HailCorporate is a community for individuals committed to unmasking the deceptive practice of astroturfing and exposing fake product testimonials. In a digital age where the line between genuine endorsements and corporate manipulations is increasingly blurred, our community has become necessary. Here, we collectively call out comments and posts where everyday people, often unknowingly, become pawns in a company’s PR strategy, spreading scripted messages under the guise of personal opinion. HailCorporate’s mission is to foster a culture of transparency and authenticity, empowering fediverse users to challenge the covert tactics used by most multinational corporations to astroturf the fediverse.
Eh, I think this community would lead to me seeing even more posts shilling for companies. No thanks.
I really hope this takes off. I was on r/HailCorporate on reddit, and it really lost its steam at some point. People often feel uncomfortable closely examining how we can unwittingly spread advertising. I know I do, try as I might to be cognizant of this.
I have run into too many instances of billionaire defenders on lemmy.world and kbin.social for this community NOT to exist. I get into strange arguments (where, from my perspective, I am just defending common sense or open standards) with frothing fascist, astroturfing fanbois about their chosen billionaire and I felt like I had nowhere to go, “look at this fucking corporate cuck”. ;)
And your solution is to start a community without contributing to it?
Are you being ironically obtuse?
just want to say, you’re right. don’t give up. destroy all fascists. keep up the good fight. a world without conservatives is a world that has a chance to live. the best we can do for now is convince everyone else what has to be done.
Thank you. I was starting to feel like I was the asshole for creating this community.
That name and image are really confusing with the stated intent of the community
There is a 0.00000% (rounded up) chance that any PR firm is committing resources to Lemmy for product/corporate astroturfing.
I have a hard time believing this won’t become more than a toxic witch-hunt for opinions someone doesn’t like vs calling out legitimate astroturfing campaigns or people inadvertently spreading corporate fallacies.
You’re free to block it if you want. I’d argue that there is a non-zero chance that there are zero astroturfers here right now. The censorship on lemmy.world in general is enough to cause me to start this community. Look at the billionaire thread. The mods were so intensely pro-billionaire that they deleted MANY comments calling for the guillotine as a solution to the world’s billionaire problem. After a while, they had to give up because it was making them look like what they are: Lemmy’s staunch defenders of crony capitalism.
… maybe just don’t call for other people’s deaths. And incidentally, the guillotine is centuries old, and in the modern day would be completely ineffective in the face of offshore bank accounts and private jets.
753 people who, if they didn’t exist, the earth would INSTANTLY become a better place. We are being sent barreling enthusiastically toward climate collapse by those exact 753 greedy dragons who are sitting on piles of money that they literally couldn’t spend in 10,000,000 lifetimes, literally buying up governments rather than do ANYTHING to dial back their excess and you? You’re sitting here tone-policing people. If that isn’t hail corporate, I really don’t know what is!
Thanks for so clearly demonstrating exactly why I started this community. I’m guessing you’re a lib who thinks Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi are working hard in your best interest but those darned Republicans keep getting in the way.
PS. You’d have a point if mods had removed posts calling for the deaths of innocent Palestinian people.
This is why most people won’t take you seriously.
Says the 8-day-old account with only one comment on an instance filled with tech serfs who are either too comfortable with their bread and circus and healthcare tied to their employment that they afraid of upsetting their billionaire bosses. That instance, while great for technical talk, is about as fertile ground for political discussion as an automated helpdesk inside of a student loan app.
Good luck in life, you’ll need a lot
I hope you are someday rich enough where you can recover the integrity that left you so early in your life. You don’t even realize that you won the birth lottery. You don’t even realize that if you were simply born in another country, none of the comforts that have found you in life would even be possible. You are clearly comfortable enough to point fingers but captive enough to still kiss the ass of your master. You’re a feudal serf and you don’t even realize it.
I empathize with your plight. I used to be a lot like you (a victim of hustle culture, monetizing all of my hobbies) before I realized how rigged this game is. One doesn’t often realize how rigged the game is until they get ground up like hamburger in it…and that is the difference between us.
you’re sitting here tone-policing people.
