Shilling, explained honestly.
We were one of the first shilling teams on Telegram and X. This page is about what that word meant, where it stopped working, and what we run instead.
What shilling meant in 2022
A shilling service filled chats and threads with human-looking conversation about a product. Not ads: dialogues. Someone asks a question in a Telegram group, someone answers with your project, a third voice agrees. On X, the same logic moved through replies and quote tweets. When it is done well, it reads like the market talking, because the market is partly people you hired to talk.
In 2022 this was an open field. Telegram communities were exploding, moderation was thin, and nobody had written the rulebook. ShillGPT was founded that year and grew into one of the first teams running this work at scale, for crypto projects that could not buy their way into a conversation that did not exist yet.
Why it stopped working
Three things changed at once. Platforms started enforcing against coordinated inauthentic behaviour, with better detection every quarter. Regulators in Europe and the United States made disclosure of paid promotion an explicit expectation, not a formality. And the audience itself caught up: buyers now open a profile before they trust a comment.
The economics turned as well. Automated noise became cheap, so noise lost value. What kept its value is the part of the work that was always honest: real people, in the right places, saying things they are allowed to say.
Shilling versus reputation management
| Dimension | Classic shilling | Reputation management |
|---|---|---|
| Participants | Disposable or bought accounts | Vetted community members with history |
| Disclosure | None by design | Where rules or law require it |
| Reviews | Fabricated on request | Collected honestly, answered in public |
| Lifespan | Until the next platform sweep | Compounds with every month of coverage |
| Main risk | Bans, fines, brand damage | Time: it is slower, deliberately |
What replaced it in our practice
The five practices we run today: monitoring and early warning, engagement and seeding, review and search repair, content and expert voice, and a crisis desk. They cover the same goal that shilling pretended to: a public record that works for the product instead of against it.
If you came looking for the old service: it exists in the place it always did best, organic conversation on Telegram and X, but it runs under the rules that survived. If your brief needs something a platform would punish, we will tell you so on the first call.
Do you still run shilling campaigns?
No hidden ones. We started as one of the first shilling teams in 2022, and that history is why we are strict about what is left of it: no undisclosed paid opinions, no fake reviews, no bot fleets. Visibility work today runs on real participants and disclosed collaborations.
Is shilling illegal?
Posting opinions for money without disclosure can breach advertising rules in the EU, Switzerland, the UK and the US, and it breaks platform rules almost everywhere. The practical risk is not only a fine: it is a wiped account base and a reputation event of your own making. We keep client work on the compliant side of that line, and we say no to briefs that are not.
Can you guarantee removal of negative posts?
No service honestly can. We remove what is false or rule-breaking through platform processes, correct the record in public, and outrank the rest with legitimate content. Everything else is theatre.
Already know what you need? Start with the onboarding brief or send a short request on the contacts page.