Internet Shill

An Invisible Person

Introduction

An internet shill is a person or online persona that imitates another individual, institution, or campaign, or otherwise acts as a "decoy.” Shills often promote messages in order to create an appearance of public acceptance, rebuke, or sentiment. Individuals or organizations operating shill campaigns are usually compensated.

The history of shills go back to at least the 19th century. At times during the 20th century, shilling became common enough that newspapers and magazines contained advertisements from businesses looking for paid shills.

In general, shilling is illegal when it brings harm to other parties. Activities intended to entertain or inform without harm are often deemed as legal activity.

Etymology

The term “internet shill” borrows from the traditional idea of shilling, which was commonly applied to people and schemes at carnivals or confidence games. Historically, shills have also been called “plants” or “stooges.” “Shill” is likely a 20th century term for “shillaber” which itself is a term of unknown origin. One potential source of the word may have originally referred to author Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (1814–1890) who often wrote under a fictional pen name.

History

Persons employing shill tactics appeared in great numbers in the 19th and 20th century, especially at carnivals, circuses, sideshows, and casinos. Shills are often associated with tricksters in gambling games and auctions. In gambling games, shills can portray themselves as unassociated passerbys, who pretend to play—and win—a prize. This display helps make winning look more probable to non-shill bystanders, who now may want to attempt playing.

Auctions also often attract shills, especially bidders who collude with auctioneers to drive up prices and increase auctioneer profits, which is usually a percentage of final sales. Online auctions attract a disproportionate share of shilling activity. Most online auction platforms, such as ebay, expressly forbid shilling, although detection is difficult.

Researchers have studied how swarm intelligence has “inspired” shills in the context of evolutionary cooperation. Shills are not necessarily malicious or harmful. In some cases, shills have the effect of spreading positive messages and behaviors through a population to increase overall cooperation.

Astroturfing

Astroturfing is an organized campaign by concealed interests that coordinate together to promote a message or idea. Astroturfing creates a false appearance of mass acceptance or rejection within a population. Often shill accounts are employed as part of an astroturfing campaign.

Astroturfing by Sector

Politics

Political astroturfing messages covertly support a particular candidate or set of policies while attacking others. Among bots, and political insiders, shill accounts on social media have steadily increased its share of astroturfing. Some shill accounts spread information about their sponsoring campaign to political opponents. Increasingly, other shill accounts post replies to opponents’ messages to “correct” people spreading information inimical to the shilling campaign.

Military

Some national militaries engage in internet shilling to “influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.” The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) writes blog posts, chatroom messages, and “other interventions” on foreign, non-English websites. User accounts controlled by the Centcom program were portrayed as real individuals living across the globe.

Business

Businesses often maintain an internet presence in social media and elsewhere to promote products, services, and other messages—often through the use of shill accounts. One of the most common and controversial practices of business shills is writing fake product reviews; either positive reviews for their products, or negative reviews for competitor products. Some states, including New York, have attempted to mitigate this practice through government regulation.

Astroturfing on Social Media

Facebook

Facebook is a popular platform that attracts shill accounts; the platform captures the attention of billions of users across the globe. In 2017, Facebook reported roughly 10% of accounts on Facebook are “duplicate” accounts, implying about 200 million accounts are accounts for non-persons.

Reddit

As the “front page of the internet,” Reddit is a highly-influential website with millions of active users. High traffic and engagement is similar to dialogue in the “public square” that can influence a larger mass of people and “lurkers”. It’s an attractive platform for manipulation through shilling tactics, recently in finance and cryptocurrency.

Forbes reported in early 2017 that Reddit was being clearly manipulated by large finance firms. Janhoi McGregor, a senior contributor at Forbes, conducted a non-scientific experiment where he posted two fake news articles in large subreddits seen by millions of people. He then managed to vote those articles to the top of each subreddit with “fake accounts and fake upvotes” for less than $200.

Social-media promotion operations work frequently with financial firms to manage shill accounts to manipulate voting on posts and comments, as well as engage in commentary under the guise of an authentic user. These services are offered by well-established, professional marketing firms.

Twitter & Instagram

Similar to Reddit and Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are both popular targets for shilling, especially in finance-related topics such as cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Job postings advertising for help in creating and managing shill accounts, including experience qualifications and possession of digital assets such as personal inventories of social media accounts.

At-home blood test sham. Transparency

YouTube

In addition to YouTube-place interstitial advertisements within videos, many popular YouTube content creators seek direct sponsorship deals or access to products as part of an “influencer” role they play on the social video website. Influencers promote products and services directly within the video content. Many are accused of being YouTube shills, however the accusation may not be as toxic as once believed.

Most youth on YouTube feel it’s acceptable for YouTube subjects to shill for sponsors, with 87 percent of respondents between ages 13-24 indicating drawbacks of sponsor shilling by YouTubers is worth the free price to watch videos.

Product Reviews

Fake Reviews

Customer reviews are a key feature in many e-commerce platforms, especially on popular outlets such as Amazon.com. Some product sellers post fake positive reviews to build reputation, trust, and posture against competition. Fake reviews are either posted directly by the selling party, or through a third-party provider.

Most often, fake reviews are posted by purchased social media accounts reserved for the purpose of leaving fake reviews. Marketplace websites such as “ACSS Market” provide a well-stocked, liquid inventory of social media accounts for several platforms. These accounts feature varying characteristics that buyers can choose for particular use cases. One common characteristic are accounts that are “aged.” Aged accounts are often perceived as relatively authentic; representing a real person who is actively using the account in a transparent manner. These previously-created accounts usually contain fake or boilerplate user-generated activity.

In late January 2022, hackers gained access to several YouTube accounts and promoted the purchase of cryptocurrency using videos produced by the hackers.

Auctions

Shill Bidding

Studies have shown that the frequency of fraud correlates with an increase in online participants, of which shill bidding is most prominent. Harm to authentic bidders comes in the form of overpriced sales.

In 2021, eBay was exposed for colluding with partnered companies that employed bidding shills to push up the price of merchandise using “fake bids.” eBay then rewarded partnered companies who used the shills by offering special low-price auction fees.

Other Issues

Conflicts of Interest

In medicine, shills have been known to promote the interests of support institutions above the interests of patients. In 2008, investigators from Congress investigated two reputable psychiatrists in Boston. The investigators determined both psychiatrists were part of an effort “to generate and disseminate data that would support use of an antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, in children, a controversial target group.”

Social Proof

Social proof is increasingly important in internet sales and marketing. Social proof is a phenomenon where people are predisposed to buy products or accept ideas or adopt values that other people in society also seemingly buy, accept or adopt. This phenomenon is well-known to marketers, politicians, consultants, and myriad others.

Ethical Issues

Ethical and moral concerns regarding shilling vary depending on context. Recent media coverage of celebrity shilling has cast the tactic in a negative light. A recent story in Slate authored by a former celebrity shill calls celebrity crypto shilling a “moral disaster.”

References

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