Shill
Encyclopedia
A shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization. Shill typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he or she is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) that he or she is secretly working for. The person or group that hires the shill is using crowd psychology
, to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by confidence artists
. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to any person who is secretly in league with another person or organization while pretending to be neutral or actually a part of the organization he or she is planted in, such as a magician's audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization (see double agent
).
Shilling is illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions because of the frequently fraudulent and damaging character of the shill's actions. However, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, but merely generates "buzz", 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 type of legal shill.
"Shill" can also be used pejoratively to describe a critic who appears either all-too-eager to heap glowing praise upon mediocre offerings, or who acts as an apologist for glaring flaws. In this sense, they would be an implicit "shill" for the industry at large, possibly because their income is tied to its prosperity. 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 only back to 1914.
. Websites may also be set up for the same purpose. For example, an employee of a company that produces a specific product may praise the product anonymously in a discussion forum or group in order to generate interest in that product, service or group. In addition, some shills use sock puppetry
where they sign on as one user soliciting recommendations for a specific product or service. They then sign on as a different user pretending to be a satisfied customer of a specific company.
In some jurisdiction
s and circumstances this type of activity may be illegal. In addition, 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
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. For example, 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. Said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
: "This company’s attempt to generate business by duping consumers was cynical, manipulative, and illegal. My office has [been] and will continue to be on the forefront in protecting consumers against emerging fraud and deception, including ‘astroturfing,’ on the Internet."
. See Spin (public relations)
and sock puppet (internet).
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. (This is different from a "proposition player" who is paid a salary by the casino for the same purpose, but bets with their own money.)
s 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
or unfair competition
, 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
".
war among other participants. Often they are told by the seller precisely how high to bid, as the seller actually pays the price (to himself, of course) if the item does not sell, losing 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. Many online auction sites employ sophisticated (and usually secret) methods to detect collusion
. The online auction site eBay forbids shilling; its rules do not allow friends or employees of a person selling an item to bid on the item.
s offered by a political party. Journalistic ethics require full disclosure of conflicts of interest
, and of any interference by other parties with the reportage.
More specifically, there are historical cases of journalists in private media organisations being covert representatives of government and/or businesses. In these roles the journalists will present positive stories about their respective interests at key moments in order to influence public opinion. This is often achieved by claiming to have access to anonymous government or business sources. At other times, the links may actually appear overt to some, but not to the intended audience such as with Radio Free Europe
, a broadcaster which targeted Eastern European audiences on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency
.
An extension of these tactics is the practice of monitoring news outlets prior to or during publication. Often when a negative story is discovered attempts are made first to stop it. However as this can, in some societies, draw attention to what could otherwise be a minor story, shills are used to put out alternative views, either to confuse the public about the legitimacy of the story or to outright convince them that it is a lie.
's experiment in which the subjects witnessed people getting electric shocks, a confederate would pretend to be one of the experimental subjects who would receive the fake shocks, so that the real experimental subject would think that a draw of names from a hat was random. The confederate would always play the role of the learner, and the subject would be the teacher, and the subject would think that this was a random draw from a hat containing papers that say "learner" and "teacher".
In performance art, such as DECONference (Decontamination Conference), the confederates were called "deconfederates", and when a large group of (de)conference attendees were asked to remove all clothing prior to entry to the deconference, the deconfederate, planted among the attendees, would comply immediately with the request, causing all of the others to follow the orders and disrobe as well.
of an individual or suspect. The plant can pose as a fellow inmate or internee, build a rapport and earn the confidence of the interviewee. The plant may subtly suggest that telling the interrogators what they want to know is the sensible or right thing to do. Even if no outright confessions are obtained, minor details and discrepancies that come out in supposedly innocent conversation can be used to chip away at the interviewee. Some plants are in reality inmates or prisoners of war
who have been promised better treatment and conditions in return for helping with the interrogation, as in the character played by William Hurt
in the film Kiss of the Spider Woman. One notorious UK case is that of Colin Stagg, a man who was falsely accused of the murder of Rachel Nickell, in which a policewoman posed as a potential love interest to try to tempt Stagg to implicate himself.
