I Was a Paid Internet Shill

Hectic

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Stanley is an undercover shill trying to discredit the OP.
 

DFreshKing

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Does not surprise me one bit.

Business is falling all over social media.

Shill will be the new troll within six months.

In first with the stop shilling.
 

Relevated

fixated with venom and phalluses
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I am a shill, I've had enough of this life of secrecy. I am a well educated korean business man however I had some bad luck, I went through a really bad phase and now I am tired of the shill life. I didn't choose the shill life, the shill life chose me.

Konichiwa
 

DFreshKing

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I am a shill, I've had enough of this life of secrecy. I am a well educated korean business man however I had some bad luck, I went through a really bad phase and now I am tired of the shill life. I didn't choose the shill life, the shill life chose me.

Konichiwa
And this Shiller, Shiller night.
 

TuTuHimm

Can definitely write definitely correctly
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I don't think I've encountered shill at the moment. I'll have to think about it while driving home in my brand new Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé.
 

Will Absolute

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There were a few instances recently of writers - historians etc. - contributing 'buyer' reviews to Amazon, lambasting their fellow authors books, and praising their own. Some were quite well-known.

A different context, but essentially the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if practices like this were fairly common. The article is very implausible though. Murder Incorporated joins the internet.
 

Wowi

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It wouldn't surprise me if something like this was happening, but I find this story quite odd for a few reasons. First of all, if there's so much secrecy (which would be understandable given what they allegedly do), why are people seemingly able to simply walk in? No locked doors, keycards or any other form of simple security. The manager also tells him about the job right away. Even though it's referral only I could imagine that quite a few people would use that opportunity to sell the story to the papers and it'd be piss easy to get a journo inside the company to write an article. They don't even sign a NDA or something similar?
 

Siorac

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I did some viral marketing for mostly mobile phone companies on the internet. Me and some other unfortunate bastards had to go to tech forums to argue with people and drop hints about how this new stuff is going to be so epic compared to the old one. We also had to create lots of faux Facebook accounts to get the word out on those.

It was boring as feck but the ethical dilemmas eluded me.
 

Will Absolute

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I did some viral marketing for mostly mobile phone companies on the internet. Me and some other unfortunate bastards had to go to tech forums to argue with people and drop hints about how this new stuff is going to be so epic compared to the old one. We also had to create lots of faux Facebook accounts to get the word out on those.

It was boring as feck but the ethical dilemmas eluded me.
That sounds more realistic. I imagine most of this stuff would be in-house, rather than farmed out to shadowy outfits operating from unmarked buildings.

You didn't say if you identified yourselves as employees of the manufacturers? Or did you represent yourselves as ordinary Joe Soaps? Or did you avoid that issue?
 

Siorac

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We had to masquerade as ordinary guys from the street who are very interested in this kind of thing.

Also, it wasn't exactly in-house: the company was a dedicated viral marketing-guerilla marketing company. There was nothing shady about it though as it is generally regarded as just another form of advertising; it worked like any commercial/advertising agency does.
 

Penna

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Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
A brand-new newbie posted a thread yesterday about the new editor of The Times. The poster's username was thebluesector, and he included a link to a news website of the same name. I asked him if he was that site, in effect and got no response.

Despite the Star Wars reference, it did leave me wondering why someone would sign up here to do that, unless it was simple advertising.
 

Sparky_Hughes

I am Shitbeard.
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Who pays kietotheworld and what do they pay him for? He'll argue with a 2 year old over what color the sky is. He can't be doing that for nothing...
Ill have you know Kietotheworld serves a valuable purpose.......if you opinion is the opposite of his you can be fairly sure you are right.
 

100

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A brand-new newbie posted a thread yesterday about the new editor of The Times. The poster's username was thebluesector, and he included a link to a news website of the same name. I asked him if he was that site, in effect and got no response.

Despite the Star Wars reference, it did leave me wondering why someone would sign up here to do that, unless it was simple advertising.
The best one was the guy who signed up for the sole purpose of disproving the forums' football agent stereotypes.
 

Count Orduck

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I don't think anyone doubts that "shills" exist. Someone who votes for themselves to win an online competition is "shilling" to a degree, and I really wouldn't be surprised to hear of major political parties asking people to be very... vocal about their support.

But at the same time, the OP is bollocks. Why would they feel the need to be so secret? They're not a spy agency. Who was producing all of these dossiers on individual posters? It's hilarious.
 

Smores

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I know ppl who have done this for products, companies etc. It's quite common and I don't doubt the OP, It's just overly dramatic, its not illegal or secretive.