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Samsung Accused of Paying For Negative HTC Reviews
judgecorp writes "Samsung Taiwan has been accused of paying to have negative reviews of HTC products put online by students who recommended Samsung devices instead. The Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission is investigating Samsung's advertising agency in Taiwan, and Samsung Taiwan has responded by cancelling all Internet marketing."
I was always wondering why some of my friends were recommending substandard samsung products and accusing me of being an Apple fanboy when I promoted LG products (I have an LG android phone). My "friends" (not IRL ones) are probably paid Samsung shills.
Its called affiliate marketing, and lots of businesses use it (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/). Is it legal? Who cares!
That there is such a thing as the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
after all, they can't bully HTC on patents, so they have to do it by hiring whiners
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Android as OS
Are you really that high? Or did Samsung sponsor that? Please don't mod me as a troll, have some common sense!
captcha is "surreal"
I wonder what are those false advertisements they are talking about.
Anyway, I hope this is not a false advertisement from HTC as well.
.
What makes this different from positive advertising of your product's virtues or negative comparisons or statements about your competitor's products? Is it the hidden "agency" of using unattributed posters to say these negative things? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_agency
I hope there's a special level of hell set aside for them.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Just ignore him. He's an MS / anti-Google shill.
- Account created today? CHECK!
- Gets several 'first posts'? CHECK!
- Praises MS (as he did in an earlier thread) or takes shots at Google? CHECK!
This place has turned into a shill slum.
... how much HTC paid for this accusation?
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
Samsung has a "kill Taiwan" strategy. There was bound to be backlash for a company that is government-backed.
http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aall/201303200043.aspx
I've had a HTC incredible 2 for almost 2 years now, and I've not been too happy with it :/ (Thankfully, the 2 year contract is almost up)
Between the faulty charger port, horrible reception, quickly draining/overheating battery, and broken promises by HTC/Verizon several times to update, I don't exactly have a very positive view of HTC.
I'll admit this is the only HTC phone I have, maybe the other ones suck less.
But regardless, while I'm not ruling it out that it's impossible for Samsung to have done such, it's certainly possible that they're also legitimate.
Personally I believe the HTC One is a remarkable phone, exceedingly pretty and I love the fact that HTC dared to go against the mainstream with their camera by focusing on good low-light performance at the mega-pixel race's expense. While the Samsung Galaxy S III has nice specs it looks like ass and Samsung is seemingly afraid of trying new things now that they believe they've found a winning formula. I hope HTC can gain some market-share from Samsung and continues to experiment with their phones.
they screwed their business themselves
no brand recognition
years of constant new phone releases under new names
crappy support and updates
crappy software. like a mail client with no push email to MS Exchange subfolders when every other android phone maker was doing it
1) if you're going to be swinging accusations like that around.
2) If that's true, then you'd see the exact same things from Windows computer manufacturers and Microsoft. (and MS has been proven to pay for bad press for its competitors already - this post is probably one of those)
This is, actually, normal behaviour from phone manufacturers who use Android as OS. There is tons of competition in the area and put blatantly, Android based setups cant stand out for favour that easily. This makes all the manufacturers play dirty, just like Google does. Don't be evil, my ass.
I wouldn't blame Google for for the work of a few minions of another company.
Reviews are the new lies, though. There's a Brooklyn camera/technology distributor, which routinely has glowing reviews in an online rating service, which seem to utterly fly in the face of many extremely negative reviews. Having briefly interacted with the company I see where the negatives are coming from and from reading the glowing reviews realize there's too much similarity, further, customers have accused them of being encouraged with gifts to leave not just positive reviews, but very positive ones. Further, they do quite a bit to try to have the negatives deleted or discredited. Scared me off so I bought my camera stuff elsewhere.
What we need is a reviewer review site.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
During a brief period as a reviewer of video games, one of my contacts related how he was persona non grata with Sony for not doing positive reviews of their games. It comes as no surprise that Samsung, and most likely other companies too, would engage in similar behavior. What bothers me is that the students seem to have sold out relatively cheaply. I once figured out that at the very least, if asked, I would cost a minimum of $10,000 for a positive review of a bad game.
Microsoft here. You remember all the nasty, sneaky, dirty tricks we've pulled over the years? Well, our latest trick is to make front groups who claim our competitors are now using those same tricks.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I can vouch for that, I signed up for a cash for review service, I get $2 for making positive Android reviews and occasional $3 for Samsung reviews. It pays similar to how bulk email spamming pays, course that's like 25 cents per hundred thousand or more depending on product being spammed.
if people are interested here is a "top 12 list" of companies that will pay you to review products, apps, os, etc.
http://www.blogstash.com/12-best-get-paid-to-review-sites-to-make-money-with/
every review either video, or written product review you post link, it gets verified and part of your account stats,
most places works similar to adsense on payouts. minimum of $100.00 in the account and they'll either send a check or direct deposit into paypal for you.