, Vassal
or Satellite
states have been routinely used in exercises of foreign policy to give weight to the arguments of the country that controls them. Examples of this include the USSR's use of its satellites in the United Nations during the Cold War. These states are also used to give the impression of legitimacy to domestic policies that are ultimately harmful to the population they control, while beneficial to the government that controls them.
Even outside the spectrum of sovereign powers many multiparty democratic systems give foreign powers the capacity to influence political discourse through shills and pseudo sock-puppets. Thanks to the reliance of many political parties on external sources of revenue for campaigns it can be easy for a government or business to either choose which party it funds or to outright create one. This way they can either choose to support existing minority voices that echo their views or form their own, using their funds and usually semi-covert influence to make them a more prominent voice.
Another concept in foreign policy is seen in sovereign alliances. In these instances, an allied country acts on behalf of another's interests so that it appears that the original power does not want to get involved. This is useful in situations where there is little public support in the original country for the actions. This type of collusion is typically practiced between countries that share common goals and are capable of returning favours. An example of this may be Cuba's role during the Cold War, in sending active combat troops to wars in Africa when it was unpalatable for the USSR to do so.
to destroy German Radio towers while dressed as Polish troops at the onset of World War Two.
and Chaos
. Often the end goal is not just to gain information about the organisation but to discredit them in the eyes of the public. However, these kinds of actions are more similar to False Flag Operations then typical Undercover Operations. In other examples, operatives may act in a manner they deem positive to assist an organisation they cannot have overt ties to.
Crowd psychology
Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...
, to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by confidence artists
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to any person who is secretly in league with another person or organization while pretending to be neutral or actually a part of the organization he or she is planted in, such as a magician's audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization (see double agent
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
).
Claque
Claque is an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs....
), or to participate in on-stage activities as a "random member of the audience", is a type of legal shill.
"Shill" can also be used pejoratively to describe a critic who appears either all-too-eager to heap glowing praise upon mediocre offerings, or who acts as an apologist for glaring flaws. In this sense, they would be an implicit "shill" for the industry at large, possibly because their income is tied to its prosperity. 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 only back to 1914.
Internet
In online discussion media, satisfied consumers or "innocent" parties may express specific opinions in order to further the interests of an organization in which they have an interest, such as a commercial vendor or special interest groupAdvocacy group
Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...
. Websites may also be set up for the same purpose. For example, an employee of a company that produces a specific product may praise the product anonymously in a discussion forum or group in order to generate interest in that product, service or group. In addition, some shills use sock puppetry
Sockpuppet (Internet)
A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term—a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock—originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an internet community who spoke to, or about himself while pretending to be another...
where they sign on as one user soliciting recommendations for a specific product or service. They then sign on as a different user pretending to be a satisfied customer of a specific company.
In some jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility...
s and circumstances this type of activity may be illegal. In addition, 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
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
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. For example, 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. Said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Mark Cuomo is the 56th and current Governor of New York, having assumed office on January 1, 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 64th New York State Attorney General, and was the 11th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development...
: "This company’s attempt to generate business by duping consumers was cynical, manipulative, and illegal. My office has [been] and will continue to be on the forefront in protecting consumers against emerging fraud and deception, including ‘astroturfing,’ on the Internet."
Sock puppets
Sometimes shills may be used to downplay legitimate complaints posted by users on the InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. See Spin (public relations)
Spin (public relations)
In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure...
and sock puppet (internet).
Gambling
Both the illegal and legal gamblingGambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
industries often use shills to make winning at games appear more likely than it actually is. For example, illegal Three-card Monte
Three-card Monte
Three-card Monte, also known as the Three-card marney, Three-card trick, Three-Way, Three-card shuffle, Menage-a-card, Triplets, Follow the lady, Les Trois Perdants , le Bonneteau, Find the lady, or Follow the Bee is a confidence game in which the victim, or mark, is tricked into betting a...
and Shell game
Shell game
The shell game is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud...
