Is it legal for companies to hire people to make positive comments on their products just so it will most likely get more buys?
by 
KiloWattKid
ANSWERS: 7
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Yes, but highly unethical. Big corporations do stuff like that all the time. Like that time where some guy wrote a program to look at isps of editors to wikipedia pages. Lots of corporate isps were editing their own pages, as well as of their competitors.
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isnt that what celebrity advertising is all about? if someone who is a star says its cool, then everyone else wants to buy it, right?
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The ones I hate are those on late night infomercials that promise they will take off weight by just putting in a battery, and letting the electricity do the rest, or worse yet a magnet.
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Legal. It's called shilling. I once sat through a time-share sales presentation (didn't buy, of course), and was disgusted at the presence of several noisy couples who were CLEARLY shilling for the salespeople. They were given financial incentives to make enthusiastic comments about how much they loved their timeshare. (If they'd already bought, there'd be no reason why they'd be at a sales presentation unless they were paid.)
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My boss was interested in purchasing a time clock from a company. There were two written reviews on the Internet for it, one very positive, one very negative.. so I guess they just cancelled each other out. One thing she did benefit from reading the review was that she needed to buy the 1 year technical assistance package. She has used it many times now.
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You're talking about shills! Sure...very famously a few months ago there was a big furor over some supposed movie critic extolling the virtues of a lame movie...the critic's name was made up...the movie company got embarrassed..."the decider" paid a news commentator shill $100,000 to say what a great government program something or another was...bought and paid for..that "news commentator" I believe was unmasked for what he was...I guess everyone has a price. But I don't think it is illegal..I think it is unethical, dishonorable and hypocritical..but not illegal! :(
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Yes
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