When you can enough for the community using the money you'll get to outweigh any damage this spam would cause.
Assuming these posts would be moderated fairly quickly and thus not have that much impact on the site, would it not be worth posting one of these if it means a $1k donation to stackoverflow.com? How about 10k?
Surely at some point the benefits outweigh the damage.
It doesn't exactly put it in a good light. It's quite stomach turning actually. Having said that, I'm a little tired of HN's never ending ability to find something to be outraged about, so despite this particular thing pushing everyone of my buttons I'm going to pass. The internet is a big place, filled with lots of people doing things, and there's probably enough material out there to always be outraged every day of your life if you really want to be.
Everyone keeps saying this, but what's the option? Discourage exposing scammy behaviour whenever someone could theoretically profit from the attention?
Merely discussing something is not promoting it. The GLBT community has fought this battle again and again, when various parties sought to suppress any mention of homosexuality in public schools, because that would be "promoting the homosexual lifestyle". This discussion may make more people aware of the Samsung contest, but it is in no way a promotion of it.
> Merely discussing something is not promoting it.
But in this particular case it is. There will be people who are interested in the contest, and doesn't mind that dishonest promotional tactics was used.
So would you have preferred that the original poster not bring it up on HN at all? I could just as easily claim that someone who was planning to enter the contest before learning about Samsung's practices will now choose not to. We have no data. In the absence of data, I think the OP did the right thing by letting us know about this.
Max Clifford I think it was said something along the lines of "there's no such thing as bad publicity".
If people are discussing something then you've made them aware of it, you've shown them "this is worth discussing" and you've displayed it as normative. Ergo promotion.
Samsung have got more publicity from this guy than they'd have got if they paid for it. Indeed the conspiracy theorist in me wants to research whether this is actually the primary method of promotion that was intended ... but that's just madness.
This is, in my mind, evidence that companies like this are out of touch. They want to treat Stack Overflow like a search engine and marketing tool to be optimized, and, in their ignorance, don't see it as something different than what it actually is: a community of people passionate about their craft and helping others with it.
Eventually people are going to learn that the way you leverage a community like that toward doing something is to become a respected member of the community yourself. It seems that today is not that say for Samsung. Honestly, they would have been smarter to just have their engineering team dedicate time to answering questions on SO every week, then have a piece done in tech media about why. That is still a bit gimmicky, I guess, but much cooler than this method.
I know that I, at least, would be really entertained to have an exchange with a Samsung engineer about a problem I was having on SO.
Out of touch? This guy maybe, but I would be surprised if SO, like most other communities, wasn't already successfully being gamed by marketeers a hell of a lot smarter than this clown.
And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes.
No place where human beings gather, virtual of physical, is safe from this. It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.
"And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people..."
You're vastly underestimating how many people are interconnected in this hodgepodge of gray matter we call HN.
Blind allegiance (or antipathy) is not how things work here.
Part of the reason this community is different from others is that the best way to respect people like pg or tptacek or anyone else who's been around is to call them on something when you disagree. I think that's how they'd like it as well.
It has nothing to do with being "smarter". It's got everything to do with being genuine.
In that regard SO is at a marked disadvantage because it's such a tempting target for drive-by dropping of bait for marketing. With the exception of a handful of long time contributors, the vast number of accounts there have no discussion between each other (since that itself leads to the question getting closed) and so they have no means to get to know each other really. That's not what happens here.
You can follow people, you can read their past threads. You can even go back and watch people evolve in their thought process with the kinds of discussions we've had. Try that on SO.
With it's connection to YC there's a bit of it implicit in the model - e.g. YC applications.
And, no I am not finding fault with the connection to YC or the special status, just pointing out that the HN playing field is not natural grass, and that it is that way for very reasonable reasons and that it is, in my opinion, almost certainly to the benefit of the HN community.
On a site with a larger commercial tie in, "astroturfing" like "weed" in a horticultural setting lacks scientific definition.
I would even bet you could detect it algorithmically without having access to the server logs. It's usually pretty obvious if you're paying attention to such things. What's interesting is that successful gaming of HN usually involves genuinely interesting content. It may not be front page interesting in it's own right, but there is a lot out there that could be on the front page. Some of it just needs a little push. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
I'm certain I've come across these incidents, but the one thing they and the SO recruits will have in common is that they don't understand what makes a community[1]. That is still their biggest weakness.
