I’m talking about comments like these, which were left since my last post on the subject. Damon Aldora left this one on 11/4:

So this is DirecTV’s first attempt at a TV Everywhere option and just reading over the specs, it doesn’t seem very TV Everywhere-oriented. In order to use it you must be on your home network, and while doing that, you can only see the 20 hours that is available on the Nomad. You can’t even see live TV. That is why I use the 922 SlingLoaded DVR from my employer DISH Network. I love it because it lets me stream anything I have recorded to my DVR, and I can choose to watch live TV if I want as well. On top of that, I can go anywhere I want, and watch TV as if I was at home. So the Nomad is a good attempt at TV Everywhere, but is still too limited to be worth the $150 asking price.

And Joseph Lopez left this one on 11/16:

The new Nomad from DirecTV is a great idea but this doesn’t allow streaming to live TV. So when you go on trip there is no up to date info on news or shows. This is only provides what ever you load on it. You can only get 20 hours where with DISH Network’s TV everywhere you can get access to 300 hrs off the DVR. You can see live TV and this works on multiple mobile devices. I have enjoyed my TV everywhere since I am always busy. I don’t have much time for home. This gives me what I need. I work over at DISH where I signed up and received this free.

Damon used a Gmail address, while Joseph used his dishnetwork.com address, and both were posted from 204.76.128.217 which is a Dish Network corporate IP. So these Dish Network employees are spamming blogs using company resources, presumably on company time. You’d think Dish might want to put a stop to that, right?

Apparently not, based on the response Peter received from Dish PR head Marc Lumpkin when he inquired about the spam:

“We require our employees who post about DISH products to identify themselves as a DISH Network employee,” Lumpkin told me via email. “This appears to be an informative posting describing the options consumers have for getting entertainment and is posted in a discussion of a similar topic.”

Really? I asked. You sure you want me to print that?

“It looks informative to me and appropriate for those Web site discussions. I’m fine with the response.”

So there you go, if it isn’t being actively encouraged then it at least has the tacit approval from management. Dish is happy with their employees astroturfing blogs with crap like this. I’m going to steal Peter’s conclusion since he puts it very succinctly, and I don’t think he’d mind given the circumstances:

Okay. So, Marc, Kevin, Dish Network CEO Joseph Clayton, et al. — we don’t really need to spell out why this isn’t “informative” or “appropriate,” right? Because we don’t need to explain why you shouldn’t show up at funerals for people you don’t know and hand out flyers for term life insurance, either. Right?

But think about it this way: Stuffing BS comments onto Web sites is the kind of thing that low-rent scammers do. You? You’re a big, publicly traded company. You have 14 million satellite TV subscribers, a left-for-dead video-rental brand you want to revive, and big plans to launch a new Web TV service.

That’s a whole lot to take care of. And spending time and money on tacky, clumsy astroturf seems like it won’t help, and could probably hurt. This article, for instance, doesn’t go in the “win” column, right?

I couldn’t have said it better myself. The best things we bloggers can do is continue to delete such comments and blacklist users who leave them, and continue to call Dish out for the spam. Public shaming can work. If the fallout from the spam is damaging enough to their brand, they may reevaluate their stance. If you’re getting spam like this on your blog speak out about it; make it cost too much for them to continue doing it.

As I’ve said before, employees of any company are welcome to join the discussion and leave valid comments on posts. They can even pimp their employer’s products if there is a legitimate argument. But cookie cutter comments only weakly linked to the post are not legitimate, they’re spam. Don’t do it.

My Sling Adapter from my TV provider/employer DISH Network still beats them all. I get all of my TV channels streamed to me on almost any device, all live. It even gives me full control to record and watch things on my DVR. Anywhere I get 3G/4G or wifi, so I’m not tied down to my home network at all.

After my first post Gabe Gagliano of Tech of the Hub Blog forwarded me a few such comments he’d received – also from the 204.76.128.217 Dish IP and both using @dishnetwork.com email addresses. The first is from ‘Rose’:

I like how many devices you can play the streaming service on. What I don’t like is the content. I think it is horrible, and with them raising their prices I plan on leaving. I plan on going to Blockbuster through my provider/employer DISH Network. With them I can get it free for 3 months. Go to this link to check out the promotion through DISH [URL removed]. Blockbuster has some great deals going on and now is the best time to switch.

The next is from ‘Monica’:

I don’t think Apple will come out with an HDTV; they still have things to work on with the original Apple TV. I have Google TV and think it’s soooo much better than Apple TV. The biggest thing for me is Google Chrome; I love being able to surf the internet on the same screen as my TV shows. I really like the variety of apps available too. Even if I’m not watching TV I can use the Pandora or YouTube app or order a movie using the Netflix app. I work for DISH and knew a lot about the Revue but had no idea I would fall in love with it!

Note that the Logitech Revue Google TV links up with Dish DVRs as they partnered. So that’s the promotional link. And finally, one that just made me roll my eyes:

I don’t like how Netflix is removing services and hiking up the prices, I definitely don’t think that’s fair at all! I’ve been looking around and I found another alternative to Netflix and now that DISH Network has teamed with Blockbuster, they have a bunch of cool offers that are available to New and existing DISH Network customers as well as non-DISH customers. Blockbuster has the most extensive library of movies, games and TV shows and you can get thousands of On-Demand titles straight to your PC or TV! Customers will also have access to over 100,000 movies, TV shows and games by mail with new releases coming out before Netflix and Redbox. You can exchange them inside a Blockbuster store and even get Blu-Rays at no additional price. The best thing about this new offer is that you won’t find these titles on DIRECTV Cinema or Comcast on Demand and everything is combined onto one bill! I actually work at DISH Network and I’ve been wanting to tell people about this for a long time and I want everyone to check it out!

