I noticed today that /u/Librato appears to be a marketing account for https://www.librato.com/. While they are making it rather obvious as to what they are doing and I’m personally not against it, i’m wondering how the community feels at large about it?
There are always going to be users posting stuff from the companies they work for, whether or not it’s obvious by the account name. I’d rather judge each story on its technical merits rather than just the fact that it came from a company’s website or account. If the stories being submitted by a company account are constantly being flagged, then that account will be banned just like any other. Currently that account’s stories are +6 and +1.
I would prefer if the Fine Admins instituted a policy that corporate account names are the domain name; possibly with a flag on the account “is-marketing-p”, with filtering on it allowed. E.g., if IBM’s marketing department shows up, they should post under /u/ibm.com .
My position is probably a broken record by now, but marketing is invariably going to be news of a product and in turn going to end up cluttering the site.
Maybe we need a ‘shill’ hat?
Marketing accounts are going to exist; I’d prefer them to be labelled.
i’m here for interesting storys not marketing of stuff i have to pay for. (background stories about them are ok, i guess..)
I think this is a fine line. To many accounts like this and abuse is all but assured.
I don’t know if there needs to be a policy or anything; if the account is abusive, then it can be dealt with as other abusive accounts are. If there are a flood of hundreds, then maybe revisit?