Also, from what I've seen, astroturfing for ideology is far more effective than for products since often that's something the participant believes in. And it's easier to elicit emotions over ideology than products (unless we're talking programming languages, but then that's sacred ground to begin with).
Well to be perfectly blunt, any forum with any sort of fan base is being astro-turfed. Its the most popular robot search on Blekko ("Powered by <forum software>") and I'm sure elsewhere as well. Whether by aggressive PR firms, evil politicians, or well meaning communities trying to stop a new dump from being situated near them.
Blind allegiance and antipathy tend to bump into things frequently. The noise they cause makes them easy to spot.
There's noise in any community, but if it's the same alley cats, you learn to ignore them. I always scroll below to the end of the threads (one of the reasons I never seem to get anything done after landing on HN) to see what I've missed. The populist upvotes aren't always the most interesting and below aren't the least so as long as you follow your own rhythm, not swayed by language, it's easy to tell when someone tackles ideas than sentiment.
And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes.
It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.
Those seem fairly contradictory to me. Unless you are saying HN and pg are clueless and lazy, then I guess not.
Samsung is a big (really big) company. Of course some people, especially in the marketing dept, are bound to be out of touch. It does not necessarily means no one at Samsung knows what he's doing (even marketing-wise).
They aren't really out of touch at all. They (or more specifically their marketing arms) just don't care about abusing "communities of people passionate about *" for advertising purposes.
This is really no different than stuffing your mailbox with flyers, sending you spam or having the tv people write product placement into your favorite show.
Evidently it works, which is really disappointing.
I try to refrain from being a spelling nazi here, but "So, I shot back this brisque email" made me laugh. It's like a portmanteau of "brusque" and "brisk."
brisqué | adjective
abrupt or offhand in speech or manner which is showing a wish to deal with things quickly and slightly indecent and liable to shock
Excellent. Not being in Texas anymore has me stranded in a sea of poor BBQ (if you can even call it that). There is simply nothing worth eating in Omaha. The more options the better.
Came across Rudy's during a visit to TX a few years back.
Last year I finally ordered one of their briskets shipped - it was nearly as good delivered. (Even as the last of its dry ice evaporated upon arrival.)
And their example questions would be off-topic on Stack Overflow and likely closed immediately. Whoever is behind this seems to have no idea what SO is and how it works beyond "it's a huge site with programmers on it".
Gumtree (Craigslist equivalent in UK) offered me money to do similar kind of stuff for the sake of "Word of mouth" marketing. They offered bonus if I could post a blog on my personal blog too.
That's sleazy, but it's to be expected now SO is such a significant player in the online developer market. The interesting thing being a question along those lines would be flagged, and closed pretty sharpish.
I can't imagine that this is the last time we'll see people trying this trick though.
I'm very interested in how this plays out. Right now I add Stackexchange to search queries in Google, precisely because the SEO effects haven't hit.
The morality question may not be so black and white, though. If it's ok to accept goodies to monetize a Klout score, why not for StackExchange? Unfortunately, it only takes a small amount of people doing this for a variety of products to ruin the site.
My impression of this as an outsider hearing only one side of the story is Samsung asked an agency to help get the word out in the tech community. The agency probably knows more about advertising than digital, or views digital advertising as Twitter and Klout. I think their less than subtle approach will backfire.
Kim Kardashian gets paid to plug god knows what, and it's not immoral to be a shill.
Thankfully, I wouldn't know what Ms. Kardashian plugs, since I'm not from the US and our regular news coverage doesn't cover such events. But as for shilling not being immoral, I have to say I seriously disagree. Advertising may not be, but shilling certainly is, in my moral code.
"Make it look organic" is a lofty goal, but I don't think it's realistic. As Misery from Ruby Gloom says, you don't tell people you're starting a craze, a craze just happens.
The agency (FLLU) seem really small. Too small in fact, because most companies would engage a substantially larger firm and have account managers and would handle all of this stuff coherently from one place rather than use potentially hundreds of firms this size (3 people).