So “I’ve been looking around and I found another alternative to Netflix” becomes “I actually work at DISH Network and I’ve been wanting to tell people”. Yeah, looked real far.

Over on SlashGear a Jesus Lopez left this comment:

DirecTV’s new Nomad device is really cool, but I’m glad that I have my employee Sling adapter. With it I can stream live and recorded TV to my Android phone, iPad, and laptop. So not only do I have access to my DVR recording but all my live channels.

Like I said in my earlier post, I have no issue with people leaving genuine comments. But these aren’t the only such comments I’ve had left let alone seen on other blogs. Often the exact same text, or with minor tweaks. And with services like Disqus you can look at the comment history for a user and see if they’ve left many of the same comment.

So the question I posed last time stands – is this officially encouraged behavior? Could it be the law of unintended consequences, maybe some kind of referral bonus? (I think this is less likely now as only some of the posts contain a link.) Is it just esprit de corps and natural enthusiasm? (Call me cynical, but I highly doubt it.) This just smells like employees being ‘encouraged’ to promote the company’s products via social media. I’d love to hear from anyone who has the real info. Or from other bloggers receiving these comments. Let’s see just how widespread this really is.

I like your review on Thor. I can’t wait to see this movie again because I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. Personally I think that Thor is one of the best movies to have come out lately. If you haven’t seen it you definitely should. One way you can see it is by using Blockbuster Online. As a DISH Network customer and employee I can tell you that right now if you switch to DISH Network you can get Blockbuster Online FREE for 3 months! There are over 100,000 titles to choose from and TV shows and games you can get through the mail. Plus you can get 5 in-store exchanges per month with no due dates or late fees. More info online at [SPAM URL DELETED]

I deleted the comment, so don’t bother checking the post for it. It is clearly spam – there was no review in the post he made the comment on. This is boilerplate text slapped up based on some keywords. I’m not including the full URL because I’m not going to give a spammer the satisfaction, but it was to a signup page for DISH Network giving you three months of Blockbuster, and it included the query string “WT.mc_id=ECM_MKTG_DISH_BLOG_0611_A9Post&WT.mc_ev=click” which looks like a marketing program tracking code to me. (Companies use this to measure how well a specific form of marketing is working. In this case how many people sign up via a link with this code, and so how effective the spamming is.)

The comment was made by Robert Paulsen (bob.in.use@*****.com) from 204.76.128.217 on 09/15/11 01:27 PM. I’m tempted to post the email openly, but I won’t sink to that level. If you look at his Disqus comment history it is packed with comments on various blogs pimping DISH Network and related services. If you plug that IP address into WHOIS you get: Dish Network Corporation DISHNETWORK-NET (NET-204-76-128-0-1) 204.76.128.0 – 204.76.133.255. And it traceroutes back to their ISP’s gateway into EchoStar: ECHOSTAR-SA.edge1.Denver1.Level3.net. So this comment was made from an IP controlled by Dish Network.

This isn’t the first user to leave a spam comment like this extolling DISH Network or one of their affiliates. At first I just deleted them, banned the user from commenting, and moved on. But it started to form a pattern in my mind, and one of the users, Alison Ranon, even used her dishnetwork.com email address for Disqus, and she’s commented elsewhere as well. Unfortunately, since I’ve deleted those past comments, I can’t go back now and check the IPs on those as well. But I did look at the comment histories for a few of them before they were deleted and they were similar to this one – comment after comment extolling the virtues of Dish on blogs across the net. And generally claiming to be a Dish Network employee.

I admit there is an outside chance that this is some elaborate setup to tar Dish, but I strongly doubt it. I think there are two likely scenarios:
1. Dish Network is officially encouraging employees to spam blogs, and probably other social media outlets, to promote their goods and services. At best perhaps they’re encouraging them to do the promotion and some of the employees are taking it too far. This would be the more evil of the two.

2. There is some indirect incentive to employees to do this. Perhaps the tracking codes are unique, like an affiliate program, and they get compensated for signing people up via their links. That would reward spamming activity as there is little penalty unless Dish enforced some kind of rule against using the links in such a manner. This is more good intentions gone wrong due to human nature.

I’d like to think it is the second one and Dish isn’t doing something as evil as deliberately sending people out to spam the net. But still, it isn’t good for Dish to have employees spamming in their name.

Let me be perfectly clear, I don’t have an issue with employees leaving appropriate comments in which they promote their companies products. Like when I used to work for Sling Media, sometimes I’d see someone post about wishing they could watch a show while on the road, etc., and I’d comment that they might want to look into the Slingbox. If I posted something about satellite TV and a Dish employee wanted to offer their opinion, or present some facts, etc., that’s cool, I welcome it. If I post about video rental services and there is a legitimate hook to respond with a Blockbuster-related comment, go for it. (By legitimate I mean you can’t just comment about Blockbuster because someone mentions Netflix, etc. But if the post, for example, questions what alternative services offer then a reply of “Well, Blockbuster does X” is legitimate. Just use common sense.)

But I think it can be taken too far, and when it is clearly a boilerplate comment that has only the most tenuous relationship to the post, that’s spam, no question. Robert seems to have spent some time commenting on random zombie-related posts across the net, trying to tie it into AMC’s The Walking Dead and how Dish carries AMC HD but DirecTV doesn’t. The comments stink more than the rotting flesh of the zombies. His comments go back to March, and remember that these are just the comments on blogs using Disqus for commenting. Who knows how many other blogs he commented on.

For you other bloggers, are you getting comments like this as well? You might keep a closer eye on the IPs they’re coming from. I’d love to hear what you’re seeing.

Anyone from Dish want to comment on this? Either in a public comment or directly to me, feel free.

As for myself, I’m going to keep a closer eye on my spam comments and their sources and will use public shaming when appropriate.