"50 cent army" on WSO

Looking at this forum here: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/duke-v-northwestern-v-cornell

The last two posters as I'm typing this ("particlesandmodels" & "Dictator2013") were accounts created in the past hour and both advocate Duke as the school of choice. The "50 cent army", for those who don't know, are alleged paid internet users in the Chinese military, who go to forums and promote good things about the Communist Party of China.

If you're a HS senior and browsing these forums for school advice (which you shouldn't be doing...), watch out for these fake accounts. I'm actually curious what WSO's policy is on these short-term fake accounts.

8 Comments
 

I've actually noticed this as well. It's almost like these schools are paying kids to go on these forums. I'm actually embarrassed cauz some of the kids seem to be from my school.

Patrick/Andy, what do you guys do with these fake accounts? I'm all for free speech but the intensity of this is getting high, esp around now when college decisions are out.

 
BTbankerWtf does Duke have to do with China?

Curious why a bunch of people would come to Duke's support also... I can't see someone like Duke needing to pump their school with a bunch of slob teenagers commenting on blogs about how great it is. But I definitely notice the 50 cent army out in full force on particular topics and debates. Never understood how people thought that was effective. It's very prevalent on the Yahoo message boards, but unless you're shorting a penny stock I have no idea why you'd hire a bunch of idiots to trash a stock, debate a topic, or in this case talk up a major university for you.

 
BlackHat Curious why a bunch of people would come to Duke's support also... I can't see someone like Duke needing to pump their school with a bunch of slob teenagers commenting on blogs about how great it is. But I definitely notice the 50 cent army out in full force on particular topics and debates. Never understood how people thought that was effective. It's very prevalent on the Yahoo message boards, but unless you're shorting a penny stock I have no idea why you'd hire a bunch of idiots to trash a stock, debate a topic, or in this case talk up a major university for you.

People still use Yahoo ?

 

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