Isn’t that what you’re doing here, too?
I haven’t seen any posts where people are calling for Palestinian deaths with no moderation action. Also, your holier than thou attitude is pretty off-putting. You usually get further trying to understand where someone is coming from rather than slinging unfounded accusations just to score points. Straw manning is wack.
wiggida wiggida wack, am I right?
Sorry, but if rules are not consistent then they aren’t any good.
fuck rules. do what’s right.
While it can feel good to cut loose, down this path lies madness. Try to remember, people trying to hurt you want you to feel backed into a corner, that perception causes you to disregard some of your real options.
You are not actually backed into a real corner, though. That perception is an illusion to try to make you lash out and hurt yourself in the long-run. It’s a propaganda technique.
If the truth is really on your side, you can use words to spread it, and convince others to help. The actual truth has to be on your side for this to work though, not just feelings and emotions.
i believed that naive shit for a long time, but then i realized that truth does not prevail because of its merits alone and that sort of thinking is what has allowed sociopaths to rule the world.
it’s a start. please don’t discourage the last act of resistance the people have left.
the guillotine is centuries old, and in the modern day would be completely ineffective
You’re right, we have far more effective tools these days.
For legal reasons I shall not name them.
I can already tell that this community is going to be an absolute dumpster fire with this sort of narrow visioned with hunt modding attitude.
And I don’t even think the problem is the community existing hail corporate is a hilarious and fun concept. I think the problem is the person creating and saying they are going to mod the community being narrow-minded, and toxic.
That’s a hilarious straw man. I said that I would mod the community by not doing any modding at all except in the worst cases of bigotry. I’m not sure how I could be any more fair, actually.
You seem to think that I should have created this community on threads with an explicit signed, dated, legally binding, and notarized promise to Mark Zuckerberg himself that I will do the work of censorship in the name of the grinding gears of the very capitalism that this community is a reaction against.
Advocating for murder is generally something that gets moderated.
Are you… surprised? There are “free speech” sites like Truth Social and Gab that may provide a better experience for you.
hexbear.net is the place for people like me
I like infosec.pub a lot, though.
although there’s definitely astroturfing, mods tend to censor calls to violence regardless
but they shouldn’t
it’s all fun and games till the court cases…
Seriously it’s not fucking rocket surgery. Direct calls to violence like that are illegal in most of the world. In contexts where it seems like it’s meant sincerely and not as a joke, mods would be crazy not to remove it.
in an unjust society, following the rules allows evil to go unchecked.
True, and unjust laws should be broken.
Murder is not unjust.
gotta choose your battles…
It already is a toxic witch-hunt here. Try posting that you like an Apple product or that you don’t like Linux or Android and you’ll immediately get called a shill. Try it! It’s fun!
I’ve never understood why people gush over Linux as a windows replacement. Why yes having to manually search for drivers for every product known to man and not being able to run even a fraction of what is on steam sounds like a fantastic time!
You can run most games on Linux, you just have to enable proton, the steam deck uses a custom version of Linux by default, so at minimum anything marked as playable will work on Linux.
Also I never had to deal with drivers at all when setting up linux, but I’m not sure if that’s normal, I’ve only used Linux mint, which was pretty easy to set up.
Apple legitimately makes super solid hardware. Their Apple watch heart rate accuracy is second only to chest straps and has a ton of very useful features. It is pretty much the best as far as integration, a “health watch” and haptics.
Their phones and laptops have some beautiful hardware design too.
Their business side just sucks donkey cock is all. But google is just as bad as Apple so potato potahto. Nobody should fanboy when every choice is shit lol
Well that’s the point. Linux, Firefox, custom Android ROMs - they’re not corporate owned proprietary software, they’re FOSS. And they’re what you should use.
Depends, if you mean for the average user then it’s good, but still overpriced as hell, and you have to deal with the Apple philosophy of “we did the thinking for you, if you dislike our choices it’s not matter of preference, you’re just wrong” no matter what.
