Part 2: MN misrepresentation in recommendations: a depressing blend of abject amateurism and outright greed

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The previous thread was hidden over the weekend. Lots of us checked it.
A mistake is something you do a few times, not a persistent and detailed pattern of acting

Oh come on, it's not one mistake.... It's an ongoing breach of the law...

This is in active threads.

There's clearly no conspiracy to hide it.

Just a bunch of posters who never once made a mistake at work. They're the ones who've never had an affair, their kids have never done anything wrong. They'd be the perfect stepmum of coursr. Pure paragons of virtue.

No doubt sprinkled in with a bunch of bitter men and TRAs

There is that of course. Lets hope they are honest about what they've done. I wonder if they have self-referred, as an organisation with integrity would...? Or are they just keeping their heads down and hoping that the reports from MN users don't go anyywhere - and in the meantime conceal any evidence of fake reviews...?

Oh god yes, that will be next 🤦‍♀️
They’re probably kicking themselves that they didn’t think of that sooner.

Little quiz for MNHQ:

You have been asked to promote a product for money using user recommendations. But no users have actually recommended it. Do you:

a) decide it’s probably best not to promote it using user recommendations in that case

b) find some vaguely similar user recommendations for other products, edit them and pretend they were referring to the product you are promoting

c) using a fake account, post a recommendation of the product in question, then use that to promote the product

d) well it all depends, how much money are we talking about?

let's hope MN doesn't start making accounts and creating fake recommendations now ...

no, they should report themselves to the ASA ... take the fine and actually learn the lesson

@JustineMumsnet thats a very magnanimous response from @Wondermoomin I think it’s clear that MNHQ hasn’t fully accepted how deceptive they have been, or indeed that what they did was deliberate and wrong. Perhaps as a gesture of contrition a percentage of the affiliate / adversing revenue received as a result of the deception could be donated to an appropriate charity?

They actually say “Swears By taps into the collective wisdom of Mumsnetters to find the best products for you and your family. Every item has been recommended by real parents, so you can shop with confidence.”

Obviously a barefaced lie, but no intention to mislead, oh no, definitely not 🤦‍♀️

More like “Swears By is a moneymaking scheme where we try to persuade posters to buy products that we are being paid to promote. We look for recommendations that match the product and if there aren’t any, no problem, we simply make one up! Items might have been recommended by real parents, might not. Good luck with trying to find safe products for your babies, suckers.”

"MN swears by” my arse. More like “not one of our many users has ever recommended this product, but they’re paying us, so here’s a review of something else which we’ve doctored to completely change the sense and con you into buying this product, might be good, might be shit, who knows, who cares as long as we get paid, no need to thank us”

Exactly!

If it was true to its branding there would need to be any, erm, creativity with the truth. because there would be heaps of recent recommendations from Mumsnetters for that specific product

Slightly different flavour of bullshit from MNHQ this time, but bullshit nonetheless. They didn’t have much choice but to row back on the 1% claim, given the evidence, but lax and rushed, really? Whoops, I was so lax and rushed that I spent time carefully editing out the words that identified the product a poster was recommending, so that I could use it to promote a different one. And I don’t see how you can argue no attempt to mislead when you are deliberately misquoting posters to persuade people to buy items that have never actually been recommended by MNers. “MN swears by” my arse. More like “not one of our many users has ever recommended this product, but they’re paying us, so here’s a review of something else which we’ve doctored to completely change the sense and con you into buying this product, might be good, might be shit, who knows, who cares as long as we get paid, no need to thank us” 👍

It’s also glaringly obvious that this is not about noticing that lots of MNers seem to love a product, and sharing that with everyone as some kind of public service. If it were that, you’d be able to use contemporary quotes from people recommending that particular gazebo, instead of 8-year-old quotes about gazebos in general. You wouldn’t need to edit out bits that give the game away, like the inconvenient “kindle”. It must be the other way around - we have a customer and need to find a way of promoting their product - go and find some posts that recommend it, and if there aren’t any, find some you can doctor to make it work.

For future updates, maybe imagine you are posting to a bunch of intelligent, informed, cynical, disappointed and very pissed off grown ups, many of whom are lawyers or work in marketing / advertising / promotions. Pretend you give a shit about your users and try to hide the fact that you think they’re morons. Ask yourself - am I about to make a tit of myself here? It’s actually toe curling, how badly this is being handled.

Just placemarking

I agree - nothing to do with being rushed. It takes far longer to find, edit and misrepresent a quote than it does to just use a quote that exists in an unaltered form. It’s clearly a deliberate act by someone or people to deceive. Why else do it?

Yes it definitely wasn't showing over the weekend but it was showing this morning.

The first thread was absolutely suppressed in how often it shows in active threads over the weekend and it wasn't showing at all on trending no matter how many times posters added to it or how busy it was. It's not posters over active imaginations its the truth.

I found both threads and I only use active and I'm on. I don't go to individual boards.

So yanno... What you're saying doesn't make sense to me

@gamerchick ,

I don’t really know what you mean. I am not overinvested and nor am I looking for anything for myself.

But it is a basic of any reliable medium that advertising has to be truthful. There is a whole code around that in law to stop charlatans selling all sorts of snake oil.

Would you be accepting of a TV ad or newspaper ad that made a false claim?

It was the first thread I saw when I logged on today

They really have NOT. And posters have posted to test this, if you read the full threads. Are you an MN person in disguise?

Heh I had a friend once. She was like a Pitbull when she felt crossed. She demanded utter prolonged grovelling from everyone who dared to cross her. Then wondered why people abandoned her.

Some people on this thread remind me of her. But with an agenda driving them, would you like a hair shirt as well?.

FWIW both threads haven been on active. Some people's imaginations do like to run away don't they..

It's clearly deliberate but for some reason I find it difficult to care about it.

👏👏👏