Shills on the internet
In online discussion media, such as message boards, discussion forums, and newsgroups, shills may pose as in***endent experts, satisfied consumers, or “innocent” parties with specific opinions in order to further the interests of an organization in which they have an interest, such as a commercial vendor...
Another example, although difficult to prove because of the secret and complex nature of shill-marketing, is the potential for a message board Forum administrator to accept sponsorship of the forum or other type of remuneration from a company that sells products related to the theme of the message board, and is paid under the secret condition that he/she protects the anonymity of the sponsor's shill by deleting any outing of the shill's identity and real purpose for using the message board, thus the Forum administrator acts as an auxiliary shill. However, to conceal this agenda the Forum administrator could implement message board membership rules which disallow the outing of any message board member, as a means to explain their thus seemingly innocent protective actions.
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