Samsung Mob!lers is a voluntary community of active Samsung mobile device users, who are offered the opportunity to participate in our marketing events across the world. At these events, all activities they undertake are on a voluntary basis. No activities are forced upon them.
We regret there was a misunderstanding between the Samsung Mob!lers coordinators and the relevant blogger, as we understand he was not sufficiently briefed on the nature of Samsung Mob!lers’ activities at IFA 2012. We have been attempting to get in touch with him.
We respect the independence of bloggers to publish their own stories.
Huh? If you threaten to strand them in a foreign country, how is that not forcing them to undertake these activities?
That's not a "misunderstanding between the coordinator and the blogger", that is your coordinator fucking up.
I can't believe that a company still thinks that "we regret there was a misunderstanding" is any sort of apology when you should have said "we regret we made this mistake and apologize", trying to pin it on the blogger, damn...
Actually not sure if that was a troll? They were just quoting Samsung's statement (which is relevant info ITT), I'm not sure if they agreed with it or considered it a sufficient apology.
(actually, given that it's three days without a reply, that pretty much rules out "troll", by the definition that I've come to know and love)
In retrospect I think you could be right on both counts. First, I should have called the guy an astroturfer instead of a troll to use more correct terminology. Second, yes, the guy may not be a Samsung forum shill after all, but I'm basing this possibility solely on the fact that he took the time to add some profile information about [himself | some real person]. The reason why I didn't believe this account is real still exists though: it was created and used solely for the purpose of commenting on the Samsung thread.
While this may or may not be a coincidence, my reaction is so negative by default because recently there have been a lot of single-purpose accounts that seem to exist only for one thread before they're being abandoned. They are usually employed to troll, to attack someone personally, to post or promote blog spam, or to shill for something. In fact, it has gotten so bad I can usually tell by the post's content and style whether this person is engaging in a quick hit-and-run or if they intent to stay around. I believe we're still putting too much weight on "green" accounts. Maybe their posts should be gray by default.
I might have come up with a false positive in this case, but there is no evidence to support that yet.
