So far most of the the sibling comments miss the goddamn point: Lululemon reps, salesmen on quora, and in generall situations where you know the person is selling you something are not a problem.
The real thing is shills posing as independent third parties posting praise/visibility/reviews or even complaints about some thing that they have a vested interest in you buying or using. It's most egregious and obvious on reddit, but I guarantee you it's here on HN too.
It made me basically give up on reddit, I spoke to some marketing guy who does it and he was so oblivious to the damage ppl like him have done to the internet.
I've never seen someone here who I thought was legitimately a "shill".
I bet 99% of accusations of "shilling" are false. It seems like everyone wants to believe that the people they disagree with are being paid. It's a form of conspiratorial thinking.
> It seems like everyone wants to believe that the people they disagree with are being paid. It's a form of conspiratorial thinking.
Getting your product to the front page of HN "organically" has gotta be worth a lot, and it would be pretty strange if nothing on the front page was there via some less organic association.
It's not about disagreement or conspiracies, just that everyone talks like they're selling you things now even if they just own the thing and aren't being paid or intentionally 'influencing'. And I remember when it wasn't like that - even on reddit. I don't think it's an intentional thing (which would be your conspiratorial thinking) so much as an emergent property of large, anonymous, loosely connected groups of people where some of the people are only there to sell stuff, which just so happens to be convenient if you're there to sell.
> Getting your product to the front page of HN "organically" has gotta be worth a lot, and it would be pretty strange if nothing on the front page was there via some less organic association.
I mean, it's HN. The orange-username "voting ring" is built right in.
I agree that a lot of people are willing to regurgitate corporate marketing without being paid.
I'm still prepared to call that "shilling".
So-called influencers exist on this basis. Influencers' work is initially unpaid, until they show they have a following and can be comfortably loyal to brands. If you follow growing social media accounts, especially on TikTok and streaming platforms, they'll quite often make it clear they hope to be rewarded later (correctly or incorrectly).
I would actually just prefer this model take over completely. The model where you just stick ads into some unused screen space, popups, commercial breaks, ad segments are hot garbage.
Like I don't really have an issue with someone posting a thread "BIFL Request: Spatulas" and some brand rep being like "Hey I work for $company and we have a thing that might work for you." One of the best answers I ever saw on /r/femalefasionadvice was a Lululemon rep doing a full breakdown of their different product lines, model differences, prices ranges, target markets. Like god damn I wish all ads were like that. It was an actual informative sales pitch.
I think some light regulation that says reps have to be upfront about their affiliations is all that's really needed here.
Such "passive" advertisements (including billboards or the ones you see on the TV) are okay compared to the hyper-targeted advertisements which have pretty much lead us to present-day's dragnet-style surveillance.
