Question
There has been a long standing and often reoccurring discussion about whether eBay uses shills on any chat boards.
Shill meaning, in this case, someone who presents themselves as just another user who expresses a point of view that supports some policy or action taken by eBay that other users might be complaining about. The shill would be posting because they are compensated, either directly or indirectly, by eBay to post favorable comments and/or to misdirect the flow of the discussion. This is different from Pinks or other who identify themselves as being associated with eBay or as having a relationship, such as a service provider, before joining the discussion. These people/shills would present themselves as just one of us.
People who defend eBay in certain circumstances are often accused of being shills when, in reality, they are just expressing their personal opinion and for no direct gain. I/we are occasionally so angered with eBay that we can't believe someone could present an alternative point of view, without being shills, when they are just adding some balanced perspective to the discussion. Sorry, but I expect we will do that again.
eBay has done some things in the past to manipulate users, which have been documented and acknowledged, so the possibility is not beyond reason.
There is a thread on an eBay chat board, at least it was there when I last looked, where this topic is being discussed in some detail. I'll link at the end of this post.
The premise is that the Live World company has been hired to run some aspects of the eBay Chat/Discussion boards.
Live World offers a range of services, as outlined on their home website, that seem to include the availability of people who will enter discussions without being identified as paid staff to promote their clients interests. This is a widely used concept in marketing and I understand how it is legal, etc.,etc.,whatever.
The questions is "In light of past experience with eBay and some suspect posters in certain chats, the documented use of Live World, the services that Live World promotes on it's website and general paranoia, are compensated posters messing with us? (Not here, on eBay)
Link to eBay Discussion Board thread
Answer
I especially like this part:
Our experienced hosts travel the Web to monitor and initiate conversations in support of your goals.
Jeeez....
Answer
Interesting topic.
I am one of the moderators of the ! Selling Tips eBay's Finest groups which I guess is on LiveWorld. We have nearly 4,600 members now. Some of our discussions, especially some started by me, have not been pro-eBay. The fee increase discussions for example. And the discussions about alternate venues which are darned hard to hold there without censorship.
I've not noticed a lot of cheerleader type activity, although I have noticed an occasional zero FB or even a Powerseller crawl out of the woodwork to comment on something.
There are 10 moderators in our group. We rarely hold any kind of discussion much less any kind of plan, or targeting of topics, direction, etc. We've discussed things like a thread promoting member's auction items and content of them. We've also discussed eBay policies, with several of us not very happy about things like the links policies being so oppressive and self-serving while ignoring potential win-win-win seller-customer-venue scenarios that should be promoted by the venue.
In our group like all others, eBay has every opportunity to come in and delete posts about alternates, about fee increase anger, etc. Didn't happen. Did moderators pull some posts that violate eBay policy to protect the group and group leader? Yes, without being told by eBay to do so. Typical way to get a post deleted is to mention the email ID of anyone or to post a fraud comment listing the userid or to spam the group with some sale offer outside of eBay auctions within the one sales thread.
I know a couple moderators are personal friends of the group leader. But from what little I know, none are paid.
And in the Thrift Store Garage Sale Frenzy group where there are a couple thousand members, the leader and moderators are very laid back. They dislike the heavy handed policies even more so than the Selling Tips moderators. The envelope gets pushed there even more.
In the fee increase discussions, I did notice after the venting, eventually a couple crawled out of the woodwork and mentioned they were staying on eBay, were opening a new store, or would wait and see. Those were very delayed comments, well after others had formed and posted opinions.
So I guess I have mixed reactions. I haven't seen the cheerleaders in action. And if I thought they were seeding opinion in the groups, well, that would have to be discussed between moderators. I'd not like seeing such seeding and perhaps we could ban the parties doing it or tag them with some appropriate label worse than Troll. Apologies to Doofy et al.