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A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with said person or organization, or have been paid to do so. Shills can carry out their operations in the areas of media, journalism, marketing, politics, sports, confidence games,
cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...
, or other business areas. A shill may also act to discredit opponents or critics of the person or organization in which they have a vested interest. In most uses, ''shill'' refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers, participants or "marks" the impression of an enthusiastic customer independent of the seller, marketer or con artist, for whom they are secretly working. The person or group in league with the shill relies on
crowd psychology Crowd psychology (or mob psychology) is a subfield of social psychology which examines how the psychology of a group of people differs from the psychology of any one person within the group. The study of crowd psychology looks into the actions ...
to encourage other onlookers or audience members to do business with the seller or accept the ideas they are promoting. Shills may be employed by salespeople and professional marketing campaigns. ''Plant'' and ''stooge'' more commonly refer to a person who is secretly in league with another person or outside organization while pretending to be neutral or part of the organization in which they are planted, such as a magician's audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization (see
double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
). Shilling is illegal in many circumstances and under many jurisdictions because of the potential for
fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...
and damage. However, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, the shill's actions may be legal. For example, a person planted in an audience to laugh and applaud when desired (see claque), or to participate in on-stage activities as a "random member of the audience", is a legal type of shill.


Etymology

The origin of the term "shill" is uncertain; it may be an abbreviation of "shillaber". The word originally denoted a carnival worker who pretended to be a member of the audience in an attempt to elicit interest in an attraction. Some sources trace the usage back to 1914, or as far back as 1911. American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (1814–1890), who often wrote under the guise of his fictional character Mrs. Ruth Partington, the American version of Mrs. Malaprop, is a possible source.


Internet

In online discussion media, shills make posts expressing opinions that further interests of an organization in which they have a vested interest, such as a commercial
vendor In a supply chain, a vendor, supplier, provider or a seller, is an enterprise that contributes goods or services. Generally, a supply chain vendor manufactures inventory/stock items and sells them to the next link in the chain. Today, these term ...
or
special interest group A special interest group (SIG) is a community within a larger organization with a shared interest in advancing a specific area of knowledge, learning or technology where members cooperate to effect or to produce solutions within their particular f ...
, while posing as unrelated innocent parties. For example, an employee of a company that produces a specific product might praise the product anonymously in a discussion forum or group in order to generate interest in that product, service, or group.
Web sites A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, ...
can also be set up for the same purpose. In addition, some shills use sock puppetry, where one person poses as multiple users. In some
jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' and 'speech' or 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple level ...
s and circumstances, this type of activity is illegal. The plastic surgery company Lifestyle Lift ordered their employees to post fake positive reviews on websites. As a result, they were sued, and ordered to pay $300,000 in damages by the New York Attorney General's office. Reputable organizations may prohibit their employees and other interested parties (contractors, agents, etc.) from participating in public forums or discussion groups in which a
conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple wikt:interest#Noun, interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates t ...
might arise, or will at least insist that their employees and agents refrain from participating in any way that might create a conflict of interest.


Gambling

Both the illegal and legal
gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of Value (economics), value ("the stakes") on a Event (probability theory), random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy (ga ...
industries often use shills to make winning at games appear more likely than it actually is. For example, illegal three-card monte and shell-game peddlers are notorious employers of shills. These shills also often aid in cheating, disrupting the game if the '' mark'' is likely to win. In a legal casino, however, a shill is sometimes a gambler who plays using the casino's money in order to keep games (especially poker) going when there are not enough players. The title of one of Erle Stanley Gardner's mystery novels, ''Shills Can't Cash Chips'', is derived from this type of shill. This is different from " proposition players" who are paid a salary by the casino for the same purpose, but bet with their own money.


Marketing

In marketing, shills are often employed to assume the air of satisfied customers and give testimonials to the merits of a given product. This type of shilling is illegal in some jurisdictions, but almost impossible to detect. It may be considered a form of
unjust enrichment Restitution and unjust enrichment is the field of law relating to gains-based recovery. In contrast with damages (the law of compensation), restitution is a claim or remedy requiring a defendant to give up benefits wrongfully obtained. Liability ...
or
unfair competition Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usually smaller, businesses or consumers. ...
, as in California's Business & Professions Code § 17200, which prohibits any "unfair or fraudulent business act or practice and unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading
advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...
".


Auctions

People who drive prices in favor of the seller or auctioneer with fake bids in an auction are called ''shills'' or ''potted plants'' and seek to provoke a bidding war among other participants. Often they are told by the seller precisely how high to bid, as the seller does not lose money if the item does not sell, paying only the auction fees. Shilling has a substantially higher rate of occurrence in online auctions, where any user with multiple accounts can bid on their own items. One detailed example of this has been documented in online auto auctions. The online auction site
eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
forbids shilling; its rules do not allow friends or employees of a person selling an item to bid on the item, even though eBay has no means to detect if a bidder is related to a seller or is in fact the seller. In his book ''Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay'', Kenneth Walton describes how he and his accomplices placed shill bids on hundreds of eBay auctions over the course of a year. Walton and his associates were charged and convicted of fraud by federal authorities for their eBay shill bidding. With the proliferation of live online auctions in recent years, shill bidding has become commonplace. Some websites allow shill bidding by participating auctioneers. These auctioneers are able to see bids placed in real time and can then place counter bids to increase the amount. One Proxibid auctioneers' website states, "At the request of the auction company, this auction permits bids to be placed by the seller or on the seller's behalf, even if such bids are placed solely for the purpose of increasing the bid."


See also

* Aiding and abetting *
Astroturfing Astroturfing is the deceptive practice of hiding the Sponsor (commercial), sponsors of an orchestrated message or organization (e.g., political, economic, advertising, religious, or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from ...
* Compliance *
Confidence trick A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irrespons ...
* Corporate propaganda *
Cronyism Cronyism is a specific form of in-group favoritism, the spoils system practice of partiality in awarding jobs and other advantages to friends or trusted colleagues, especially in politics and between politicians and supportive organizations. ...
*
False advertising False advertising is the act of publishing, transmitting, distributing or otherwise publicly circulating an advertisement containing a false claim, or statement, made intentionally, or recklessly, to promote the sale of property, goods or servi ...
* False testimony * Greenwashing * Influence-for-hire * Influencer marketing * One weird trick *
Propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
*
Psychological manipulation In psychology, manipulation is defined as an action designed to influence or control another person, usually in an underhanded or subtle manner which facilitates one's personal aims. Methods someone may use to manipulate another person may includ ...
*
Pump and dump Pump and dump (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements (pump), in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price (dump). O ...
*
Pyramid scheme A pyramid scheme is a business model which, rather than earning money (or providing Return on investment, returns on investments) by sale of legitimate product (business), products to an end consumer, mainly earns money by recruiting new members ...
* Sockpuppet *
Spin (public relations) In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event. While traditional public relations and advertising may manage their presentation of facts, "spin" often i ...
* You scratch my back * Whitewash (censorship)


References


External links


Opinion Spam Detection: Detecting Fake Reviews and Reviewers.
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago {{Conflict of interest Commercial crimes Deception Gambling terminology Promotion and marketing communications Social influence Conflict of interest Circus slang