I get about $30-$50 from reviews to paypal, and I use that money to pay for my pc gaming wants :P
its shit, and make sure you always use a throw away email, I use: http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html
couple hours of bullshit reviews for 'free money', most half smart people should realize that online reviews are all bullshit.
even movie critic reviews online like tgwtg website is all bullshit, cause it's all paid for work. Either for sites like tgwtg is ad based revenue and some product reviews from other contributors to crappy blog sites that get paid to write written reviews for products...
the biggest thing any sane person should know is do not trust ANY online review. most are paid for and most are bullshit
Just thought I'd mention that manufacturing and marketing have very little to do with each other.
See: http://blog.thingsdesigner.com/uploads/id/tree_swing_development_requirements.jpg there's a reason this cartoon is so popular (it's mostly true & hilarious).
A Taiwan-based corporation that brings in a lot of revenue to its government is now hurting and then goes to the same government it has given billions to and asks it to investigate the legitimacy of negative articles from its competition which, in turn, creates negative publicity for their competition?
Whenever a company uses illegal tactics (I would assume this could be considered defamatory in Taiwan) to advance a product against competitors, just fine them based on a simple fee schedule that is the total number of products sold against the harmed competitor(s) times a sliding scale of severity based on how anti-competitive it was. If that means billions in fines, so be it. Just make it so black and white and inflexible that it becomes a matter of "did you do it?" "Yes?" "Then pay "$x * y" in fines and restitution.
Cough Cough B&W Cough Cough
Does anyone else notice that many Samsung ads seem less about the products and more about making other people feel bad? I don't own an iPhone, but whenever I see a Samsung ad insulting some apple user all I can think is, "Boy those guys are jerks." If I need a product and the Samsung one is superior I'll probably buy it, but it would cross my mind that I don't want to be a jerk like the people in their ads.
Definitely no other company does this.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Samsung is carved, tattooed, laser imprinted and sealed at the top of my do-not-buy-never-ever-blacklist. There is seriously no shittier, less moral, asshole tech company that Shamescum...in the world. (Monsanto and BigOil are shittier, but they aren't tech companies). I'm serious.
They are not copying Apple as they get their shilling for free!
Well, wouldn't that apply to offline reviews too?
I tend to search for forums to find out the problems first, but I do know of one instance where a company deleted forum posts to hide the fact that their AV product broke windows 7 (try to guess who, it is worth 1 internet!).
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
I'm aware of that but it is nice to know who I have to thank for that.
Every single company in existence would likely do this at some point if they make a habit of it so they never get ratted on.
Once they make that first step it is blackmailed for life. At least if you are a smart comment and review shitstirrer, that is.
Any large company that doesn't run covert smear campaigns are probably nuts. Attack your competition. Even legally. (mocking is still legal last I checked)
Better yet, don't run smear campaigns, run "X is the best product / company" campaigns instead. Be on the moral side of cheating the system at the least!
All this negativity is bad for you.
Samsung’s local advertising agency had hired the students to criticise HTC and recommend Samsung smartphones instead.
People used to do this at my college all the time.
Not directly, sure, but they'd be like "Here's a free pizza from samsung, remember how HTC never gave you a pizza when you pick a phone :D"
I generally agree; not to trust positive reviews of products made by someone with a marketing budget. I generally hone in on 3* reviews and actually read it to see the gist of what they are talking about.
Outside of that, you have newegg that is able to show reviews of verified purchasers. And this is exactly why Google is moving to the "real names" model. Because "fake names" will only hurt their bottom line in the long term. Someone could still pay a "real name" to review products, but even those could be detected automatically and investigated by an integrity department.
The fact that we have the word 'astroturfing' to describe this kind of thing should be a pretty good hint that this happens.
People pay for fake Twitter followers, good reviews, bad reviews of competitors, position papers, and all sorts of crap. It's all about managing your brand and the message.
I find nothing at all surprising about this revelation, and I strongly suspect many corporations do the exact same thing.
Hell, Microsoft, the oil industry, the tobacco industry, political parties and the *AAs routinely cite 'research papers' from organizations which are really there just to be paid mouth pieces in order to support the version of the truth one organization wants to get out there. It's all marketing sleight of hand.
This is just the normal way of doing business these days. I've just come to assume that anything *too* much in favor of anything was purchased or was otherwise put out by someone with a stake in the game.
News flash, the average person doesn't apply a lot of critical thinking to these things, and companies are highly motivated to get a leg up on the competition.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So that's how far Slashdot has fallen down the fucking toilet, a paid shill admits he's a shill, gives people SUGGESTIONS ON BECOMING ONE THEMSELVES, and gets modded up +5 informative.
Fuck this site and fuck you. People like you are the fucking cancer of the internet.