Enterprise use cases you might as well pitch your Apple products in the trash, they won’t work and you’ll spend more time figuring out which USB-C Thunderbolt to 10G SR optical fiber converter actually works than you will getting productivity done.
Now you’re getting it!
Begins whistling the start of a musical number
If you get downvoted on lemmy you don’t get a 10min timeout and karma reduction like on reddit. So you may as well say what you want and wear the downvotes proud.
The app I use doesn’t even LET me downvote, so hah!
then use a different app!?
Oh I do. Downvotes don’t matter at all on Lemmy. It’s just annoying because some people think they do and they think if they get upvotes that it means they’re right.
If they don’t matter currently for moderation I have to imagine they’ll be part of a moderation toolkit eventually. Leveraging community voting to detect spam would be decently effective, especially for fresh accounts.
Yeah, but reddit automatically bans you for a few minutes in a specific community once you get enough downvotes. The more you get, the longer it takes to reply to people. So any opinion that’s truly unpopular (i.e. not “I like cats better than dogs”) will get you to post less, with toxic people throwing their 3 cents in, calling you names, and you can’t respond at all since you are limited to a comment every 20 mins.
I dobt lemmy would implement autobanning like that.
EXACTLY
Sounds like something a shill would say
/s
Shit… busted.
I work for a telecommunications company and we obviously sell mobile phones as well as our own brand of routers and repeaters. Here in Germany, there is no obligation to use anything your provider gives you, so ppl are legitimately free to use whatever modem/router they want. Our’s is plenty enough for everyone who just wants a thing that sits in the corner and is never interacted with. Hell, It even has VPN via Wireguard and dynamic DNS and a little display. Are there more sophisticated routers out there? Hell yes. Yet, whenever my noob friends or family ask me for advice and I go “just by the one we’re offering and be done with it”, they call me a shill.
So… Why do you ask if you don’t want to hear the response and why the hell would I sell you something I know doesn’t fit your needs when you’d come to me with your complaints?!
Jesse… what the fuck are you talking about?
That people call me a shill for recommending the stuff from the company I work for which I only recommend because
A) I know it so I can help them with their problems and
b) I got it cheaper, so I tried it and I know that it’s alrightBut people will first ask me “because I work at a Telco” and then not believe me because “of course you’d say that, you work at a Telco”.
I was adding a personal anecdote to the argument you made that people calling out “shills” often depends on if they share your opinion or not.
Got it. I think we’re specifically talking about Lemmy, though, and online communities where people don’t even know your identity. Your anecdote just makes me think your family is crazy. They know you and still call you a shill? That’s nuts.
Don’t you dare tell anybody here that you use Chrome and that you like it.
I use Chrome exclusively because Firefox is a broken resource hog.
Seriously? Have you missed the memes that Chrome will eat your memory? They were everywhere for a while.
No, I didn’t miss any of those lies.
I’m an Apple user who owns a Tesla and thinks both have decently good products.
Do I win Lemmy Tech Product Controversy Bingo?
Nope. I already ticked those boxes. My prize was a punch in the face from a random Lemmy zealot. Better luck next time.
You’ll know when lemmy gets big enough, because you’ll start seeing subtle Coca Cola placements in posts
No, there’s definitely some infrequent advertising on lemmy. I block it (and frequently any community that contains it) or I’d point you at two or three examples I’ve seen in my time here.
this is a very naive guess…
This is exactly what’s going to happen, the idea that corporate entities are even aware of us let alone investing resources into convincing the few hundred commenters on Lemmy of their opinions is ridiculous.
This will just turn into “oh, you have a dissenting opinion? You’re a corporate shill.”
Can’t wait, we’ll lose even more people and then I’ll end up just going to Tildes exclusively as the echo chamber becomes even more severe than it already is here.
At times it’s amusing when people get super excited about the “Reddit exodus” and how the Fediverse will end Reddit.
Seems like the really egregious behavior is leaving Reddit and moving here, which might have the effect of actually improving Reddit lol
I agree, everytime I see someone saying how improved this place is I just think “wtf are you seeing that I’m not?”
