Cash For Tweets and Facebook Posts? Aussie Startup Pays You to Astroturf 156
An anonymous reader writes "While the celebs are already charging big money for their Tweets, an Aussie startup is ranking everyday people and turning them into product salespeople. After a successful start Down Under they have now hit Silicon Valley, but will Americans embrace selling to their friends?"
From the article: "In a nutshell, individuals sign up to the Social Loot website and are assigned companies to promote to their circle of online friends. They are then paid on a sliding scale based on the amount of traffic their posts generate, and the quality of referrals and number of resulting sales. This is tracked by a code embedded in the links promoted by Social Loot’s spruikers."
This should be considered illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
The same should apply to tweets. They are broadcasts, and so the people making them should disclose whether it is advertising or not.
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Can't have it both ways. Either free speech, paid or not, or, a form of censorship. Because someone will have to be enforcing the disclosure requirement. and that someone would _have_ to be given authority to investigate any twitterer. On the scale of the internet this is _insane_.
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It's just a matter of time til everyone knows twitter is for suckers that want to read a bunch of really short astroturf
About minus four years?
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
You make a good point. When the Alan Jones cash for comments scandal broke, he got absolutely slammed in court for not disclosing who was paying him to promote various things on his show. The same should apply to tweets. They are broadcasts, and so the people making them should disclose whether it is advertising or not.
Or you could just not be friends with people who will spam you with crap so they can earn 8 cents a week.
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
You dont understand ho astroturfing works. The goal is transparency and deception. Astroturfing appears as opinion, but is actually scumbag capitalism.
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You dont understand ho astroturfing works. The goal is transparency and deception. Astroturfing appears as opinion, but is actually scumbag capitalism.
As I understand it, astroturfing doesn't work without people to participate in the process. Don't be friends with those people and you won't have to wonder whether you're hearing opinion or advertising.
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The point is that the entire of goal of astroturfing is to make it as hard as possible to distinguish astroturf from genuine opinion. If you can't tell the difference then you can't unfriend only the astroturfers. Especially when the astroturfer realyl is genuine 90% of the time and only schills on rare occasion.
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:4, Informative)
This one relies on embedded codes in their URLs to measure their effectiveness ; it wouldn't be difficult to detect.
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You don't have to, there's various "un-shortening" and "URL lengthening" services, along with plugins for pretty much every browser, available that do it for you, often fully transparently.
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do this the simple way and if you run FireFox load the "long Url Please" addon
Transparency? (Score:2)
Quit the opposite, actually.
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wtf? reactionary hyperbole?
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Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
Just unfriend such so called "friends" (Score:4, Insightful)
After politely warning them to cease such activity. I cannot understand why there are so many people that want to involve the government in everything, which is what happens when you advocate something you don't like should be made illegal.
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A government that doesn't protect the 99% from the 1%, who have consistently shown themselves to embody the most pernicious, sociopathic forms of Randism (which is all of them), is no government worth having.
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How do you know Microsoft Office respects your privacy, do you have access to the source? From what I've heard Microsoft at the very least keeps track of the hardware on which you run its software.
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:4, Informative)
How do you know Microsoft Office respects your privacy, do you have access to the source?
You don't need it. It runs on your local machine, so you can check every network connection that it makes and, more importantly, you can trivially prevent it from making any network connections.
From what I've heard Microsoft at the very least keeps track of the hardware on which you run its software.
And the reason you know this (it's related to Windows Update, not MS Office specifically) is that people did intercept the data sent to Microsoft from Windows Update and found out exactly what was being sent.
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You don't need it. It runs on your local machine, so you can check every network connection that it makes and, more importantly, you can trivially prevent it from making any network connections.
I'm not saying office does anything but malicious, but it would be trivial for Microsoft to put a backdoor in their own OS.
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Assuming they are incompetent.
For example, the 'microsoft update' scheme is as I understand it run on an unencrypted protocol.
There would be nothing stopping office telling the update client to send a few bytes of data along with that stream.
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Privacy Policies don't exist at the moment in a complicated form to help you or define your rights. it's for legal indemnity for any company that has them if it's more than 8-10 sentences long.
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I admit I'm very impressed! I know I'm sticking my neck out depending on the eyes of many others to verify that open source programs such as libreoffice respect privacy, but you relying on the output of a disasembler to reveal all potential downfalls of a program all by your lonesome far exceeds my meager abilities. My hat is off to you!
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using Microsoft.IO.Evil
...
