TechCrunch recently covered an example of shilling, where interns were paid to post fake reviews on Apple’s App Store. The sleazy PR firm in question this time was Reverb Communications, based out of California. TechCrunch’s article pulls up a lot of great points, even going as far to post an e-mail from Reverb in which the faux PR firm defends their practices with halfhearted arguments.
My problem with the whole ordeal, and the point the article doesn’t really touch on, is that they’re paying interns to do this.
In other words, they’re not just practicing sleazy, backward ethics; they’re teaching them. Here’s an excerpt from the Reverb e-mail, written by Doug Kennedy, who I imagine has something like Overseer – Sleazebag Production on his business card:
My office did mention that you had issues with our staff and interns writing reviews for some of our clients games, I’m sure you are aware that in order to write a review on iTunes an individual needs to purchase the game or app and can only write one review. Our interns and employees write their reviews based on their own game play experience, after having purchased the game by themselves, a practice not uncommon by anyone selling games or apps and hardly unethical.
I could make the assumption that Doug is a complete idiot. I could just assume that nobody has mentioned anything about bias due to financial stake to him, that he never accidentally read something on disclosure ethics, or that he’s never heard anything about the mechanics of social media or the way the Internet works in general. But I won’t give him that benefit of a doubt. I have to just assume he’s just a sleazebag.
On some level, I can deal with that. For better or worse, shilling is a fairly widespread practice. For now we have to settle with the fact that, every now and then, a sleazebag like Doug gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
What I simply can’t deal with is the fact that he’s passing on these dubious ethics to interns, masquerading them as industry standard. Practices like this should only be taught as an example of what not to do.
They say it’s always good to end a blog post with a call to action. Well, here’s Reverb’s client list. I think you know what to do.
Related posts:
- The price of being sleazy: Three hundred thousand dollars
- Having a code of ethics, in and of itself, is meaningless
- Shills down my spine: 3 ways to kick off the fight against online marketing evil-doers
- The farming game craze, from Harvest Moon to Farmville to Happy Farms
- Digg’s short URL fiasco and what we can learn from it
