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Comment by _aleph2c_ | Hacker News Reader

MLM: Multilevel Marketing scheme

Articles like this grind my gears when they mention an ancronym in the title and I have to read through 4 paragraphs before finding out what MLM means.

I suspect that sometimes the person who uses the acronym doesn't know its meaning. Or the acronym doesn't even have a commonly accepted definition, even. For example, that's my experience from recently reading a number of articles on the "OSR" scene, or movement, or trend, in TTRPGs where "OSR" is variously explained as "Old School Revival" or "Old School Rennaissance" or even "Old School Rules", etc, but without any agreed-upon definition of what the hell it is.

(Btw: TTRPGs = Table-Top RolePlaying Games :P)

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Men Loving Men, I always assume.

It's the politically-correct term for pyramid scheme these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing

> MLM salespeople are, therefore, expected to sell products directly to end-user retail consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing, but more importantly they are incentivized to recruit others to join the company's distribution chain as fellow salespeople so that these can become downline distributors.[1][8] According to a report that studied the business models of 350 MLM companies in the United States, published on the Federal Trade Commission's website, at least 99% of people who join MLM companies lose money.[9][10] Nonetheless, MLM companies function because downline participants are encouraged to hold onto the belief that they can achieve large returns, while the statistical improbability of this is de-emphasized. MLM companies have been made illegal or otherwise strictly regulated in some jurisdictions as merely variations of the traditional pyramid scheme.[11][12]

> It's the politically-correct term for pyramid scheme these days.

It's actually different though the business model is the same.

Pyramid schemes actually frequently ran without an actual product. Those were made illegal (in the US). MLM's have a product but selling the product is secondary to recruiting underlings. The way to make money in an MLM is to never buy the product and recruit people who buy and you get a cut.

>politically-correct term

I don't get it. Were people getting canceled for saying "pyramid scheme" or something?

The point is that they are not technically pyramid schemes - there is a product to sell. It just so happens that the product is worthless so it makes the system a pyramid scheme in practice, but its peddlers are very quick to point out that it's not a pyramid scheme because of this technicality. It's the same reason why they are still unfortunately legal.

AFAIK there are laws against pyramid schemes, but MLMs are okay. Also, MLMs are pyramid schemes with extra steps, so they are basically the designer drugs of financial hucksterism.

No, the previous commenter is incorrect. Pyramid scheme is a well defined category of fraud. A MLM/affiliate marketing company may be a pyramid scheme, or it may not. Courts have routinely ruled that the business category is perfectly legal.

No. This term was created by pyramid scheme firms themselves to to categorize their business in a legit sounding way.

The person you're replying to really means to say "euphemism," or inventing a new term to avoid the negative connotations of an existing term that already fits. Sometimes euphemisms are motivated by political correctness, but not always and definitely not in calling a business model mostly indistinguishable from illegal pyramid schemes multi-level marketing.

Running a "pyramid scheme" is a crime in many places, so news organizations and such will prefer to use more neutral language that doesn't necessarily imply the groups they're talking about are criminal.

People are more likely to avoid doing business with you if you call yourself a pyramid scheme. Calling youself a "multi-level marketing" business sounds far more benign.

Doesn't MLM also apply to ponzi schemes and such?

I was really hoping this would be about Medical Logic Modules / Arden Syntax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_logic_module

Masked language modeling (Bert)

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