Bitcoin Forum

A few weeks ago, there was some talk in Meta that certain members were shilling links and articles from different crypto sites on the forum. Some users thought that it was a matter of paid shilling campaigns.

I wanted to test this theory, so I decided to contact about 70 of some of the world's most popular cryptocurrency news sites. I pretended to be an advertiser with multiple Bitcointalk accounts who wanted to use those accounts to make posts, shill, and advertise articles and links to their platforms.

I will not share the content of the emails I sent to not give anyone any ideas. Although, this post alone is enough to do just that.

The goal was to find out if crypto media outlets are interested in paying to have their brand and articles mentioned and discussed on Bitcointalk. Of all the emails I sent and forms I filled out, 7 sites showed an interest in working with me (unfortunately, I deleted one of those emails before I could take a screenshot of it), they wanted to discuss the pricing, and services offered by my fake advertisement team.

I will show screenshots of those replies, but without revealing the names of the sites or people to whom I spoke. My aim is not to doxx them.

1.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/tlBE9.jpeg

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https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/tlg5N.jpeg

3.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/tl8Ua.jpeg

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https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/tlKRo.jpeg

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https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/tlb1T.jpeg

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https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/tlpWl.jpeg


The conclusion is that Bitcointalk is a place that remains relevant for some crypto news sites. They don’t mind discussing and even paying someone for advertisement/shill campaigns. So, the next time you see a specific member or a group of people shilling a particular brand or 3rd-party website aggressively, it is quite possible that they are paid for it. 

While I do appreciate your effort, the conclusion is not surprising at all. I was clearly expecting that the most blatant shilling is not for free. I somehow thought that the accounts doing that were employees, not "externals", but that detail is not so much important.

The only surprise for me is that you've got such answers from only 10% of the newspapers, although I acknowledge that the starting 70 you reached out is quite a big number.

I honestly expected greater interest in my fake services when I started this experiment. It is possible that some of the emails ended up in spam folders, plus they were sent around or during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Maybe a few more interested parties will reply back soon. What is also interesting is that only one site wrote back saying they aren't interested. Everyone else remained quiet.

You are probably right when you said that some shilling might be done by them alone, so they don't need to pay other people for it. Lastly, the top 5-10 sites probably generate enough traffic and they aren't interested in campaigns like the one I proposed. 

It's also not uncommon that some companies or employees start working only after the 10th of January. So yep, you may get more answers  :D


Um.. no. The same is when you send your resume: most companies "reply" only if they call you for a next step. Otherwise they just don't bother.


...Or some may already have and established "army" of "promoters"  ;)

Interesting, I've had a similar experience with some random projects on LinkedIn where I dropped my telegram contact details after several days without a response from the project team, I decided to think smart and went back and edited my contact details and added my forum profile link, and a few hours later I got a message from the team Yeah, I lost the job because they added some ungodly condition since I was a BTT user - it shows how every project want to shill here.

For real, the forum is still quite relevant out there!! Others may not believe but the forum's paid adverts, signature, and bounty have contributed significantly to the forum

Mostly the accounts used for shilling is newbie or low ranked accounts and there are cases which are exposed as well by Red tag queen but imagine if there is an account farmer who know how to do it professionally and smartly by growing account and getting merits meanwhile their post contain some sort or relatable to the crypto websites you are talking about. ???

I'm more surprised that there are 70 crypto news whatever websites that would dare to call themselves popular and even more amazed half of those would not be a single employee CEO operation.

@Pmalek since just providing the list would not count as an accusation or anything I would be really grateful if you could share the list, seeing that number make me think I've completely lost touch with the trend and I'm really starting to get too old and behind the times.


The top doesn't need traffic as they have more than the forum could provide, some don't have the money, some are doing it themselves, some don't trust a random mail, some have thought they could do this by themselves once they've read it, some haven't either got or read the mail or are still debating.

10% still seems high for me.

Ps, did you send an email to coinidol too?  ;D ;D

Go to Fiverr.com search with: bitcointalk (https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=bitcointalk&source=main_banner&search_in=everywhere&search-autocomplete-original-term=bitcointalk) and bitcointalk bump (https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=bitcointalk%20bump&source=top-bar&search_in=everywhere&search-autocomplete-original-term=bitcointalk%20bump), you will see many Fiverr users are offering bitcointalk service. They are taking orders to constantly make posts with group of alts, bump an ANN and many more service which we all know that does not work anymore. But they created a market and scamming ignorant project owners.

Business surrounding bitcointalk has a big market. After all it's the biggest crypto community but project owners should do their own due diligence to work with right people instead of people who are giving false promise and selling something which does not even exists anymore like BUMPING service.