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. (This is different from a "proposition player" who is paid a salary by the casino for the same purpose, but bets with their own money.)
Marketing
In marketing, shills are often employed to assume the air of satisfied customers and give testimonialTestimonial
In promotion and of advertising, a testimonial or show consists of a written or spoken statement, sometimes from a person figure, sometimes from a private citizen, extolling the virtue of some product. The term "testimonial" most commonly applies to the sales-pitches attributed to ordinary...
s 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
Unjust enrichment
Unjust enrichment is a legal term denoting a particular type of causative event in which one party is unjustly enriched at the expense of another, and an obligation to make restitution arises, regardless of liability for wrongdoing.Definition:...
or unfair competition
Unfair business practices
Unfair business practices encompass fraud, misrepresentation, and oppressive or unconscionable acts or practices by business, often against consumers and are prohibited by law in many countries. For instance, in the European Union, each member state must regulate unfair business practices in...
, as in California's Business & Professions Code
California law
California law consists of several levels, including constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law, as well as case law.-Constitutional law:...
§ 17200, which prohibits any "unfair or fraudulent business act or practice and unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
".
Auctions
Shills, or "potted plants", are sometimes employed in auctions. Driving prices up with phony bids, they seek to provoke a biddingBidding
Bidding is an offer of setting a price one is willing to pay for something. A price offer is called a bid. The term may be used in context of auctions, stock exchange, card games, or real estate transactions....
war among other participants. Often they are told by the seller precisely how high to bid, as the seller actually pays the price (to himself, of course) if the item does not sell, losing 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. Many online auction sites employ sophisticated (and usually secret) methods to detect collusion
Collusion
Collusion is an agreement between two or more persons, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage...
. The online auction site eBay forbids shilling; its rules do not allow friends or employees of a person selling an item to bid on the item.
Journalism
The term is applied metaphorically to journalists or commentators who have vested interests in or associations with parties in a controversial issue. Usually this takes the form of a show or network pretending to be offering news when in fact they are simply repeating talking pointTalking point
A talking point in debate or discourse is a succinct statement designed to persuasively support one side taken on an issue. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition's talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy...
s offered by a political party. Journalistic ethics require full disclosure of conflicts of interest
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
, and of any interference by other parties with the reportage.
More specifically, there are historical cases of journalists in private media organisations being covert representatives of government and/or businesses. In these roles the journalists will present positive stories about their respective interests at key moments in order to influence public opinion. This is often achieved by claiming to have access to anonymous government or business sources. At other times, the links may actually appear overt to some, but not to the intended audience such as with Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
, a broadcaster which targeted Eastern European audiences on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
.
An extension of these tactics is the practice of monitoring news outlets prior to or during publication. Often when a negative story is discovered attempts are made first to stop it. However as this can, in some societies, draw attention to what could otherwise be a minor story, shills are used to put out alternative views, either to confuse the public about the legitimacy of the story or to outright convince them that it is a lie.
Research and experiments
A shill in a psychology experiment, or the like, is called a "confederate". In Stanley MilgramStanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
's experiment in which the subjects witnessed people getting electric shocks, a confederate would pretend to be one of the experimental subjects who would receive the fake shocks, so that the real experimental subject would think that a draw of names from a hat was random. The confederate would always play the role of the learner, and the subject would be the teacher, and the subject would think that this was a random draw from a hat containing papers that say "learner" and "teacher".
In performance art, such as DECONference (Decontamination Conference), the confederates were called "deconfederates", and when a large group of (de)conference attendees were asked to remove all clothing prior to entry to the deconference, the deconfederate, planted among the attendees, would comply immediately with the request, causing all of the others to follow the orders and disrobe as well.
