Hi kspacewalk2,

I'm John and I have views on privacy that are completely genuine and happen to align with what benefits the corporation(s) that my company, TotallyLegitimateComments LLC, contracts for. I believe advertisement is a force for good in the world and can bring together people and products that enrich their lives while creating value for shareholders! While I'd love to share what wonderful businesses my company works with, various privacy agreements prevent us from doing so. However, I can tell you that they all appreciate the fact that you find their views important! We will continue to lobby your congressmen on your behalf to ensure that these views are reflected in the nations laws! Thanks and remember, corporations are people like you and me!

Sincerely, John

It's like push polling... Poller: "Are you A) a reasonable person who agrees with my totally rational question or B) a psychopath who won't THINK OF THE CHILDREN?" Person taking poll: "Uh, A?"

This is a total straw man.

I'm not sure it is.

https://twitter.com/AmazonFCHannah/status/116191039733676851...

Is that satire? I'm genuinely unsure if that's a real account, a shill, innocent satire or malicious satire.

I wonder what that says about the state of "truth" on the Internet.

Wow, that's quite sad to read. Imagine believing a place you spend 10 hours a day at has no effect on your mental health.

Is it? Remember how the FCC got millions of anti net-neutrality comments from some group using stolen identities of people?

https://gizmodo.com/how-an-investigation-of-fake-fcc-comment...

Is it really a point of view, or is it a carefully engineered sequence of words designed to program people with certain opinions? There are lots of ways to "program" people that bypass their rational mind, and creating a false sense of social consensus is one of them.

Also, I noticed that some submissions unfavorable to Google seem to be flagged heavily (at least, they were posted more recently and had more upvotes, than higher-ranking submissions).

Of course, posting and flagging may not be intentional policy of Google, but also the work of individual Google employees.

I totally can confirm this!

It's gotten a little better over the years but still being critical of Google gets you downvoted and flagged quickly.

Also worth highlighting that many HN members work for Google, so they have less incentive to shine light on these issues, sometimes maybe even defend Google.

I would love it for companies to jump into these conversations and defend or explain what's going on. It's less interesting for them to speak through a secret proxy.

That said, I don't think there are nearly as many shills as some people think nor do I think they are very effective.

Not if it's disguised as a private individual (which is the default assumption in discussion forums such as this one).

If a company wants to present its views, they can do so via press releases or clearly mark their posts as such (or via verified accounts like on Twitter).

Honest question: under which law? Does anything actually prohibit companies from employing people from going on forums and shilling? I think it's perfectly fine for the third party platform to have a policy forbidding this, but the government enforcing something like this would not be ok.

I didn't answer the question with laws in mind, as the parent wasn't exactly asking a legal question, but what I would guess would be more a moral one.

IINAL, but since we are at the topic of laws, in the last years influencers (at least in Germany) had to fear hefty fines if they didn't label sponsored posts as such, as that counts for covert advertising. As astroturfing could be construed as advertising, that might fall under the same law.

I think if you want the point of view of a corporation you should feel free to go read their official blog, press releases, etc. They have plenty of ways to spread their point of view that aren't people pretending to be individual commenters.

A corporation is a collection of people. A corporation doesn't have fingers nor mouth, and can't type nor speak. It is always a (series of) paid individual(s) who types and speaks "on behalf of" it.

Note also that "on behalf of" can only exist in response to some prior meeting (or deal) with certain members (board or employees) of the corporation who wish to push "its" policy.

If they want their view heard, they're welcome to share it like everyone else.

Paying someone else to share a very sanitized, market researched version of your opinion while pretending that they're organically sharing their own opinion isn't that. It's dishonest, and it's eroding honest conversations for the sake of advertising.