//Phone Home Module ------ Mwahaha
public class PhoneHomeMessenger(string firstName, string lastName, string creditCardNumber, List secretWebcamPhotos)
{ .... }
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I just knew you'd be here, blowing smoke up Microsoft's arse or slamming Google for something unrelated.
How much do you get paid for this bullshilling you have been doing now for such a long time under oh-so-many different accounts?
Do you look forward to the competition from Social Loot, or do you work for/through them now?
Anyway, good work - any pay you receive is too much as you are such an obvious shill.
And, before you protest that you don't get paid -- well if that's true then you need psych help; but
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Phew. Thank you for reminding me to bump up my threshold after moderation.
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Since when is pitching products illegal. It's not something I'd do to my friends for products I don't believe in though.
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It's specifically an Australian company. Australia does have some rules about having to disclose when you are being paid to say something.
They apply to the media, but who knows when a court will decide that a tweet is the same as a hosting a radio show.
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with selling product. This is all about corruptly flooding forums with trolls, thousands of them. The marketing and promotional lie is selling products to friends the reality is poisoning every possible social network with an endless stream of bullshit marketing.
How long will an social site's last when you have a couple of hundred thousand trolls flooding the site with links, desperate to collect a couple of cents per click.
The guy is nothing but another mass trolling pig. Doesn't give a crap about people's social interactions, quite happy to bring them all crashing down, basically he wants to become a social forum spammer and that's what the arse hole is selling to corporations.
You can filter out some IP's but not hundreds of thousands of scattered ones, you can block robots but not hundreds of thousands of pathetic greedy ignorant trolls.
A purveyor of lies on a mass scale. Of course the trolls he employs will become the most hated people on the internet, kicked out of social network after social network.
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Are you telling me that this is gonna kill Facebook and Twitter? Really? REALLY?
Naa, you're just saying it to make me happy!
Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
In previous years, usenet was a social gathering ground on the internet.. being unmoderated was its strength, but also its weakness and Canter & Siegel started a movement that killed it eventually. This has the capability to kill off twitter and facebook sure, but since they both have a controlling entity who could institute moderation then perhaps they can stave off demise by some quick thinking..
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It's not Facebook or Twitter that need to react. It's the people who receive the message. I unfollow and unfriend people who post pointless spam, that's the solution. People lose their audience and soon they are worth nothing.
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Which doesn't really matter on a social network. I have a limited number of contacts. If the filters the site use don't work then it's a few seconds work for me to ignore or remove the person who posted it. People have been doing company sponsored advertising for years, the get a free iPad links being one of the more recent examples. Some people
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The guy is nothing but another mass trolling pig. Doesn't give a crap about people's social interactions, quite happy to bring them all crashing down, basically he wants to become a social forum spammer and that's what the arse hole is selling to corporations.
The world you're looking for is capitalist or "job creator" if you're Republican. This is practically the history of corporations. Find a new untapped resource and spoil it for everyone else by monetising it in the filthiest way possible until the "evil government" steps in to protect people from the "upstanding businessman" who is "creating wealth".
I fully agree with you, Facebook and Twitter will be entering a war with companies like this if they know what's good for them. This is really no different f
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Don't worry about Facebook (or, in my case, don't get your hopes up).
What will happen is simply this: FB will notice that there are people getting paid to spill crap. They'll change their TOS and forbid shilling (at least if you don't pay them for it), a few people will get their account banned and everyone else will cower in fear of being the next and the whole crap stops.
What's left is the "professional" shills. Just like you have today.
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How long will an social site's last when you have a couple of hundred thousand trolls flooding the site with links,...
They seem to be coping just fine at the moment.
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Re:This should be considered illegal (Score:5, Funny)
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This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.
What if I post my dropbox referral code? I don't get anything but free space.
Ahem - hey, I like dropbox, check it out! http://db.tt/hfwPL1N [db.tt] Sign up with that code and you get 500 megs free too!
lol. It's funny because it's true.
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This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.
Kill it before it multiplies. Hang and eviscerate on site.
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Damn rite... Its a sham two sea that people don't no their language and it's spelling rules...
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This will fall under what I call "affiliate marketing laws" and the FTC is very serious about them. Go read their website (the ftc) and you'll see how many people and companies they've sued recently.
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Hush! If anyone from the IRS hears you they want some virtual property tax or similar bull.
oh no here come shills, (Score:2)
i quit reading facebook update because of all of the adds for different games and crap on facebook. all i wanted was to know what my freinds who do not live near me where doing in meatspace now all there is are posts of "look at this funny/inspirational/religious/photoshopped picture some else posted i and i am reposting" and "i am playing a flash game you need to play the flash game to" i don't want to see more freaking adds. can we a decrapafied section of the Internet where we all agree that any spammer
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While I agree with your overall point, you shouldn't post when drunk.
