A report out of China claims that Samsung paid 500 people to pose as fake fans at the launch event for Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge held in China. Around 1000 people attended the event and half of them were reportedly paid to be there. The report claims that the recruiter who was tasked with picking these “fans” sought people who were under 30 years of age and preferably looked like students.
The report goes on to claim that those who were selected for this were paid the equivalent of $4.80 provided that they stayed at the event for over one hour. For each person they got to attend the press event the recruiters were apparently given the equivalent of $3.20.
In case they were asked by someone from the press, the fake fans were under instructions to say that they attended the press event because they were Samsung fans or because they were interested in its new flagship smartphones.
An attendee cited in the report claims that she came across the job by replying to an ad on WeChat, a popular messaging service in China, and earned around $8.40 for just spending 15 minutes at the event. All attendees were required to “like” the Samsung Galaxy Baidu page. All hired fans were also required to post their photo, name and phone number on WeChat.
The claims made in this report have not been independently verified. Samsung has not yet commented on these allegations.
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