Am I just being grumpy, or is now an odd time for a single link Times Online post? [more inside]
posted by motty on Feb 1, 2008 - 66 comments

Vaguely relevant remark + 2(link to own website) + sales-pitch = inauspicious first comment.
posted by Sonny Jim on Jun 12, 2007 - 4 comments

This post might be a self-link with one level of indirection. It's certainly just marketing, regardless.
posted by Malor on Apr 20, 2007 - 25 comments

Is PreacherTom an astroturfer? He's made 13 posts to the blue, all in the past couple of months. And all 13 of them start with a link to Business Week. There's someone with the same name on Netscape.com's digg-esque site who does the same thing, and one on StumbleUpon, too. And that's not all. Am I being paranoid? Is this even worth frowning on, as long as they're all decent posts?
posted by Plutor on Dec 22, 2006 - 166 comments

And the award for most obvious self-linker goes to ...
posted by anjamu on Aug 22, 2006 - 11 comments

I can't prove that this is a self link, but I'd be willing to bet money that it is. (My BS detector is going off bigtime.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Aug 12, 2006 - 20 comments

Fuck this.
posted by Snyder on Apr 27, 2006 - 128 comments

mrhappybanjo, here's looking at you. (askme thread + a post to projects for the store in askme)
posted by tozturk on Jan 13, 2006 - 56 comments

stupid viral marketing. Light your torch and sharpen your pitchfork.
posted by crunchland on Dec 5, 2005 - 33 comments

It should be pretty obvious that stuff like this should not fly in the blue. Using this site as a quarry for pyramid schemes is inappropriate and action should be taken accordingly.
posted by baphomet on Jun 26, 2005 - 47 comments

yesterday, on./ was reading an interesting discussion about a product when someone accused the poster of Viral Marketing, in effect really trying to grab publicity off of ./ while they're covertly under contract to the company they are posting about.
Today, in a very useful MeFi discussion, someone raised the Same Suspicion.

Whether Octavius is correct or not, I think there's no reason to doubt that firms are cropping up to harness communities and blogs to plant publicity on the net. On its face, it would likely be far more effective advertising than a pop up or TV commercial... Once the corporate heavyweights catch on, it could get quite excessive and sneaky.

But it could seriously undermine a community since to some extent, we'll all start scrutinizing the motives of any given post and poster.

Could well be the beginning of the end (or at least the end of the beginning) of the innocence for MeFi etal... Any ideas on how to contend with this?

posted by BentPenguin on Sep 6, 2002 - 39 comments

I noticed an odd trend recently in the way a couple new people were posting and I think I've uncovered a problem. (more)
posted by mathowie on Oct 1, 2001 - 100 comments

has bonzo gone too far? three of four posts have been self-links, and now this comment....
posted by rebeccablood on Jun 17, 2001 - 22 comments