News of the day...
Out of context: Reply #2807
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- yuekit0
The business of Internet shilling - posing as a genuine forum user but being in the employ of a corporation to promote their work - is booming. And it has been for a long time. From fake Amazon reviews to the U.S Army astroturfing social media, comment manipulation is as old as the very concept of internet forums.
Fake comments and fake conversations being hard to spot, especially when they’re made by specialist agencies, makes shilling big business.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on Reddit. Being the world’s 22nd most popular website and the U.S.’ 7th makes it a popular target because of the hundreds of millions of eyeballs it attracts every month.
In December last year, I managed to place two entirely fake news stories onto influential subreddits - with millions of subscribers - and vote them to the top with fake accounts and fake upvotes for less than $200. It was simple, cheap and effective.
- NeoGaf, a videogames board and haven for clueless shut-ins, is rife with it. Makes an already terrible site even worse.face_melter