It feels like this place took the worst of reddit, not the best.
Yeah I see this turned into a witch hunt for places where fruitful discussion may have otherwise happened.
It’s interesting to get an inside view and how some corporations do their BS, which usually requires discussing it which is often kicked off by some complaint or misunderstanding of how the world works.
I tried to convince my small company to put an account on Mastodon instead of X. Our social media person opened a Mastodon account, but decided it wouldn’t be run until Mastodon was a little more, well, relevant.
There’s definitely spam, although it tends to be more of the boner pill variety.
How many people are actually buying suspicious dick pills on the internet? The I always assumed its scam/info stealing and you get nothing. There can’t be enough people dumb to buy those to keep it profitable, right?
Someone bonehead posted an ad on the technology community yesterday for a dental practice in Melbourne
I mean, what were they thinking?!?
I’m shocked anyone thinks this. Lemmy might as well not exist.
https://www.demandsage.com/social-media-users
LOL, not even half a million users:
These communities end up with so many false positives. Some people just like sharing when they find stuff they like!
That’s how a lot of marketing astroturfing works though.
You let people post things organically, then you signal boost the shit out of them, and nobody can claim it’s false or contrived, because OP really did just post a thing they like.
How is a corporation going to signal boost someone in a website they don’t even know exists for a platform of a few thousand reliable everyday users when they have no presence with which to “boost” it?
I’m sure we will have false positives. Luckily, having your comment or post shared on hailcorporate doesn’t disqualify you from anything.
I’ll hopefully be able to recognize witch hunts for what they are. If this community isn’t for you, please exercise your right to ignore it. :)
I saw one of these comments yesterday; I’d post it there, but it got deleted :(
is it just me or does this community have zero posts?
Is it me or did I create this community within the last hour?
You didn’t create anything. You just registered a community name.
It’s like the Great Value version of domain squatting.
You’re arguing semantics here, weird nerd. Who cares what you call what I did to bring this community into reality? I pressed a few buttons and the thing that was in my mind now exists in the world and is impossible for you to do anything about.
Did you want to add anything of value to the conversation?
now exists in the world and is impossible for you to do anything about.
Is the corporate astro turfer with us in the room right now, demesisx?
There’s a snowball’s chance in hell that corporations are spending their time and money trying to convince the few dozen active posters and few thousand commenters of anything. Most corporations with a PR department probably don’t even know Lemmy exists let alone has a significant enough number of users to matter to their interests.
Even if all of that weren’t true, you’ve still done nothing but created a community which I’m sure takes all of the time that setting up a new voice channel on discord does. Congratulations, you’ve created a place where random people who don’t agree with you will be framed as corporate imps for having an independent thought or knowledge of how the world works that you just can’t wrap your head around.
“Impossible for you to do anything about”
Lol it’s like watching Jerry from R&M leaving the day care and being told that he was always allowed, we really couldn’t care less but you’ll take this criticism as “those darn corpos trying to ruin Lemmy!” Instead of people calling you out for providing nothing and then pretending you are some activist striking out against the man.
Did you?
It’s just you
Great, valuable contributions here. Thanks Pepsi! You really ARE the taste of a new generation!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=T-8mKTAkYa4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Based on OP’s comments on this thread, I can only imagine what the modding of the community is going to look like
Let’s characterize it!
I won’t abide stanning for the billionaire class or calls to impotent civility. I very much have in my heart EXACTLY the spirit of what /r/HailCorporate was and if you doubt that, you are exactly the type of corporatist cuck that I created this community to reveal.
Now to characterize your privileged perspective:
“I have no sympathy for marginalized groups, quite literally pleading for their lives. If they wanted my sympathy, they should have done so more politely!”
I haven’t even gone into my personal opinions, but gj on deducing them.
Just what the fediverse needs. Another pit of toxicity and baseless witch hunting.
It’s also not generally a great idea to go all out attacking the people who cared to look at your post about your new community.
