Shill farm exposed – an example of shilling in action.

So, recently I came across an advert looking for paid shills. I posted the image just to remind people that it's a constant and prevalent activity. The terms "shilling" and "fake news" are thrown around so often that they can lose their meaning, but there's a big difference between badly informed, overly enthusiastic crypto fans and organised shill farms with a budget.

Shilled coins in this case: Duecoin and Remecoin

/u/g4henderson suggested actually applying for the job to find out which coins are being shilled, which hadn't even occurred to me – these job postings are always cropping up, but I did reach out to the employer this time and tracked his username to a facebook account spamming ads for Duecoin and Remecoin (there, I did what the post asked for and posted about Duecoin on a forum. Gib monie now please.)

I checked out the ad and the website actually encourages users to post on forums in exchange for Duecoin (there are a few posts on reddit, so far only one user has posted to /r/cryptocurrency about it, nobody cared).

Shilling happens!

This post isn't about Duecoin or Remecoin specifically – I just want to highlight that shills and fake news publishers aren't mysterious bogeymen operating below ground. They advertise in vague terms that won't get them shut down, put together shill teams and fake news writers, and start pumping out material. Most people don't fall for it, and in this case it's particularly transparent, but unfortunately all they need is a few. Bear in mind that people are still falling for the crypto giveaway scams on Twitter – someone posted on /r/Litecoin yesterday after giving a scammer hundreds of dollars asking if it could be refunded. You might know what's up, so it's easy to forget that some people are coming in blind and could do with this kind of thing being made clear.

It's still all good! Just help someone out if you see them getting converted by shills

This isn't a FUD post. Crypto is a really wonderful movement full of incredible, revolutionary developments in technology that could shape life as we know it forever. We're going to be the last generations that were alive before blockchain adoption makes seriously big waves (in my opinion), and that's special to me. It's also a space filled with promising investment opportunities, and that's great too. As long as people exercise a little caution and due diligence they won't get burned, so just bear in mind that fake news isn't an abstract concept – it's an industry, and simply an obstacle to navigate around in order to participate in this movement.

Edits: FormattingPSbuyduecoingreatteam