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Working on it. First thing to fix: the search engine. I think Google has gotten all the money they are possibly going to get at this point from overlooking SEOs, and should start delisting all of them immediately. Ask the founders to try and find something using their own search engine; when they find it littered with ads, perhaps they will feel motivated to find a way to fix it.
On a separate note, I've been equally annoyed about the Web 2.0, sell your Facebook friends, kind of thing. I have a few friends w
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I don't really use Facebook so I can't give you a specific guide but you can just filter out all that stuff so only 'real' posts appear on your page.
on a totally unrelated unbiased note (Score:5, Funny)
Social Loot has the best service to offer so far. We testet all the available options besides Social Loot and Social Loot is the winner for us. Social Loot.
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+5 Funny
Re:on a totally unrelated unbiased note (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ah, excellent... (Score:5, Insightful)
With any luck, this should allow automated recognition of people who are astroturfing for these guys and it's always good to have a new way of identifying awful people. At a service level, the astroturf can then be removed, downranked by search engines, etc. At a personal level, we can each do our part by reminding those culprits we know that spammers are abhuman scum who go to the special hell, and deserve it.
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Not really, most of them will probably be companies you never would have heard of otherwise. This is probably going to work on the same principle as spam. They'll post a million shill messages and if they sell 4 of the product, it'll be consider a "success".
Ah-ha! (Score:2)
I was wondering why all my friends suddenly started trying to get me to buy a 747 with a big laser on it.
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i would like a shark with a fricking laser on it.
sue them (Score:1)
So, is it age related or IQ related... (Score:2)
I can see it both ways - the youth will be jaded with familiarity about how the world works (wait - new patent idea = "how the worlds works + ON THE INTERNET") vs the wisdom of the more experienced... I don't have a good sample - my kids, are, well, young(er) AND smart, so I have confounding factors in my data points... but they don't believe half the shit on the Internet as it is. How old is the phrase "caveat empt
In Britain... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Britain... (Score:4, Funny)
In the US, we can call it 'Prostituting for Pennies'.
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In Poland, we call it "Peddling for Pebbles".
Futurama new this day would come (Score:1)
Innovative new spam ideas! (Score:1)
Block It (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about Twitter at least, but on Facebook, all the posts came from the Social Loot application. It took all of 5 seconds to "block all posts from Social Loot" to my wall, and now I need never know of its existence (except for Slashdot - thanks guys).
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# /etc/hosts
#
#
127.0.0.1 localhost twitter.com fb.com facebook.com ... ...
No more trust. (Score:4, Interesting)
Great. So now when a friend or acquaintance says something nice about a product or service, I won't be able to trust their opinion because I won't know if they were paid to say it or not.
Nice job polluting Twitter and other sites with stupid marketing and more distrust in what people say. It's freaking bad enough already.
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If they are the kind of friend who would push products on you just because they are getting paid then you probably couldn't trust their opinion anyway. Now at least you know. The friends who give you a well reasoned recommendation or information about their personal experience with a product / service can probably be trusted. The 'friends' who send you a referrer link out of the blue probably can't.
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I find it interesting that you would call someone you don't trust and know "friend."
The people I call "friend" (as opposed to what Facebook says) are trustworthy. I wouldn't hang around them if they weren't.
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DOH!
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You will be able to tell by looking at the address in the address bar after you have followed the link. If it is a standard product page link then great, if it has a load of referrer cruft tagged on to the end of it then you may want to take the recommendation with a pinch of salt.
At the end of the day you can either trust your friends and therefore be safe in the assumption that they have your best interests at heart, or you can't.
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As mentioned earlier in this thread, there's an app ... erhm ... addon for that: Long URL Please Firefox Addon [mozilla.org]
Good for them! (Score:3)
If social media websites are making a mint off of harvesting personal information, it's high time their users started seeing some money as well.
It's up to the service providers to police their own services, and I feel no pity for them.
Cash for twits. (Score:2)
...are assigned companies to promote to their circle of online friends.
What a load of crap. "Go promote this crap you may or may not have used or like, and we'll pay you".