Edit: 10 merits for the time consuming research :-P

The forum happens to be the highest crypto community that exists and when crypto articles, write ups or even bitcointalk/discussion is searched on Google search engine and a series of them out there, the forum is likely amongst the first 5th that comes up, although this is relative as per nations. Given thte fact, with crypto news sites and businesses in the clicks and ads view campaign looking out for crypto enthusiast to visit there page regularly, its very unlikely to reject an offer coming from a bitcointalk reputable users and can even give considerations to users without credible reputation.

It all goes down to one thing, the decorum of the forum and the Satoshi brainchild for which accords it some form of attributes as a core arm (if I can borrow that term) of bitcoin and cryptos. Hence, the forums value is no question but, the credibility of what some users put out here is. That's why fake advertising and shilling is not promoted here as, unaware users are likely to dig in more often. So, its no surprise the offers that might come out of it but, users on the forum have to watch out on the links they click. Nice one taking out time to go the length and prove a point @Pmalek.

This will always be the case when your on a popular website which gets traffic. They aren't necessarily asking you to spam either, they're probably thinking (at least some) that your offering a legitimate service which isn't going to be frowned upon. Advertising is very much part of our life these days its everywhere you look. I mean, its the reason signature campaigns exist on the forum, they aren't doing it because they have spare Bitcoin to throw around, it genuinely gets them more traffic. That's why you'll see most forums will have some sort of signature section, and most are using it for advertising. Even outside this forum it exists.

Though, advertising is definitely an issue here or paid hype/bumping services. We must nuke thousands each month, and they're very likely by the same people / advertising agencies since they use the same techniques, post in the same threads, and generate fake low quality conversations with each other. Also, the thousands per month isn't an exaggeration, in the last 30 days I've personally handled over 1000 of these types of reports, and I know other moderators were also doing the same. These aren't always reported either, I often watch the patrol since when they start they usually continue for a few hours.  

Which is very likely, and probably fairly easy to somewhat prove. Would only need to do some searching for blogs that are promoting their websites, since that's usually the method advertisers take.

If you repeat it enough times, it will become true. :)

If you are interested in the names of the websites, I can PM you a few sources from where I gathered the majority of the information besides the ones I already knew. I don't want to make it public and provide everything on a platter to those looking to spam this place. 

No, I don't think so. I can't find anything in the sent folder. Why?

I didn't know that such services are being offered on websites for freelancers, but I am not surprised to be honest.

Hihi:
Moderation of @CoinIdolNews constantly shitting in the Press board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5253793.0)
There was quite a bit of drama with coinidiot as poeple labeled the so-called newspaper that was spamming the board like mad at that time. Did not end nicely for them (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276040.msg55204413#msg55204413).


After discussing that, out of curiosity I tried to search for lists, not to find out by name specifically but to see if they are that many indeed and it's quite possible I've stumbled upon the same sources, and yeah, there are a  ton. I was skeptical there might be 70 which could brag about an at least <100k Alexa score but to my genuine surprise, the internet is full of this.... species of websites.
So I fulfilled my curiosity already, unfortunately. :)

LOL, you seem not to remember it. There was a lot of spam in Press for long time with back links to coinidol website. I don't know when they started.. 2018?, and they were still written in 2021.
I don't know if all, or just many of them, but they've got deleted, however, you can take a look: https://ninjastic.space/search?board=77&content=coinidol.com

And I see stompix also forgot to mention beincrypto  ;D https://ninjastic.space/search?board=77&content=beincrypto.com

Of course we wouldn't be surprised by the results you get from that survey because site owners know that their web traffic will greatly increase when ads about their site or article are shared in places with a higher reading interest base like bitcointalk. Those who are willing to pay are those who know what benefit they will get from hiring the shill. However since this forum doesn't allow shill activity, the war drums will start beating and I'm sure there will be more and more reports about them to the moderators.

Bitcointalk sure is relevant nowadays, and anyone who is active in forum can see that.
Advertisment Round 347 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5379845.0) auction was posted few days ago in forum by theymos, and anyone can participate including news agencies.
Maybe someone remembers that guy from China who came with his big dao farm few months ago, after he was busted by Ratimov :)

It's no surprise to me because you sent them emails around holiday time and new year, so give them some time and you will receive more replies from others.
Once they post public email address it constantly gets filled with mix of genuine emails and spam from Nigerian prince(s).

To be honest I was the same too until I had done some research before starting my campaign management service. I was surprised and at the same time disappointed too. I tried some of the users and messaged them about the service they are providing. All of them has more or less the same common response:

We have many accounts and we will regularly post comments on your ANN thread to bump it. The rates are interesting too. They have some rates for up to 7 accounts, 15 accounts, 50 accounts. This means these guys has army of alts in the forum who is spamming constantly LOL

The sad thing about it that those who orders the gigs do not know that the bumping actually does not work like this used to work before. They are just wasting time in this trap.