Interrogations
Police or military interrogators sometimes use undercover agents (called "plants") to assist with the interrogationInterrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
of an individual or suspect. The plant can pose as a fellow inmate or internee, build a rapport and earn the confidence of the interviewee. The plant may subtly suggest that telling the interrogators what they want to know is the sensible or right thing to do. Even if no outright confessions are obtained, minor details and discrepancies that come out in supposedly innocent conversation can be used to chip away at the interviewee. Some plants are in reality inmates or prisoners of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
who have been promised better treatment and conditions in return for helping with the interrogation, as in the character played by William Hurt
William Hurt
William McGill Hurt is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School, and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in the science-fiction feature Altered States , for which he received a Golden Globe nomination...
in the film Kiss of the Spider Woman. One notorious UK case is that of Colin Stagg, a man who was falsely accused of the murder of Rachel Nickell, in which a policewoman posed as a potential love interest to try to tempt Stagg to implicate himself.
Puppet Government
PuppetPuppet state
A puppet state is a nominal sovereign of a state who is de facto controlled by a foreign power. The term refers to a government controlled by the government of another country like a puppeteer controls the strings of a marionette...
, Vassal
Vassal state
A vassal state is any state that is subordinate to another. The vassal in these cases is the ruler, rather than the state itself. Being a vassal most commonly implies providing military assistance to the dominant state when requested to do so; it sometimes implies paying tribute, but a state which...
or Satellite
Satellite state
A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...
states have been routinely used in exercises of foreign policy to give weight to the arguments of the country that controls them. Examples of this include the USSR's use of its satellites in the United Nations during the Cold War. These states are also used to give the impression of legitimacy to domestic policies that are ultimately harmful to the population they control, while beneficial to the government that controls them.
Even outside the spectrum of sovereign powers many multiparty democratic systems give foreign powers the capacity to influence political discourse through shills and pseudo sock-puppets. Thanks to the reliance of many political parties on external sources of revenue for campaigns it can be easy for a government or business to either choose which party it funds or to outright create one. This way they can either choose to support existing minority voices that echo their views or form their own, using their funds and usually semi-covert influence to make them a more prominent voice.
Another concept in foreign policy is seen in sovereign alliances. In these instances, an allied country acts on behalf of another's interests so that it appears that the original power does not want to get involved. This is useful in situations where there is little public support in the original country for the actions. This type of collusion is typically practiced between countries that share common goals and are capable of returning favours. An example of this may be Cuba's role during the Cold War, in sending active combat troops to wars in Africa when it was unpalatable for the USSR to do so.
False Flag Operation
Another tool utilising the appearance of another entity is a False Flag Operation. In these operations a government or organisation attempts to impersonate another party while committing an act that will allow it to react. An example of this is the Nazi OperationGleiwitz incident
The Gleiwitz incident was a staged attack by Nazi forces posing as Poles on 31 August 1939, against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany on the eve of World War II in Europe....
to destroy German Radio towers while dressed as Polish troops at the onset of World War Two.
Undercover Operations
During covert operations or police investigations agents may routinely claim to be of political views or a part of an organisation in order to gain the confidence of the people they wish to surveil. Sometimes this goes further with the agents participating in acts on behalf of the organisations they infiltrate or falsely represent as was the case during the Operations like GladioOperation Gladio
Operation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II. Its purpose was to continue anti-communist actions in the event of a shift to a Communist party led government...
and Chaos
Operation CHAOS
]Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for a domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency. A department within the CIA was established in 1967 on orders from President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson and later expanded under President Richard Nixon...
. Often the end goal is not just to gain information about the organisation but to discredit them in the eyes of the public. However, these kinds of actions are more similar to False Flag Operations then typical Undercover Operations. In other examples, operatives may act in a manner they deem positive to assist an organisation they cannot have overt ties to.
See also
- Confidence trickConfidence trickA confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
- Pyramid schemePyramid schemeA pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public...
- Psychological manipulationPsychological manipulationPsychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
- Erin BurnettErin BurnettErin Isabelle Burnett is the anchor of CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront. She was the co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk on the Street program and the host of CNBC's Street Signs program...