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Companies paying people to say good things about their products on forums

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app103:
Hmm...  I guess we have to watch out for that mouser guy then.
-mwb1100 (October 13, 2008, 06:12 PM)
--- End quote ---

oh...by the way...

mouser just admitted to me that he does paid posting. 

f0dder:
With that kind of money, I can see why it would be tempting :o

But even though I don't view myself as having super extremely high moral standards1, I don't think I could make myself post positively about something I didn't personally like or use.

#1: or perhaps it's just that I don't follow all of normal society's rules and etiquette :)

Carol Haynes:
What kind of money .... where do I sign up.  :D

Oops ... drat  :-[

Kamel:
Actually, there is a way to deal with this. In the terms and conditions of your message board, you can force agreement of terms and conditions before allowing registration. In those terms and conditions, add a line that states

"Posting messages, public, private, or otherwise, for the purpose of advertisement, is against the terms of service and can result in an immediate and permanent ban along with removal of any/all of the content contributed by the user. Any post made here (donationcoder.com), be it the opinion of the user or not, which was posted in return for any product, service, or financial reward is strictly prohibited by the terms of service."

I just made that up, so it hasn't been thoroughly checked for any 'loopholes' or anything, but it would most definitely be a start to get rid of this. Businesses have to play by the rules, and this form of advertisement should be illegal. If for no other reason, because the forum owner should be responsible for the price of advertisement on the said board. If a person is paid to advertise something on the message boards, the owner of the forums who has paid money and put his sweat into making a successful message board is completely left out of any dividends received by the advertising.

If I were to ever do a review website (something I've wanted to do several times, actually) I would add a mission statement to the front page explaining my policy in detail about receiving money and kickbacks from companies regarding their product.

Sobczak:
This is another type of advertisement ofcourse our people is also believes the advertisement almost.

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