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A shill is a person who publicly attempts to constitute, increase or sustain credibility and/or approval of/to an entity without disclosing that they have a relationship with the entity, understating the type, importance or closeness of said relationship or concealing the actual role in which they perform for said entity.

The goal of the the shill is a (expected) personal benefit, may it be profit (participation), wage, payment by result or enabling, increasing or sustaining the chance of success for a specific socio-economic or socio-political project.

The entity can be either a person or an organized or disorganized group. Organized groups have some level of structure and decision-making ability while disorganized groups don't.

Organized groups can be the government, politicial parties, profit-oriented companies, investment or interest groups (hedgefonds, freemasons) or non-profit non-government organizations like non-profit companies, charities, churches or cults. Disorganized groups can be religions or unreligious cosmovisions (atheism, humanism), permanent political ideologies (f.e. communism, capitalism) or temporary political interest groups (f.e. "pro-life-movement" for abolishing the right to have an abortion).

The difference between shilling and expression of opinion is that the benefit is received from an external rather than an (emotional or intellectual) internal source or that the external force dominates the internal motivation.

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