Before everyone jumps to conclusions... could it not be the case that someone with just a very small bit of budget said "Wouldn't it be great if..." and then hired this little company "I know a few guys who could..." to help promote it, failing to understand what form that promotion would take.
Of course, it can and should be argued that Samsung (and their many departments and entities) had a tighter leash for their managers and such "little" projects and initiatives... but I wouldn't argue that not having a tight enough leash is tantamount to Samsung consciously trying to bribe users.
This is where I long for journalists over bloggers... perhaps someone could find out who hired FLLU? Then perhaps someone could ask that someone the basis for the campaign and whether it was authorised by Samsung.
There are a lot of big companies who cannot even function without hiring tiny companies and freelancers to do the work. I've done marketing contracts for public companies as a one-man operation and had a shocking amount of control over the messaging. It's likely you'd find people at Samsung who think this sort of stuff is great and others who think it is abhorrent. That's the nature of big organizations.
(1) Size of company doesn't justify abusing and lie.
(2) Hiring external agent doesn't clean client's purpose.
(3) No big Korean company hires unknown firm.
So they knew who they're, what they do and how they do before hiring them. Do you think this is one time mistake, not the daily work of the firm?
When I heard this news, I didn't surprise because this is what Samsung does daily basis in Korea. But it was surprise that there's a person who can imagine this happen by mistake.
I'm kinda bummed I didn't submit this myself. I would've loved to cash in on those most precious of internet points. Oh, well. :)
To address the question of discussing this publicly: I don't think I'm doing them any favours right now. I'd like to think that the developer crowd (especially the one at HN) is not as easily swayed by competitions, challenges and brands as to forget sleazy behaviour like this.
I'm calling them out publicly because our places of discussion are very rarely guarded by tall walls. Instead, they let everyone in (and that's what makes them great). The price is that every once in a while we all have to push some people out. That's what I'm trying to do by writing this post.
Also, I apologize for the spelling and grammar, I wrote it early in the morning and my brain was still complaining about sleep deprivation and whatnot. Stupid brain.
P.S. also, guys, can I ask a quick favour? If anyone notices the site is down, please drop me a line (my email is in my profile). It's shared hosting and I'm not sure how well it will cope with top-of-HN. Especially when PST wake up.
I'd love to say it's my amazing architecture and optimizations skills. But it's not. It's just a static blog, generated with Ruhoh (http://ruhoh.com/) and nginx. I'm on Webfaction's cheapest plan, on the Amsterdam servers.
Fascinating that this story has far more upvotes and comments than another similar story, yet both boil down to essentially the same thing: money buys influence.
"Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users"
They could have just bought some ads on Stack Overflow. From the Help Center:
> If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit organizations.
Anyone who finds this shocking, I have news for you; every large company has been and is doing this type of astroturfing all over the internet for well over a decade now.
I guess it can be surprising when you get asked to participate in it directly, but every type of site that's driven by "the public" (Slashdot, Digg, reddit, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc.) is going to be a target for this type of activity.
It's usually pretty obvious, and I think if we ever want it to stop I think it's important to publicly shame companies who do it like this.
Really? Come on. To be fair, since the immediate comparison that jumps to mind is between Samsung and Apple, let's put it right on the table: I don't think Apple does this.
I am sorry if this comment spark off any other pointless debate and argument or offended any Apple Fan boys or Samsung Fan boys.
But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.
Ans Samsung are at the top of this game. They are number 1 in spending on advertising and they spend double the advertising budget compared to 2nd in place. ( And their Rate are pretty awesome too compared to others )
You see heavy advertising on a Newspaper from Samsung? Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence? You should make up your own mind.
Compared to all other dirty thing that Samsung does behind the scene, these things are really tips of the iceberg.
If you don't write favorably about Apple, then they don't invite you to the press releases. So their hands are no cleaner, just far more transparent and public.
Honestly that guy was not convincing at all. He pointed out how some journalists refused his request to ask apple about the address uploading issue and then completely speculated on the reasons why... then went on to makeup some BS reason as to why AllThingsD can criticize apple while still remaining in contact with him. After being in litigation with apple, this guy is clearly biased. If you read the comments people point out his agenda.
