avi
Keymaster
http://bgr.com/2013/10/24/samsung-paid-anti-htc-trolls/
LOL, didn't know that companies would go upto this extent
LOL, didn't know that companies would go upto this extent
Samsung fined for paying off trolls to bash HTC on the web
- Thread starter avi
- Start date
- Status
letmein
Herald
avi
Keymaster
blr_p
Oracle
http://bgr.com/2013/10/24/samsung-paid-anti-htc-trolls/
LOL, didn't know that companies would go upto this extent
This was in Taiwan that Samsung was caught.
From bloomberg
How did the Taiwan FTC actually go about proving this charge ?
Here you go.
The third-party advertising agency hired by Samsung Electronics Taiwan got caught; I guess the investigators knew how to crack down on the origins of the comments. Basically, this is advertising without letting the viewers/readers know that it is actually an advertisement.
Microsoft has been in this situation before more than a decade back, when the Internet was still in its infancy; though they were caught for offline campaigns. Many cigarette companies also engaged in such behaviour (still do?), and I'm very sure oil companies do the same against other greener technologies and climate change. And political parties all around the world, they are the masters of such tactics even before computers were available.
You can start here and read the history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
According to one data mining expert, one-third of all book reviews on the Internet are fake. Alternatively, someone could do the opposite for a competitor and have their books bombarded with 1-star, 2-star and 3-star reviews. I guess Samsung tried something along those lines here.
blr_p
Oracle
Ah,ok recall something like this a few months ago, so the news here is that investigation concluded and samsung has been found guilty. Samsung offering regrets kinda means they admitted it. Not really but sorta.
April is about the time the htc one was out and was all the rage. It was either s4 or htc one. Most reviews i saw did not favour one over the other. A tie.[DOUBLEPOST=1382632275][/DOUBLEPOST]
April is about the time the htc one was out and was all the rage. It was either s4 or htc one. Most reviews i saw did not favour one over the other. A tie.[DOUBLEPOST=1382632275][/DOUBLEPOST]
I call this the one star reviewer phenomenon, its very difficult to seperate genuine complaints from operator error or ignorance. Harder to make your mind up whenever buying something.
Last edited:
Samsung has managed to land itself in a big soup. Already battling a slew of cases filed by Apple against it, Samsung has been caught apparently "paying for false praise and negative comments about competitors and has been fined just over $340,000".
Apparently, the issue came to light in April after Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) opened an investigation into the allegations against Samsung. Investigations found that the allegations were true and that Samsung had used a "large number of hired writers and designated employees" to post negative comments about competitors in Taiwanese forums.
The FTC revealed that Samsung did this through a third party marketing company. Apart from Samsung, two local marketing firms were fined a combined total of over $100,000.
Though the FTC’s report doesn’t mention the targetted company, reports of HTC being Samsung’s victim of the defamation campaign spread fast. The FTC, in its report said that the company, Samsung, paid people to "highlight the shortcomings of competing products".
In its report, FTC also said that Samsung had been involved in a number of infractions that included "disinfection of negative news about Samsung products", "palindromic Samsung product marketing", something which is known in the industry as "astroturfing".
Though not the only company to have been involved in such an activity, it has been caught red-handed twice this year alone
Source here
Apparently, the issue came to light in April after Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) opened an investigation into the allegations against Samsung. Investigations found that the allegations were true and that Samsung had used a "large number of hired writers and designated employees" to post negative comments about competitors in Taiwanese forums.
The FTC revealed that Samsung did this through a third party marketing company. Apart from Samsung, two local marketing firms were fined a combined total of over $100,000.
Though the FTC’s report doesn’t mention the targetted company, reports of HTC being Samsung’s victim of the defamation campaign spread fast. The FTC, in its report said that the company, Samsung, paid people to "highlight the shortcomings of competing products".
In its report, FTC also said that Samsung had been involved in a number of infractions that included "disinfection of negative news about Samsung products", "palindromic Samsung product marketing", something which is known in the industry as "astroturfing".
Though not the only company to have been involved in such an activity, it has been caught red-handed twice this year alone
Source here
red-devil
Forerunner
Without naming names, advertising is advertising, intrusive or subtle, explicit or disguised. You may choose to like it or hate it but you'll always know it was advertising. Dissing and trolling is a completely different thing, where you're not 100% sure of whether it was genuine or not.
The human mind being what it is, you will more readily attribute negativity as genuine and effusiveness as guile. Trolling basically exploits this to create negative opinion about entities. The immaturity of a company or political party or any other organisation is exhibited as they have no positive competitive traits. It's mud-slinging and despicable, and I wouldn't put it past a company like Samsung to do this.
Most tech companies in and of the far east employ professionals to do this, and they have recruited enough and more stooges in India as well. Over the long term, you can expect it to become standard business practice. PR agencies will be recommending professional trolling as a strategy to clients.
The human mind being what it is, you will more readily attribute negativity as genuine and effusiveness as guile. Trolling basically exploits this to create negative opinion about entities. The immaturity of a company or political party or any other organisation is exhibited as they have no positive competitive traits. It's mud-slinging and despicable, and I wouldn't put it past a company like Samsung to do this.
Most tech companies in and of the far east employ professionals to do this, and they have recruited enough and more stooges in India as well. Over the long term, you can expect it to become standard business practice. PR agencies will be recommending professional trolling as a strategy to clients.
All do it. Apparently, someone did the same for the BBM app on the Play Store but it might have been done inadvertantly by a spammer.
Whereas I agree with your inference, the fact is that the democratisation of any field means the number of gullible people will always be greater than, and always increase faster than the best of minds.
I suspect that troll specialists know clearly who to target and whom to avoid.
We've had a case here in the recent past when a 'representative' of Corsair (and claiming to be from 'Corsair, of course!' ) started a thread. The first post stank of a troll and after being told off, has not shown up since
blr_p
Oracle
Yeah, people that go to a shop and let the sales person make their mind up. Whatever he sells is best and what he does not have is not mentioned. There is a tangible gain to be had by skewing perceptions. FUD works well. If this is what samsung was caught doing in taiwan then the FTA was doing its job.
With most things in life there isn't a substitute for doing your homework, then testing those ideas out in a forum. Unfortunately this takes work and costs time. Its inevitable as choice increases. There is a learning curve, which once overcome makes the next decision easier. The best person to answer the questions you have is yourself.
The simplest test i apply is the tone, what emotions are being aroused, use of superlatives etc. Any of those and you know you're being sold something. So often people want to know what is the best of something, i find increasingly it boils down to least worst. This is not some cup half full or empty thing, cons can be significant, compromises non-trivial.
Last edited:
- Status