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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 11 2017, @01:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the ow-who-ya-gonna-trust? dept.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced a crackdown on alleged stock promotion schemes in which writers were secretly paid to post hundreds of bullish articles about public companies on financial websites.

Twenty-seven individuals and entities, including a Hollywood actress, were charged with misleading investors into believing they were reading "independent, unbiased analyses" on websites such as Seeking Alpha, Benzinga and Wall Street Cheat Sheet.

The SEC said many writers used pseudonyms such as Equity Options Guru, The Swiss Trader, Trading Maven and Wonderful Wizard to hype stocks.

It said it found more than 450 problem articles, of which more than 250 falsely said the writers were not being paid.

No word on conflicts of interest and misleading information in regard to stock promotion on television news networks.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:13PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:13PM (#492292)

    It seems to be absolutely impossible to get away from.
    I guess as the Trump cabinet continues its love affair with big business and more stories are allowed to propagate freely, it's going to be up to us to stomp them out.
    I'm glad for sites like this where people are free to call out this continual plague of fake news.
    Hell, with enough eyes, we could have stopped Trump. We just need more communication among the working class to stomp this garbage out!

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:41PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:41PM (#492345) Journal

    One problem is the working class may not be educated enough to tell truth from fiction. Nor do they have enough critical thinking to recognize outright lies.

    (Protip: anyone who frequently uses the following terms is a con man: "trust me", "I promise", "believe me", "it will be the biggest, best, ... ever!".)

    Second problem is that the working class is happy to keep taking their Soma. And if the chocolate ration is increased this week to 20g, they are happy, even if they don't actually get any more chocolate than last week.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:04PM (#492356)

      Second problem is that the working class is happy to keep taking their Soma. And if the chocolate ration is increased this week to 20g, they are happy, even if they don't actually get any more chocolate than last week.

      Its more like they are happy as long as the 'undeserving' people get their ration reduced.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:45PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:45PM (#492346)

    "Hell, with enough eyes, we could have stopped Trump."

    Just try to offer a candidate who isn't already a laughing stock before even being elected. No more Clintons, no more Kennedys, forget all about Lurch Kerry. You might try running Bern again. Except, he's such an old bastard. Who else you have in mind?

    Trump wasn't the Democrat's enemy - Clinton was.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:12PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:12PM (#492362) Journal

      > Who else you have in mind?

      Elizabeth Warren

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:39PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:39PM (#492413)

      Trump wasn't the Democrat's enemy - Clinton was.

      That depends on what you mean by "the Democrats".

      If you mean what would have been best for them and their organization, then yes, they would have done much better had Hillary Clinton stood down. However, since Hillary Clinton had carefully installed her own people at the DNC immediately after Obama's 2012 victory, it would be safe to say that the Democratic Party by 2016 had become yet another subsidiary of the larger Clinton organization (which included the Clinton campaign, the Clinton Foundation, "Correct the Record" SuperPAC, and of course moles like Donna Brazille in many major news outlets).

      That's also why Bernie or any other primary contender not named "Clinton" never had a real chance of winning. It would be like having NBA championships where LeBron James got to hire, train, and supervise the officials.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:02PM (7 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:02PM (#492355) Journal

    Hell, with enough eyes, we could have stopped Trump. We just need more communication among the working class to stomp this garbage out!

    Not with the Democrats running Clinton. She spent almost twice as much and still lost.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:54PM (6 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:54PM (#492420) Journal

      She won. But the Republicans cheated and stole the election, while screaming loudly that the Democrats were actually doing the cheating. Their complaints about people crossing state lines to vote twice were pure propaganda to justify the vote suppression, caging, and gerrymandering the Republicans have gone all in on since the 2010 census. There is no other way to explain the very lopsided representation across the US, other than Republican manipulation and cheating. The Democratic candidate wins the popular vote, but the Democrats somehow lose the House not by a little but by a huge margin, 194 to 241 seats? That's packing and cracking for you. For example, the Democrats won 3 of the 13 seats in North Carolina by very large margins, while losing the other 10 by much narrower margins. It's hard enough getting people to vote at all. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is going to the trouble of double voting by traveling to different states to do it and taking the risk however small of being imprisoned for vote fraud when we know our votes count for so little anyway. 2x0 is still 0.

