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UGC (User-generated content)
Material made by customers or creators rather than by the brand, and then used by the brand.
The term now covers two different things. There is content people genuinely made on their own, and there is content commissioned from a creator to look as though they did. The second is advertising and has to be labelled as advertising.
It works precisely because it does not look like a brand talking, and that advantage is spent the moment the production values, the pacing or the caption give away the agency behind it.
The unglamorous part is rights. Reposting a customer’s photo without written permission is a copyright problem that has cost brands real money, and a comment saying “sure, go ahead” is thinner ground than it feels like.