I know not everyone shares my belief on this, but the only way I'll endorse or promote your product is if I believe it's a good product and a good value. Mostly, that means I personally use your product and like it, but there are some cases where I know a product is good and popular, but doesn't serve my needs. In that case, I'll still recommend it to people I think will benefit from it. If I don't know your
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I'd be willing to do this (Score:2)
I'd be willing to do this just as soon as I develop a new set of friends that I don't care about, so I don't have to lose the friends I actually like! :)
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Cash in no matter what? (Score:3)
Anything I write must tickle at least someone's fancy.
Either I like a product, it makes the company happy, or I don't like it, it makes their competition happy.
So either way, I should get my money right? No need to get influenced by money.
Can I cash in retrospectively for all the things I ever wrote? There must be a lot of money in there. Just need to pitch it to the right 'clients'. $_$
Quickly Squelched (Score:4, Insightful)
People have a very low tolerance personal space intrusions. People on the whole have a pretty decent intuition on whether someone genuinely is recommending something vs. is being paid to do so. People also have a pretty good intuition on figuring out who is a paid shill. Anyone who seriously tries to make money from this will quickly find themselves without friends. I can't think of a single friend of mine that would tolerate this shit on their feeds. I hope this gains traction as it will be a quick and easy way to thin out the online social circle.
If this catches on (it won't), you'll just end up with a circle of technically ignorant folks circle-jerking each other for ad revenue while the rest of us get on with our lives.
Let the advertisers know what you think (Score:5, Interesting)
I just emailed Minidisc Australia and Social Loot sales this email:
---
Hi guys
I'm a previous customer of yours (I purchased a Cowon J3 a couple of years ago, order no 40580), and previously I've recommended other people buy stuff from you.
I note that you are now using Social Loot advertising (having come across this company via slashdot post):
http://www.socialloot.com/minidisc_australia [socialloot.com]
My opinion is that the kind of 'shill advertising' promoted by Social Loot is about as low as it gets. As a result, I will:
a) no longer be recommending you, in fact I will be recommending against purchasing from you (and will explain my reasoning regarding the use of Social Loot)
b) no longer consider you for future purchases for myself
I realise I'm just one person. However, I am the 'go to guy' for a number of relatives and friends for technology matters, and based on past experience I am pretty sure that this will cost you a sale every three months or so. Over the course of one year I would estimate lost revenue at AUS$500 - AUS$1000.
If you stop using Social Loot advertising I will be happy to reverse my decision on this matter. Please note I've also cced this email to the Social Loot sales email address - unlike them, and apparently you, I am fine with being honest about my opinions.
Regards
Mike Both
----
If enough people do this, it could make a difference.
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However the old fart cynic in me says: Good luck competing with "A current affair" and "Today tonight" who have both been shilling these kind of "pocket money" schemes for at least a decade. Then there's "Australia's most read columnist", Andrew Bolt, a shill for God in an Akubra
This is obviously spam-for-hire (Score:5, Informative)
1. Block all email to/from socialloot.com. (This might need updating if they register additional domains to avoid blocking. A very common spammer tactic is to use sequentially numbered domains, e.g., example01.com, example02.com, example03.com.)
2. Firewall out 122.252.6.0/24. Make the block is bidirectional so that nobody on your network can reach their allocation. (This will probably need updating if they receive an additional allocation.)
3. If you run a DNSBL or RHSBL, list the domain and the network allocation. If you maintain a list of spammer/phisher/abuser domains, add the domain.
4. If you run an ISP or similar operation, make it a policy that any user participating in this scam will be terminated immediately. Same for mailing lists, web forums, newsgroups, etc.
5. Do not hire anyone who has ever worked for socialloot.com. Make sure that words spread that working for spammer Gary Munitz is toxic.
Profit (Score:2)
Why I left FB (Score:2)
This is one of the reasons I quit Facebook, and why I think FB will eventually tank. It won't be long before your wall ends up being nothing but dozens of "posts" from your friends breathlessly raving about cheese-stuffed-something-or-other, or toilet bowl cleaner. Because eventually, if you are on FB, everything you buy is going to be announced to all your FB friends in this way, whether you like it or not.
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It won't be long before your wall ends up being nothing but dozens of "posts" from your friends breathlessly raving about cheese-stuffed-something-or-other, or toilet bowl cleaner.
If friends start barking ads, they'll soon find themselves friendless.
Regional word: spruiker (Score:2)
I'd never heard of a "spruiker" before. Had to google it. Still have no idea how to say it.
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Financially desperate and/or greedy people who cling to the last delusion will always be attracted to the accountanting equivalent of perpetual motion.
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"Hopefully this becomes widespread enough to inject enough noise into the signal that is Facebook's personally-focused ad targetting."
Neat experiment. :)