I work at Stack Exchange, and contacted Samsung as soon as this was brought to our attention last night.
1. The company engaging in these tactics was not hired by Samsung; they appear to have been sub-contracted for some promotion by the company they did hire. Now, it's obviously possible that they turned a blind eye, or don't want to know what methods are used, but in fairness, there's no evidence that they had any idea this was happening. And given the directness of it all, I suspect they'd have objected, if only because it looks so bad.
2. Everyone who was contacted due to being a user on our sites has now received a follow up communication from the company that sent the first message redacting the offer and apologizing for the inappropriate contact and request.
None of that makes any of this... lovely, but it does help clarify that any potential harm or noise this might cause seems to have been contained.
Big company decides to pull a grassroots-focused marketing campaign. Picks an inappropriate venue. Backs off.
Is fb, for example, a more appropriate venue, selling likes and all that? They explicitly allow sponsored posts that appear to have been made by friends. I think the marketing person figured that stack overflow was similar to fb for nerds. Whoops.
1. The company engaging in these tactics was not hired by Samsung; they appear to have been sub-contracted for some promotion by the company they did hire. Now, it's obviously possible that they turned a blind eye, or don't want to know what methods are used, but in fairness, there's no evidence that they had any idea this was happening. And given the directness of it all, I suspect they'd have objected, if only because it looks so bad.
2. Everyone who was contacted due to being a user on our sites has now received a follow up communication from the company that sent the first message redacting the offer and apologizing for the inappropriate contact and request.
None of that makes any of this... lovely, but it does help clarify that any potential harm or noise this might cause seems to have been contained.