1. It's not silly to think that. See: Game Industry and Game Blogs.
2. You rarely hear about journalists getting blacklisted from events because a. the general public rarely cares or b. if they do they call the journalist, a 'whiner'.
But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.
Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".
Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence
Good point; Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them.
Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".
Except in this case I don't think this claim was true at all.
So how many happy Samsung customers does that translate to, when the rest of their phones are not doing so well and GS3/GN2 are hardly as numerous as any model of iPhone?
Apple simply does not engage in anything even remotely resembling astroturfing. The simplest reason is that they don't need to, but the more accurate reason is that it's not in the company culture to do things like that.
As a semi-related example, I'm sure you're familiar with product placement in TV shows and movies. Most product placement is done because the company paid for it to be there (for example, all of the Windows 8 stuff I've seen in Arrow I'm certain is paid product placement). However, despite the fact that Apple products are used frequently in TV shows and movies, Apple does not pay for product placement; all the Apple product placement you see was free.
In any case, I personally don't think Apple is the only company that doesn't engage in astroturfing. I'm sure there are many large companies out there that don't do it.
Apple has a team dedicated to making sure their products are easy to access and deploy in a movie/TV, and a preferred choice. They don't pay cash, but they absolutely push their products into movies/TV.
No, they "lose" phones in bars though (twice) and do other very sneaky things. Apple is super sneaky. They also do things like making gimped software and drivers for other platforms part of their business plan. I consider this worse than astroturfing.
What are you talking about? Trust me, when a prototype device gets stolen in a bar, that's absolutely not guerrilla marketing. That was serious business, and I'm certain the only reason the engineer didn't get fired is because it would have been bad PR. Apple takes its prototype hardware extremely seriously.
And I really have no idea what you mean with the "gimped software and drivers for other platforms" claim.
On reddit, I often see comments about upcoming games that really strike me as astroturfing... It's mainly that it makes so much sense for manufacturers to do this (word of mouth is more compelling than "advertising"), that I can't imagine them not doing it. So when a post is just emptily positive in a generic way ("Really looking forward to this!"), with no content to suggest it's not astroturfing, I assume it is.
I think one way it can be given away is not from an individual comment, but in the context of all the comments on that story. But if it's done well, it's impossible to distinguish.
It also is found most podcasts; if you hear a recommendation in a podcast, there is a high likelyhood that the recommended company sponsors|ed the podcast -- either through money, access, or 'perks'. Even in cases where sponsorship is disclosed, there is generally no separation between the podcasters and the acquisition of sponsors.
Editorial integrity is long dead on the Internet; its long since time to get used to turning a critical eye to technology-related editorial content.
Mm, probably the reason that everyone "knew" that the US was engaged in extralegal spying for quite some time, but the outrage didn't legitimately start until the actual documents were leaked.
That said, I'd be really, really surprised if Apple engaged in that kind of shenanigans. Their own customers are better product evangelists than any PR shilling company could ever hope to be.
Except those sites are driven by votes and comments float to the top via lots of anonymous voting. Which is both a boon and a bane. It helps drown out the crap but also helps to promote idiotic groupthink and censor dissent.
Wow, this is an interesting topic. I especially like the informative news link. I was also wondering if anyone here has heard of the Samsung Smart App Challenge because I was thinking of entering. I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest Samsung devices. I also heard that Samsung devices are 4X faster than leading competitors devices because of their advanced technology. Does anyone else here have questions about Samsung's latest products and services because I heard they have great brochures and contests all the time and amazing fast technology in their devices that are affordable for all budgets.
Thank you and please visit our web site .... Oh wait, am supposed to paste this paragraph too? I better ask John do I paste the entire email body or just the first paragraph?
Hi John,
I pasted the email you sent as instructed. Is it $500 per paragraph per post? I have high HN karma so my rate is $500 per paragraph. Also I responded to several posts about child trafficking because it was a very interesting discussion, hope you don't mind.
> I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest Samsung devices.
yes I heard of it too and I am going to submit an app! Wish me luck. I am submitting my battery draining app. By the way do you know how Samsung Touchwiz manages to heat up my phone? It is an awesome feature and it seems to be unique to Samsung because I could not find the function the Android SDK! Can you believe that?! Ha!