I guess I missed those events. I don't really visit the Press board hence my ignorance about the whole situation.

Yeah, without much effort you could probably find hundreds of these crypto news sites or news aggregators (whatever they are called).

RainbowKun or something like that, right? He was very active in the Bitcoin Discussions sub, but nothing happened to him if I remember correctly. I think he is still around.

There are maybe 3-4 crypto-related sites that can be categorized as serious, and they had (or still have) paid shills, but none of them could do such things indefinitely, which has been shown several times in the Press board. I don't understand at all the need to discuss this when there is a simple way to prevent each of them from doing such things - I've proven this in the Press Board and countless times in the Bitcoin discussion board just by using the report to moderator option.

This forum has lost a lot of users in the past few years, and therefore the exposure of each project is decreasing - so even if all 70 contacted started such campaigns, half of them would give up after a week, the other half might last a week or two when they realize that their posts are deleted and those who do so get temporary or permanent bans.

Wow!  First of all, you deserve all the merits you got for this experiment, and you get big props from me for taking the initiative to do what you did

Second, I'm not sure what to think about the results.  You're probably correct that members who post only links to or snippets from crypto news outlets are being compensated for their work--but I'm not sure if that's necessarily unethical on the news sites' part.  It seems kind of like a newspaper outlet trying to increase their circulation via advertising, which historically they've always done.  Getting eyeballs on their articles and getting people to visit their sites by having bitcointalk members promote them seems pretty tame.

That's the bad part of all this, though I'm assuming these shills are posting in the Press section?  If I'm not mistaken, that one has been full of spammy members for a long time now, and I don't think there's been much discussion going on in it for a long time. 

Very interesting, Pmalek.  Again I applaud what you did--though I wish you'd name names.

I recall encountering these gigs from what I mentioned in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5338861.msg57116462#msg57116462) back in May. I also provided the link of the gig in one of my replies there, but it was taken down already though there were screenshots that I provided.
I would just advise to report these gigs. Not sure if my report went through and Fiverr took down the gig as they never contacted me back about the status of my report, or the freelancer took it down by himself.

How about you look at the Press Board and see for yourself? There are no more paid posts on that board for some time, nor will there be in the future, and that includes the Bitcoin discussion.

There was a recent discussion about it, and you participated in it - but such discussions lead nowhere, because instead of reporting such a problematic post, someone is asking for the board to close, and we all know that the chances of that are almost nil.

Proposal: Rename the "Press" board to "Spammer of the Month" board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5370706.0)

Thanks for the compliments!
I decided not to do it for several reasons. I already mentioned that I didn't want to hand the information over to those willing to partake in such activities. Showing the names, would make their job of finding those willing to pay for their campaigns much easier.
Also, we don't really know what exactly they would be prepared to pay for. They have expressed an interest in discussing the proposed service, one site did mention a price for bringing them traffic, but nothing more. Maybe they would expect some sort of quality in the posts and not plain and simple copy-pasted spam.

Good initiative, plus knowing that they pay for these services doesn't actually prevent them from doing it. So, even if we knew who paid for advertisers to shill repeatedly, then it probably wouldn't stop the posts. Plus, as I mentioned briefly before expressing an interest in advertising doesn't necessarily mean they want people to spam for them.

They might not be familiar with the rules of Bitcointalk, although they're probably aware of the forum. They might thinking that they're advertising in accordance to the rules, e.g signatures. Although, I know I'm giving them a lot of the benefit of the doubt here, they probably don't care as they only care about traffic, not how your getting that traffic as long as its legitimate traffic.

It's almost the end of January, so I took another look at my marketing email address that I used to bombard crypto websites with my offer to shill their brand and articles. I wanted to see if any other interesting offers were submitted. However, that wasn't the case. Those 7 examples in OP are it.

I can’t see the exact text of what the OP sent these sites, but I don’t think creating posts that cite a particular site is against any rule that I can think of. Most of the backlink spam that I report is either off topic, nerco bumping a thread, or is a very low value thread/post.

If someone were to create threads from articles at a particular site, that is otherwise interesting, I don’t think any rules would be broken. The forum rules follow libertarian ideology, so the fact that someone is getting paid to create a post is almost never going to, in itself, break a rule (it may serve as the basis for the motivation of someone breaking a rule, which may be a factor that results in a harsher penalty).

