Andre Yoskowitz
8 Jun 2013 15:30
Earlier this week, a poster with the name "mistysilver" made a large post on Reddit claiming that "reputation managers" were being paid by the software giant Microsoft to post positively about the upcoming Xbox One console.
The post said Microsoft employees were voting down any negative comments and voting up or adding pro-Xbox One comments across the popular social news site. In the post, (which has since been taken down), Silver introduced himself by saying "I work for a marketing firm in Redmond that has a contract with Microsoft. I can't say specifically which division, but suffice to say we are not involved with the Xbox." While at Microsoft, the poster says he saw an employee "mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own. I couldn't make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have[sic] just brought in a huge sweep of SMM managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One."
Microsoft was quick to deny the story, saying "There is no coordinated or sanctioned effort by Microsoft employees, or anyone paid by Microsoft, to unduly influence Reddit or other online forums." As mentioned, after the denial, mistysilver's post was removed.