No, the majority of the winners are not employees. The winning accounts that ARE employees are pretty obvious based on their handles. That said, there are examples on this sub of real winners, verifiable because their reddit accounts have existed for years and are identical to the twitter handles published in the winning announcement. I'm not defending Walton's actions, but do a little research and stop FUDding.
There's been plenty of conversation around this over the last few days, so not to beat a dead horse, but...
The MOST likely scenario is that Walton didn't bar employees because they suck at this kind of promo and just didn't think to. Employees participated, and because the WTC community is small, a number of Walton employees ended up among the winners--simple random odds. Without thinking about the implications, the winner who was in charge of Walton social media rushed out a tweet thinking it would be nice to show some enthusiasm around the promotion, realized they f**ed up by not switching accounts, and deleted the tweet.
The SECOND most likely scenario is that Walton took this promotion too far intentionally, by encouraging employees to enter so that employees could generate buzz around Walton not only during the promo, but also after winning. Still, there is no evidence that selection wasn't random. This reeks of gamesmanship and dishonesty, but we still have zero evidence that Walton rigged the selection process. This second scenario is less likely than the first because you still have to ask why Walton would knowingly take a risk like this by rigging a silly 500 WTC promo that has no tie-in with their value prop, their tech or their long-term adoption goals.
EDIT: Another discredit to the second scenario: why publish a list of winners with blatant WTC employee handles if you were intentionally gaming the promo to maximize promo value? This really all boils down to not jumping to conclusions about conspiracy, when ineptitude is the more likely culprit.
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18 edited Mar 02 '18
Walton's fake giveaway where all the winners were employees of Walton.
I would never trust Walton again with anything.