I really look forward to winning the new Galaxy Note as I compared it to a bunch of other Android phones and it seems that it not only offers the best hardware but also the biggest surface for heat dissipation. I have a cold currently and can't stop thinking about how awesome it would be if I could use my cell phone as a portable hot-water bag.
That reminds me of a story about Samsung and illness: 2003 I had a heart attack. I was so shaky and panicked that instead of the emergency services I dialed the Samsung hotline.
I got to speak to a support agent instantly! He calmed me down and explained to me how there is a secret resuscitation function built into my current Samsung phone then he hung up. As my heart rate came to a halt I yanked up the vibration strength in the settings menu and with his callback a powerful electric shock ran through my body giving my heart the much needed kick to start beating again.
As I thanked him he explained that this function was not openly advertised because Bill Gates had a patent on breaking bones through muscle contractions caused by an electric shock for using a Linux product. But because the implementation was too similar Samsung hid the feature.
160 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 232 ms ] threadAssuming these posts would be moderated fairly quickly and thus not have that much impact on the site, would it not be worth posting one of these if it means a $1k donation to stackoverflow.com? How about 10k?
Surely at some point the benefits outweigh the damage.
$2 is about right (http://www.thepricegeek.com/results/my+integrity?country=us)
What Samsung asked him to do is way worse than prostitution.
This is an awesome post and it is fair to be in HN, but in some way just gave to Samsung what they wanted.
But in this particular case it is. There will be people who are interested in the contest, and doesn't mind that dishonest promotional tactics was used.
If people are discussing something then you've made them aware of it, you've shown them "this is worth discussing" and you've displayed it as normative. Ergo promotion.
Samsung have got more publicity from this guy than they'd have got if they paid for it. Indeed the conspiracy theorist in me wants to research whether this is actually the primary method of promotion that was intended ... but that's just madness.
Eventually people are going to learn that the way you leverage a community like that toward doing something is to become a respected member of the community yourself. It seems that today is not that say for Samsung. Honestly, they would have been smarter to just have their engineering team dedicate time to answering questions on SO every week, then have a piece done in tech media about why. That is still a bit gimmicky, I guess, but much cooler than this method.
I know that I, at least, would be really entertained to have an exchange with a Samsung engineer about a problem I was having on SO.
And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes.
No place where human beings gather, virtual of physical, is safe from this. It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.
"And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people..."
You're vastly underestimating how many people are interconnected in this hodgepodge of gray matter we call HN.
Blind allegiance (or antipathy) is not how things work here.
Part of the reason this community is different from others is that the best way to respect people like pg or tptacek or anyone else who's been around is to call them on something when you disagree. I think that's how they'd like it as well.
It has nothing to do with being "smarter". It's got everything to do with being genuine.
In that regard SO is at a marked disadvantage because it's such a tempting target for drive-by dropping of bait for marketing. With the exception of a handful of long time contributors, the vast number of accounts there have no discussion between each other (since that itself leads to the question getting closed) and so they have no means to get to know each other really. That's not what happens here.
You can follow people, you can read their past threads. You can even go back and watch people evolve in their thought process with the kinds of discussions we've had. Try that on SO.
And, no I am not finding fault with the connection to YC or the special status, just pointing out that the HN playing field is not natural grass, and that it is that way for very reasonable reasons and that it is, in my opinion, almost certainly to the benefit of the HN community.
On a site with a larger commercial tie in, "astroturfing" like "weed" in a horticultural setting lacks scientific definition.
Also, from what I've seen, astroturfing for ideology is far more effective than for products since often that's something the participant believes in. And it's easier to elicit emotions over ideology than products (unless we're talking programming languages, but then that's sacred ground to begin with).
[1] SO is most certainly not a "community".
You may have missed a few threads. HN has had brand/tribe/loyalty slap-fights. More than a few. And more frequently as of late.
Blind allegiance and antipathy tend to bump into things frequently. The noise they cause makes them easy to spot.
There's noise in any community, but if it's the same alley cats, you learn to ignore them. I always scroll below to the end of the threads (one of the reasons I never seem to get anything done after landing on HN) to see what I've missed. The populist upvotes aren't always the most interesting and below aren't the least so as long as you follow your own rhythm, not swayed by language, it's easy to tell when someone tackles ideas than sentiment.
