Do internet "shills" exist?

that is not my world that I ever learned about, so no useful comment here.
But that only covers x years in my environs, not yours.

still, probably there are.
Certainly people work up personas.

Shills and advertising - just look at a2k re kitchens.


god help a normal person who wants to ask about his or her kitchen

Probably. Out of all the posts on all the forums, probably. Maintaining a debate takes quite a bit of time though, and isn't likely to be seen by much over a dozen people. How much time would they have to spend, and who could pay the costs in return for so little.

Spam? Sure. Shills paid to actually return and debate? I doubt it's especially common.

That's one reason to think political shills (as opposed to kitchen promoters) are more of an urban legend than a serious problem. They wouldn't be a very cost-effective tool.

Another reason to doubt they exist in large numbers is that something so outrageous should have made the news. Political shills themselves seemed plausible to me. But the idea that they have conspired to keep the story out of the media? Significantly less likely.

Not exactly sure how you define "shill" but yes there are people online who are literally paid for their comments and business reviews online.

The obvious ones are:
1. restaurant and other assorted business reviews;
The not so obvious ones are:
2. Think tanks and PR firms who have been paid to publish product reviews and allegedly scientific studies on the validity of certain products such as prescription medicine but in reality they are as valuable and fair as a company PR release from the company in question themselves.
3. Sock puppets who are government and think take people who pretend they're regular joe smoes and their agenda is to push disinformation against their employer's competing commercial and foreign policy enemy states.

If you look at some of the job orders at sites like elance, guru and others you'll see requests for people to post reviews, ads and the like all over the internet for companies.

Next time I see such on their job lists, I'll copy it here.

But just because these tactics aren't cost effective (that being a very rational and pragmatic argument) doesn't mean a whole lot of people AREN'T rationally thinking it through when they do these things. You're giving too much credit where credit isn't due for a great deal of people and their motives online.

Rather than doing searches using the word shill, search for articles on astroturfing:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astroturfing_cases

Just listened to a radio feature on this phenomenon on the CBC tonight. Apparently it's a decent source of income in the former Soviet Union.

Here is an old a2k topic on the subject:


http://able2know.org/topic/181547-1

In the radio program to which Beth refers, they said that in Russia, people are paid about $175 US/month to post their pro-Russian, anti-American blurbs at online fora. We have had a Russian propagandist (or maybe more than one) for years and years here. They also pay people to set up and maintain blogs which promote the Russian point of view. It would be hard for me to believe that the Russians are doing this, but that nobody else is.

I have used the term shill in online fora to denote people who post, often people whom i have known online for years, who are in any particular case just puking up the propaganda of a certain point of view. This can be people who rant about welfare cheaters, while ignoring the huge corporate welfare which the US government pays out. It can also be people who compare conservatives to Nazis. They come in all shapes and sizes.

After Mr. Obama was elected, Mr. Bush was very cordial to him, and both he and Mrs. Bush went out of their way to treat him and Mrs. Obama in an urbane and welcoming manner. I started a thread on this--i thought it was important and i still think so. It jerked the carpet out from under any Republicans inclined to immediately begin attacking Mr. Obama as a dangerous socialist, when the President and at least nominal head of the party is graciously accepting the electoral defeat of his party.

Man, what a mistake that was. People lined up to suggest that i had taken leave of my senses and to point out the numerous crimes of Mr. Bush, and to suggest that i hadn't been paying attention for the previous eight years. So much for honesty in the political arena.

I heard that program yesterday on NPR. I was pretty amazed by what I heard. I think paid Internet shills exist ... and that A2K gets its share. I don't think there's a multitude of them here. I think that they pop up around big election times.

Do Tea baggers hire them? I don't personally give them the credit for such strategic thinking...based on other evidence of their behavior.

One thought-provoking quote I recall from the show:
"The only thing worse than a paid Internet troll is an unpaid Internet troll!"

One doesn't expect the teabaggers to get it, and engineer these types of scams. It would be the Koch brothers and their paid advisers who would come up with something like this.

'Course they exist. Welcome to the world of online business, where opinions can be bought, sold and manipulated.

Most people's answers were helpful.

Ultimately, I went with your post as best because people who are looking for info on shills need to know how to find that info using Google.

And yet I suspect ordinary people have been paid to lie for a very long time.

I've seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, after all.

As far as I am aware, to shill originally meant to drive a price up at auction by false bidding.
The seller would arrange for one or two shillers to stand in the crowd and bid, thereby creating more interest among the genuine punters. The shill would go on until said item reached the desired amount, then the false bidders would stop and let the genuine punters take over.

When ebay first started, shilling was pretty rife. False accounts were opened by the seller, so he could bid his own goods up accordingly.

I first heard it from the staff at Tring Auction house, where I worked in my youth.

For a while, I was considering opening a vintage/antiques shop with a picker from another part of the province. He and I both have good 'eyes'. Minz taught me that you make your money in the buying, not the selling. Time with him helped me spot the shills in the farm estate auction crowds. It was fun sometimes to play against them - make the house pay for something they'd meant to send the price up on

One team that used to operate at Tring were all from the same family. The women used to do the "knocking" during the week, basically ripping off people on the doorstep by undervaluing items, and the men would all troop in to the most local auction house at the weekends and sell them.
Their shillers were all close relatives, who nearly all wore small trilby hats (like Boomers haloween one) so were easily spotted by auction staff.
The word would quickly go round and the same thing happened to them. They would end up not only buying their own goods back, but paying buyers AND sellers commision.
It gave everyone a good laugh when it worked, and discouraged them from returning too often.

True enough. I'm aware of it, was an early distruster of advertising, both liking some commercials and being wary of them. Later in life realized that PR as a career a loved one was considering also bothered me - while being awake to the fact that much of PR is reasonable and good and necessary.
edit - that person moved on to another career, but the PR classes were admittedly (by me) useful.


That one sentence of mine meant that the people I've hung around with don't do that.