Me neither but the problem is that those who engage in these kind of activities usually can't create any quality of their own. It's usually just copy-pasted materials with no inputs or feedback from OP whatsoever. The only goal is to place that link in the post and tick that as work done on your list. And then you do that as fast and as much as you can... Thread starters don't even go back to check the comments made about the post, engage in discussion, or answer questions. They don't have time for that and don't want to do it because new links need to be spammed.  ::)

Bump

This is not necessarily always the case though. For example, I’ve shilled for Tesla products like the Cybertruck and Powerwall without being compensated by Tesla. You could make the argument I did it to farm referrals, but that’s a flimsy case. Sometimes people just like products and want to share them. Recently I also made a thread that could be construed as shilling for the Sondors Metacycle. I really was just presenting what I believed to be a good opportunity to get a fun electric vehicle for a number of reasons (inflation and manufacturing price increases/rarity). Believe me, or was this just another paid post?  ;).

Shilling may be a good thing for those site owners who are desperate to make profits but here in bitcointalk, shilling should always be avoided, otherwise you will be reported and may be banned. But staying long here in the forum, i have come to witness a lot of members still do shilling their own coins, no wonder why others took the risk because they also make money from it. But if you want to make your stay in the forum more profitable and valuable, learn to avoid those things that can only give you demerits as it will only make your account suffer in the future.

The part of my post you quoted doesn't say that if you notice someone shill something, it's definitely paid shilling. It says that it's quite possible that it is. I believe that still to be true. Of course that doesn't apply to all sorts of products, gear, or services. No one would believe that Elon Musk pays you a fortune every month to advertise his Cybertruck on Bitcointalk. That wouldn't make sense. If I purchased an excellent smartphone or a computer I am really happy with and I made those feelings public, it goes without saying that Dell and Samsung aren't paying me for advertising campaigns.

On the other hand, if I started shilling a suspicious crypto wallet, casino, or a relatively unfamiliar/unpopular service or product, there might be some ulterior motives behind all that. So it always depends, what is shilled and who does it.   

Not all but certainly there were already caught in the past about shilling a crypto news site which every time there is a new articles posted, the user also post part of the article and state his opinion and right below is the reference link of the crypto news site. I believe it was beincrypto site. Every business wants to have traffic to convert as clients  on  their businesses and most of them find Bitcointalk a  valuable place to advertise. Traffic in  bitcointalk makes money, the  sig campaigns in the forum proves it.

The fact that you offer your shill services to them, makes it convenient to them too.

I guess we can really sense it if the poster is shilling because he was paid to advertise it, or its just his own will to advertise what he thinks other should know about it as well. But as long as shilling is there, the promotion is there, it will always be against the forum rules. So if we can create post without shilling aside, i think that way will be safer and won't create complications in the future.

Advertising and shilling is not against forum rules. If that were the case, we wouldn't have signature campaigns and other promotional activities. Aggressive advertisement of a site or service that creates spam whose purpose is only mentioning the brand without creating any quality for the forum is not allowed. Continuously advertising in other people's threads (especially if it's off-topic) is also forbidden. 

The good thing in bitcointalk is the freedom of publicity and advertising for any services so people can discover all the differences and try them by their own with full responsibility. But sometimes you should be carful as OP mentioned that some high rank memebers are getting paid to shill for certain services even that they might be kind of sus or not offering good quality service. Even scam cases sometimes as we saw many times.
And for the annoying advertisements where new members are spamming every section or threads i think these posts are being deleted by admins and if it's keeps appearing from same memeber he gets a permanent ban. So the thing everyone should do is being smart and do research before doing or using something on bitcointalk no matter how good it looks

This post has been here for months but it's still relevant. Indeed, anyone promoting a gambling website or casino here are possibly paid for having an advertisement to encourage other forum members to join and try. With your experiment, you just proved that those gambling website or casino owners still have interest in bitcointalk to be their bridge to find potential clients. After all, a lot of members here are really into gambling.

It's good to see random checking such as this to know and verify whether if something could possibly happen or occuring already in the forum. This just make the claim of some that there are accounts existing here not really to share their first-hand experience of the site, but to advertise so that the casino will be more known and of course, to entice and scout players.

I'm not really surprised that there are casinos and gambling sites willing to discuss the set up and the pay for advertising and shilling because surely, they get more than what they will pay for once many members will give in from a shilled post. As you can see, feedback is one of the most important things a player look into when finding a good gambling site. If the poster paid could execute a smooth talk and scout players, it's a win for them and the casino they are working for. Fortunately, we can criticize the posts and its author to make some warnings to other members and to disprove if something is really wrong.

I applaud the ideas or experimental steps you take. This inspires me a little for your experimental steps. and this also proves the greater potential of this forum. their interest must also be justified. maybe those who responded also have an account on this forum or they see other good potential from this forum. this clearly opened my mind to introduce this forum more broadly as the experiment you did.