Daily news
Followers
Labels
Search This Blog
Search This Blog
Popular-Posts
3/Technology/post-list
Music
2/Music/grid-big
Nature
3/Nature/grid-small
Fashion
3/Fashion/grid-small
About Me
Categories
Tags
Translate
Sports
Get All The Latest Updates Delivered Straight Into Your Inbox For Free!
Random-Posts
3/random/post-list
Random
3/random/post-list
Popular Posts
Subscribe Us
Recent-Posts
3/recent/post-list
RECENT
3/recent/post-list
Fashion/hot-posts
Technology
Breaking News
Latest Post
New best story on Hacker News: RevisionDojo, a YC startup, is running astroturfing campaigns targeting kids
RevisionDojo, a YC startup, is running astroturfing campaigns targeting kids
427 by red-polygon | 74 comments on Hacker News.
RevisionDojo is a YC-backed test prep company ($3.4M raised) that sells International Baccalaureate (IB) test prep. Over the past year, users on r/IBO sub-reddit have documented a pattern of unethical marketing practices: *Astroturfing:* Coordinated campaigns where accounts pose as students sharing "cheatsheets" and "predicted exam leaks." Other accounts then upvote, leave supportive comments, and ask follow-up questions—creating the illusion of organic student excitement. Multiple threads have exposed this pattern [1][2][3]. *Paid fake posts:* High school students report being offered payment to write promotional Reddit posts [4]. *Pressuring critics:* Users who post negative reviews report being contacted directly by company representatives, told it's "a shame" they're posting publicly [5]. Critical comments receive coordinated mass downvotes [6]. *Soliciting copyrighted materials:* They use TikTok influencers and fake reddit posts to persuade students to sell them official IB exam papers, violating IB policies [7]. The r/IBO moderators are actively investigating [8]. These practices appear to be working great for them. Recently, they acquired OnePrep (oneprep.xyz), a free SAT prep tool that was already popular on r/sat. Since the acquisition, the same manipulation tactics have been deployed at scale: 150 Trustpilot reviews in a window of a few days [9], and widespread coordinated Reddit manipulation—multiple accounts posting "tips" that recommend Oneprep, coordinated upvoting, and fake enthusiasm in comments. The most prominent example was a 2,000+ upvote post removed by moderators for manipulation, but it's part of a sustained campaign across the subreddit. *Sources:* [1] https://ift.tt/V4rMw98 [2] https://ift.tt/erycUj6 [3] https://ift.tt/qigQlvC [4] https://ift.tt/06zDemN [5] https://ift.tt/0hbr7SN [6] https://ift.tt/gXH4Prc [7] https://ift.tt/KN8VtC9 [8] https://ift.tt/UO3SeaA [9] https://ift.tt/XK7jbAD
427 by red-polygon | 74 comments on Hacker News.
RevisionDojo is a YC-backed test prep company ($3.4M raised) that sells International Baccalaureate (IB) test prep. Over the past year, users on r/IBO sub-reddit have documented a pattern of unethical marketing practices: *Astroturfing:* Coordinated campaigns where accounts pose as students sharing "cheatsheets" and "predicted exam leaks." Other accounts then upvote, leave supportive comments, and ask follow-up questions—creating the illusion of organic student excitement. Multiple threads have exposed this pattern [1][2][3]. *Paid fake posts:* High school students report being offered payment to write promotional Reddit posts [4]. *Pressuring critics:* Users who post negative reviews report being contacted directly by company representatives, told it's "a shame" they're posting publicly [5]. Critical comments receive coordinated mass downvotes [6]. *Soliciting copyrighted materials:* They use TikTok influencers and fake reddit posts to persuade students to sell them official IB exam papers, violating IB policies [7]. The r/IBO moderators are actively investigating [8]. These practices appear to be working great for them. Recently, they acquired OnePrep (oneprep.xyz), a free SAT prep tool that was already popular on r/sat. Since the acquisition, the same manipulation tactics have been deployed at scale: 150 Trustpilot reviews in a window of a few days [9], and widespread coordinated Reddit manipulation—multiple accounts posting "tips" that recommend Oneprep, coordinated upvoting, and fake enthusiasm in comments. The most prominent example was a 2,000+ upvote post removed by moderators for manipulation, but it's part of a sustained campaign across the subreddit. *Sources:* [1] https://ift.tt/V4rMw98 [2] https://ift.tt/erycUj6 [3] https://ift.tt/qigQlvC [4] https://ift.tt/06zDemN [5] https://ift.tt/0hbr7SN [6] https://ift.tt/gXH4Prc [7] https://ift.tt/KN8VtC9 [8] https://ift.tt/UO3SeaA [9] https://ift.tt/XK7jbAD
MKRdezign
Powered by Blogger.