[murphyslab]

I remember a comment linked in bestof where someone who works in advertising explained how he would build up a bunch of Reddit accounts, each with a different profile so when an opportunity to tell a fabricated story came up, he could place a product plug in an AskReddit thread or similar.

He wouldn't even directly name the product. As an example, if he were selling a particular brand of boots, he would mention how great his boots performed but not mention the brand. Naturally someone will ask for the brand as a recommendation and voilà he plugs the product in the most natural fashion. It doesn't seem like an ad because he was just directly answering another user's question. But the entire build-up to that moment was manufactured to sell the product.

[tooltower]

I'm starting to accept that maybe our current social media sites and aggregators are inherently vulnerable to manipulation. IRL social structures without broadcasting capabilities has fewer of these problems, since the reward is less.

Maybe there's some way to have the best of both worlds, but I don't know how.

[GoblinSlayer]

This is how it happens in meatspace: http://web.archive.org/web/20210831185116/https://www.wdsu.c...

[zozbot234]

Broadcasting capabilities is fine, but not when broadcasting is the only choice we get. Narrowcasting to a select audience is just as important, and this is what smaller sites (even including HN itself) can excel at.

[hvidgaard]

This is not new to social media, but it has made it pervasive.

[faeyanpiraat]

There is a similar scheme going rampant in youtube comment sections, where a comment starts off with a couple of relevant sentences, then goes on shilling something, and there is a fake discussion going on under the comment, and everything has a lot of thumbs ups.

This is especially prevalent under videos discussing financial topics.