reddit, but under the new sponsorship system, the creator of the video has no say in whether or not the Reddit post linking to their content can be sponsored.

Image courtesy of Reddit