..which am I supposed to consider more evil? The guys who've stacked the deck, or the guys trying to sneak more cards into the pack?
Not hight, just a microsoft shill. He's been spending all day getting first post and vomiting bs.
The fact that we have the word 'astroturfing' to describe this kind of thing should be a pretty good hint that this happens.
Astroturfing is a different thing; it's when a company creates a political lobbying group disguised as a "grassroots" organization. (Fake grass, get it?) Calling this "astroturfing" makes no sense, since there is no such thing real grassroots support for a company like Samsung.
This is a negative variation on shilling: paying people to badmouth your competitors (as opposed to traditional shilling, which is paying people to talk up your own product.)
Shilling is to advertising as astroturfing is to lobbying.
He was informative. The rules of modding are that you don't mod based on whether you agree or not, you mod based on the quality/usefulness of the information provided. Some idiots mod down everything they disagree with so effectively they are trying to censor others. That would make /. much worse. Modding up because you agree would have a similar though less harmful effect. Less harmful in that low modded comments tend to get filtered out. If you'd prefer a site where nothing was posted except what you agreed with then you should start your own.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
for almost a year i read how awesome the galaxy S3 is. then my father in law got one and i played around with it. nice phone but nothing special. i'll keep my iphone 5
guerrilla marketing at its best
I wont mind talking negatively about android and samsung for free...
That would make /. much worse.
That ship has sailed.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
I'm posting anonymous for a reason (fear of retaliation from Samsung)
I've followed the story since it first broke out in Taiwan. What Samsung did was not just bad review. They essentially flooded forums with flame, troll, fake discussion to create a viral campaign.
For example, a hired writer would post under ID "A" asking, which phone is better, Samsung vs HTC. Then the same guy would login using ID "B" to write good review about Samsung phone. He would then use a 3rd ID "C" to pretend to be an HTC supporter, but reply with poor taste (like calling "B" an idiot, swearing, but give no real context). All this to great a buzz and fake discussion, with the original ID "A" eventually said he bought Samsung, and it was a smart move and a better choice. Samsung was also accused of hiring writer to cook up fake story on forum how he "unboxed the new HTC One and the quality was crap".
Samsung also played the nationality card. Samsung sponsored some sports event in Taiwan, then hire writer to post "WHY ISN'T HTC SUPPORTING TAIWAN LIKE SAMSUNG", and also using multiple ID's to "agree" and build the fake discussion so that Samsung sounds like the good guy, and HTC is the bad guy.
Leaving fake positive review is one thing. What Samsung did was with smear campaign on HTC, Sony Xperia, Apple, is just utterly disgusting!!!
Just thought I'd mention that manufacturing and marketing have very little to do with each other.
See: http://blog.thingsdesigner.com/uploads/id/tree_swing_development_requirements.jpg there's a reason this cartoon is so popular (it's mostly true & hilarious).
This cartoon is a lot older than you may think. I saw a copy, not including analysts or programmers, very much like this hanging around Dow Chemical back in the 1970s when I was a scout and we had a trip to a lab there.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It is an interesting article though because I've had similar thought's about HTC recently on certain other tech and Android forums the amount of HTC One posts is way beyond any other phone and most of them are full of nonsense reasons why the One is better than everything else but if you look at the actual specs the HTC is trailing the Galaxy S4 in everything.
To me that's very fishy.
Amen. But I would have added: "what part don't you understand, the 'fuck' or the 'you'?"
Either way, my sentiments.
Shills, haters, and political rants from idiots on the "right" and "left."
Smart, articulate and (for the most part) very well educated idiots, but idiots just the same.
Whatever happened to common sense and open-mindedness? And critical thinking?
Red or Blue, it must suck to be ...
dude get over yourself, microsoft wouldn't give a toss about slashdot comments. its just trolling and hilariously it works every time, just try it, put up an anti-google comment in all the stories in the firehose and watch what happens in the stories that get published. the responses will be filled with posts from people like you who actually think they are exposing microsoft "shills", even though this comment really has nothing to do with microsoft and was more a defence of samsung.
My hope is that a large-scale crackdown on astroturfing will follow. It's an absolute poison to society and has no right to be a thing.
You are 100% correct about the age:
http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm
Have yourself a cookie!
Quite informative, both in the proliferation and ease of paid reviews, and the extent to which unempathetic people like yourself can openly rationalize unscrupulous behavior by blaming the victim--the "freedom to screw over peopl"--oh I'm sorry, I mean the "personal responsibility" mentality.
However, if you want to continue on the stepping stones you've created for yourself and put your moral vacancy to better use, I recommend pushing ARMs and other exotic loans for large financial institutions, and/or perhaps pushing some rehash of "consumer driven" plans in the healthcare industry. A lot more money to be made. ":P".
We know it's you doing it Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741