      So often the side that makes the most noise is the one most guilty. The Republicans doth protest too much.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:20PM (5 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:20PM (#492728) Journal
        That's quite the rationalization there. Not a single state [wikipedia.org] split their vote between Trump and Clinton so there was no opportunity for gerrymandering to throw an election.

        The Democratic candidate wins the popular vote, but the Democrats somehow lose the House not by a little but by a huge margin, 194 to 241 seats?

        Sure, that is a problem and North Carolina is a great example of why. Just looking at the current district maps [wikipedia.org] shows the ridiculous amount of gerrymandering that has gone on in that state. But stealing the House is not stealing the Presidency.

        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:19AM (4 children)

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:19AM (#493190) Journal

          The presidential and senatorial elections were stolen through voter suppression. Conservatives have drummed up fake fear over voter fraud that does not exist, to pass photo ID laws which they claim will reduce voter fraud. The facts put the lie to their absurd claims. For instance, Governor Abbot of Texas had the state spend $1.4 million investigating voter fraud and came up with a mere 311 cases, of which only 2 might have been prevented by photo ID. $1.4 million plus the costs of issuing photo IDs, to prevent 2 inconsequential crimes is a very poor return on spending, and the government of Texas ought to be roasted for such egregious waste.

          As everyone should understand, what the photo ID requirement really does is make it harder to vote for all the citizens who have no other reason to have a photo ID. Then there's crap like not having enough polling places and voting machines, and using old and unreliable voting machines in heavily Democratic areas, while Republican areas get the best. Voter caging is another slimeball tactic, in which they reach for any excuse to kick off the rolls voters who it just happens are more likely to be Democratic.

          All this really got rolling when the Supreme Court nerfed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Jim Crow is back, baby. Jim Crow elected Donald Trump.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:36AM (3 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:36AM (#493242) Journal
            And I see you don't have any actual reasons for why the Senate elections are supposedly stolen. At least with the House elections, we can see some obviously gerrymandered districts. And no matter how many House and Senate elections are allegedly stolen, we still don't have an explanation there for the success of Clinton.
            • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 13 2017, @12:55PM (2 children)

              by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday April 13 2017, @12:55PM (#493342) Journal

              You don't see that photo ID is vote suppression, eh? How about a slight change to the law: You can't vote unless you own at least one car. That'd keep a lot of the riffraff from voting. That sound good to you?

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:14PM (1 child)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:14PM (#493346) Journal

                You don't see that photo ID is vote suppression, eh?

                Of course not.

                How about a slight change to the law: You can't vote unless you own at least one car.

                Requiring the state to shoot anyone I don't like is a slight change as well. Going by number of words changed is folly.

                • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:13PM

                  by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:13PM (#493430) Journal

                  Why do citizens need to register to vote? The state has far better means of determining eligibility, such as the income tax form, which has the citizen's name, place of residence, and other pertinent info. It does NOT include photo ID. Those who didn't file, even though they owed no income tax, well, too bad, they don't get to vote. Seems a fair way to track who can and cannot vote. There's no need to collect that info more than once.

                  Registering is just another barrier, as is photo ID. There used to be poll taxes, until they were unequivocally recognized as a means of disenfranchisement, not a legitimate means of collecting revenue to offset the costs of running an election. Poll taxes are now banned by the 24th Amendment. Just because there's no charge doesn't mean the photo ID is free. Still costs time and money to travel to a location where they can be obtained, which effectively makes photo ID a poll tax. Let the state go to the trouble of hiring photographers to go door to door so that citizens are not unduly imposed upon, and keep copies of the photos so that citizens need not bring them to the voting booth, then I will have no objection to photo ID requirements.