Fake forum comments are 'eroding' trust in the web

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I know that for myself, I'm often too overoptimistic & trusting (naieve?) I believe it is part of my Aspergers....so how would that play here on WP?

Wow, scary. Now more people will be paranoid and be accusing more people of being fake and another person. But honestly it didn't surprise me.

Sure I have seen people pretending to be someone else online because it be obvious. One time my old online boyfriend pretended to be my mother to tell the impersonator who was impersonating me that she was grounded for driving over people. I also know people will pretend to be their own friends or mother or father or someone they know to defend themselves and anyone who joins on a forum to jump into a drama I am always skeptical. Same as if someone joins to defend a person who had been banned. I don't bother reporting them because I don't care. I let others do that if they want to.

Unless you're absolutely certain you know who it's from and you know what it's about, do not reply to it.

The best thing to do if you have any suspicions about a PM or wonder why you've received it - or anything else about it that seems odd: report it to a Moderator, including the WP user name it was sent from.

Remember that people do not PM someone at random with a genuine offer - there is always some sort of scam involved.

This is common on a decor forum I frequent. But the people who post there regularly all pretty well known to each other. You can really spot the fake post (as described previously). Everyone just ignores it and the discussion moves on around them as if they haven't spoken.

It's usually something like a person asks a question and everyone else is responding with suggestions, and then this post comes up "You should do what I always do and buy from this store!" Then they add a link.

It's somewhat annoying, like junk email, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "it's ruining the web" or anything overly dramatic!

Always? That's a gross oversimplification

I read an article online about this couple struggling with food to feed their whole family and there was two spam comments. Someone posted a link to a blog about how to eat for 2 dollars a day. I always thought those were genuine posts and the person is trying to help.

Last edited by League_Girl on 15 Dec 2011, 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^^ Receiving a Wrong Planet PM from a stranger offering something "out of the blue", and not people publically describing a difficult situation and having an offer of help publically posted in response.

Big difference.

Yeah, but I doubt they're corporate plants. It seems like regardless of what your persuasion is on a given idea the other side will often seem irrational or like they're puppeting the same things over again. In essence though you have as many opinions on the internets as the people have backsides - so the notion of the majority being paid schills doesn't make a whole lot of sense (or at least no one's been kind enough to inform me of where to sign up to be paid for my opinions yet ) .

I could see suspicion if someone keeps having rather contrived conversation that always leads back around to "Try buying product x"; though admittedly I haven't seen that. I've seen forums where people will join up and within their first few posts they'll start severl OP's selling designer sneakers, clothing, etc.. - as for trying to get socially involved to the point of heated debate, dunno, it just doesn't seem like something they do.

When you say offer you something, you made it sound like offering help was a problem. There's nothing wrong with a good samaritan

It might not even be a product or service they are trying to push. It could be an opinion, ideology, philosophy, or what have you.

For example, a lot of people think Fox News is full of shrills that are paid to advance the agenda of whom ever would benefit from it. If that was true, then it's not a big leap to say that they might employ people to engage public opinion even more over other mediums besides their news channel, one being the internet. They could post on message boards and forums expressing the opinion they are supposed to get across, winning debates simply because they are motivated by money, and the other people participating are more likely to concede due to not being able to endure as long, because they most likely have less motivation to continue for an inordinate amount of time.

But, if there was nothing to debate we'd live in a much more strongly left-leaning world.

BTW, have you tried my new enlargement cream?

New cream? There was nothing wrong with your last batch.

People who have joined here and posted a thread about how they cured their autism through a diet, fake post?


They may not be trying to sell something but it makes me think of the article.

I'm just saying, to think we have Fox schills here (who they're clearly not getting their moneys worth out of) we might as well assume we've got shills from Moveon.org and the Tides Foundation as well and we might as well admit that if that thinking prevails, pretty much anyone who disagrees with anyone and wants to try and land a blow below the waist will try calling them a plant (at which point PPR would REALLY start looking like a food fight if it didn't already).

I think if political action machines want to do something sneaky and actually change the mechanics of how things are done in the US or what the public is lead to believe, they're likely not going to do it by paying for a 30-something year old who lives with his parents to play WoW and have all the Cheetos he wants while he makes vague circular rants about his political beliefs. I could see them trying to set up alternative education, I could try to see them getting their own lawmakers into state and federal legislature; trying to pose as kids on the internet with a lot of half-baked arguments and fallacies would really just be spinning their wheels.

Warcraft forums?! Really? Since when are trolls new in there? Oh yeah, they aren't by a long one.

Doesn't always have to be selling something though, it can be as simple as someone talking up a company's/organisation's interest and discrediting or exhausting their opponents in a level that would be considered excessive for an ordinary person to do. Political/Ideological astroturfing is quite popular, nearly as popular as the marketing variant actually I'd say.