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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

I am sorry if this comment spark off any other pointless debate and argument or offended any Apple Fan boys or Samsung Fan boys.

But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.

Ans Samsung are at the top of this game. They are number 1 in spending on advertising and they spend double the advertising budget compared to 2nd in place. ( And their Rate are pretty awesome too compared to others )

You see heavy advertising on a Newspaper from Samsung? Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence? You should make up your own mind.

Compared to all other dirty thing that Samsung does behind the scene, these things are really tips of the iceberg.

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But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.

Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".

Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence

Good point; Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them.

Apple simply does not engage in anything even remotely resembling astroturfing. The simplest reason is that they don't need to, but the more accurate reason is that it's not in the company culture to do things like that.

As a semi-related example, I'm sure you're familiar with product placement in TV shows and movies. Most product placement is done because the company paid for it to be there (for example, all of the Windows 8 stuff I've seen in Arrow I'm certain is paid product placement). However, despite the fact that Apple products are used frequently in TV shows and movies, Apple does not pay for product placement; all the Apple product placement you see was free.

In any case, I personally don't think Apple is the only company that doesn't engage in astroturfing. I'm sure there are many large companies out there that don't do it.

Apple has a team dedicated to making sure their products are easy to access and deploy in a movie/TV, and a preferred choice. They don't pay cash, but they absolutely push their products into movies/TV.

The point is they're not paying. Showmakers want them.

No, they "lose" phones in bars though (twice) and do other very sneaky things. Apple is super sneaky. They also do things like making gimped software and drivers for other platforms part of their business plan. I consider this worse than astroturfing.

What are you talking about? Trust me, when a prototype device gets stolen in a bar, that's absolutely not guerrilla marketing. That was serious business, and I'm certain the only reason the engineer didn't get fired is because it would have been bad PR. Apple takes its prototype hardware extremely seriously.

And I really have no idea what you mean with the "gimped software and drivers for other platforms" claim.

Apple instead making gimped software or drivers for other platform?

What ??

"X" instead DO not even make software or drivers for other platform ( Mac and Linux ), what do you consider those company then?

"Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them."

I'm a Mac, I'm a PC? Classy, well-done trashing, sure, but straight up naming-names trashing it was.

> "subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company"

When your customer satisfaction numbers are that high, who needs to pay for astroturf?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/07/31/samsung-sma...

So how many happy Samsung customers does that translate to, when the rest of their phones are not doing so well and GS3/GN2 are hardly as numerous as any model of iPhone?

Except in this case I don't think this claim was true at all.

If you really want to know you should go deeper down the rabbit hole.

Other then that I can say nothing more.

There's the problem, stating that "all companies do this" when some big ones get caught is wrong. Some companies do this, but not all.

Apple can get their customers to astroturf for them. Psychological tools are quite effective with a large enough audience.

If you don't write favorably about Apple, then they don't invite you to the press releases. So their hands are no cleaner, just far more transparent and public.

That's just silly. Pretty much the whole tech press are critical if Apple and still gets invited.

The ones that don't get invited are those that buys stolen goods to be able to show off unannounced products.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-prs-dirty-little-secre... Leo Laporte and several of the tech journalists on the TWiT network talk about it as well. I've actually heard this so frequently, I just thought it was common knowledge.

Honestly that guy was not convincing at all. He pointed out how some journalists refused his request to ask apple about the address uploading issue and then completely speculated on the reasons why... then went on to makeup some BS reason as to why AllThingsD can criticize apple while still remaining in contact with him. After being in litigation with apple, this guy is clearly biased. If you read the comments people point out his agenda.

1. It's not silly to think that. See: Game Industry and Game Blogs.

2. You rarely hear about journalists getting blacklisted from events because a. the general public rarely cares or b. if they do they call the journalist, a 'whiner'.

Samsung _advertise_ a lot. That doesn't mean you'd expect them to astroturf; it's an illicit practice in many countries.

Based on previous cases, it's not surprising: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/samsung-taiwan-market...

Most of this is not astroturfing.

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