And you're vastly underestimating how easy astroturfing is to do, and how cheap/effective it is to implement with a captive audience (i.e. HN).
It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.
Those seem fairly contradictory to me. Unless you are saying HN and pg are clueless and lazy, then I guess not.
This is really no different than stuffing your mailbox with flyers, sending you spam or having the tv people write product placement into your favorite show.
Evidently it works, which is really disappointing.
It... did not end well.
http://www.snowsbbq.com/
Better yet, show up in person on a Saturday before 11ish when they sell out of all their meat and enjoy some BBQ for breakfast! ;)
Last year I finally ordered one of their briskets shipped - it was nearly as good delivered. (Even as the last of its dry ice evaporated upon arrival.)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7192/update-on-gpu-optimizatio...
Maybe they know that the HTC One is a better phone?
Still sucks that legit users end up being contacted over it though.
I can't imagine that this is the last time we'll see people trying this trick though.
The morality question may not be so black and white, though. If it's ok to accept goodies to monetize a Klout score, why not for StackExchange? Unfortunately, it only takes a small amount of people doing this for a variety of products to ruin the site.
My impression of this as an outsider hearing only one side of the story is Samsung asked an agency to help get the word out in the tech community. The agency probably knows more about advertising than digital, or views digital advertising as Twitter and Klout. I think their less than subtle approach will backfire.
By "monetize a Klout score," you mean spam your followers on social networks sites, right? That seems pretty morally clear to me.
Kim Kardashian gets paid to plug god knows what, and it's not immoral to be a shill.
That isn't to say that I would do it. (I won't) But it isn't black and white. It might be a dark gray, but it's still gray.
Thankfully, I wouldn't know what Ms. Kardashian plugs, since I'm not from the US and our regular news coverage doesn't cover such events. But as for shilling not being immoral, I have to say I seriously disagree. Advertising may not be, but shilling certainly is, in my moral code.
I guess that one could have worked. A real question on some programming problem having this as a side note...
They didn't really understand SO, but they could have done worse.
> Does Apple have to fall back on these kinds of tricks?
Are you suggesting that Apple is pretending to be Samsung and soliciting shills? That's impressively tinfoil-hat-y, especially given that Samsung has been caught practicing questionable marketing techniques before (http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to-posting..., http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-sams..., http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/samsung-sor...)
Before everyone jumps to conclusions... could it not be the case that someone with just a very small bit of budget said "Wouldn't it be great if..." and then hired this little company "I know a few guys who could..." to help promote it, failing to understand what form that promotion would take.
Of course, it can and should be argued that Samsung (and their many departments and entities) had a tighter leash for their managers and such "little" projects and initiatives... but I wouldn't argue that not having a tight enough leash is tantamount to Samsung consciously trying to bribe users.
This is where I long for journalists over bloggers... perhaps someone could find out who hired FLLU? Then perhaps someone could ask that someone the basis for the campaign and whether it was authorised by Samsung.
So they knew who they're, what they do and how they do before hiring them. Do you think this is one time mistake, not the daily work of the firm?
When I heard this news, I didn't surprise because this is what Samsung does daily basis in Korea. But it was surprise that there's a person who can imagine this happen by mistake.
I'm kinda bummed I didn't submit this myself. I would've loved to cash in on those most precious of internet points. Oh, well. :)
To address the question of discussing this publicly: I don't think I'm doing them any favours right now. I'd like to think that the developer crowd (especially the one at HN) is not as easily swayed by competitions, challenges and brands as to forget sleazy behaviour like this.
I'm calling them out publicly because our places of discussion are very rarely guarded by tall walls. Instead, they let everyone in (and that's what makes them great). The price is that every once in a while we all have to push some people out. That's what I'm trying to do by writing this post.
Also, I apologize for the spelling and grammar, I wrote it early in the morning and my brain was still complaining about sleep deprivation and whatnot. Stupid brain.
P.S. also, guys, can I ask a quick favour? If anyone notices the site is down, please drop me a line (my email is in my profile). It's shared hosting and I'm not sure how well it will cope with top-of-HN. Especially when PST wake up.
(I kid).
"Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users"
vs
"NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140881
> If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit organizations.
http://stackoverflow.com/help/behavior
That would have been a lot less sleazy, and probably would have gotten more views than most questions about programming contest code.
I guess it can be surprising when you get asked to participate in it directly, but every type of site that's driven by "the public" (Slashdot, Digg, reddit, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc.) is going to be a target for this type of activity.
It's usually pretty obvious, and I think if we ever want it to stop I think it's important to publicly shame companies who do it like this.
But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.
Ans Samsung are at the top of this game. They are number 1 in spending on advertising and they spend double the advertising budget compared to 2nd in place. ( And their Rate are pretty awesome too compared to others )
You see heavy advertising on a Newspaper from Samsung? Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence? You should make up your own mind.
Compared to all other dirty thing that Samsung does behind the scene, these things are really tips of the iceberg.
The ones that don't get invited are those that buys stolen goods to be able to show off unannounced products.
2. You rarely hear about journalists getting blacklisted from events because a. the general public rarely cares or b. if they do they call the journalist, a 'whiner'.
Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".
Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence
Good point; Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them.
I'm a Mac, I'm a PC? Classy, well-done trashing, sure, but straight up naming-names trashing it was.
Except in this case I don't think this claim was true at all.
When your customer satisfaction numbers are that high, who needs to pay for astroturf?
As a semi-related example, I'm sure you're familiar with product placement in TV shows and movies. Most product placement is done because the company paid for it to be there (for example, all of the Windows 8 stuff I've seen in Arrow I'm certain is paid product placement). However, despite the fact that Apple products are used frequently in TV shows and movies, Apple does not pay for product placement; all the Apple product placement you see was free.
In any case, I personally don't think Apple is the only company that doesn't engage in astroturfing. I'm sure there are many large companies out there that don't do it.
What ??
"X" instead DO not even make software or drivers for other platform ( Mac and Linux ), what do you consider those company then?
And I really have no idea what you mean with the "gimped software and drivers for other platforms" claim.
Other then that I can say nothing more.
I think one way it can be given away is not from an individual comment, but in the context of all the comments on that story. But if it's done well, it's impossible to distinguish.
Editorial integrity is long dead on the Internet; its long since time to get used to turning a critical eye to technology-related editorial content.
That said, I'd be really, really surprised if Apple engaged in that kind of shenanigans. Their own customers are better product evangelists than any PR shilling company could ever hope to be.
I'd have to agree, but Samsung's flavor of astroturfing is pretty gentle and benign compared to the viciousness of microsoft' attack dogs.
Thank you and please visit our web site .... Oh wait, am supposed to paste this paragraph too? I better ask John do I paste the entire email body or just the first paragraph?
Hi John,
I pasted the email you sent as instructed. Is it $500 per paragraph per post? I have high HN karma so my rate is $500 per paragraph. Also I responded to several posts about child trafficking because it was a very interesting discussion, hope you don't mind.
Thanks. Still waiting FOR MY Check, John!
> I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest Samsung devices.
yes I heard of it too and I am going to submit an app! Wish me luck. I am submitting my battery draining app. By the way do you know how Samsung Touchwiz manages to heat up my phone? It is an awesome feature and it seems to be unique to Samsung because I could not find the function the Android SDK! Can you believe that?! Ha!
I really look forward to winning the new Galaxy Note as I compared it to a bunch of other Android phones and it seems that it not only offers the best hardware but also the biggest surface for heat dissipation. I have a cold currently and can't stop thinking about how awesome it would be if I could use my cell phone as a portable hot-water bag. That reminds me of a story about Samsung and illness: 2003 I had a heart attack. I was so shaky and panicked that instead of the emergency services I dialed the Samsung hotline. I got to speak to a support agent instantly! He calmed me down and explained to me how there is a secret resuscitation function built into my current Samsung phone then he hung up. As my heart rate came to a halt I yanked up the vibration strength in the settings menu and with his callback a powerful electric shock ran through my body giving my heart the much needed kick to start beating again.
As I thanked him he explained that this function was not openly advertised because Bill Gates had a patent on breaking bones through muscle contractions caused by an electric shock for using a Linux product. But because the implementation was too similar Samsung hid the feature.
Beat that Apple!