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posted by takyon on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-my-hundred-million-cents dept.

Current Affairs published an in-depth editorial on recent revelations about a $1 million astroturfng campaign by Correct the Record:

Astroturfing makes me angry. It should make you angry. It should make you fucking well see red. It's marketing evolved into something incredibly scary, sophisticated, and evil. It's essentially thought warfare, or psychological warfare, which takes away much of what was supposed to make the internet a new and beautiful frontier of communication. Worse yet, if you actually identify and approach these operatives, they'll gaslight you and deny that they are such an operative. These are people who are paid to psychologically abuse you. Do you get this? It's an ugly and evil thing, and not only does it take away our ability to take information and fact at face value, but it takes away our ability to take opinions, feelings, and personal stances at face value as sincere and legitimate.

takyon: For some additional context, "Hillary-supporting super PAC invests $1 million to hit back at online Clinton critics":

Correct the Record, a super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton's bid to become US president, has promised to invest more than $1 million to respond to users criticizing its candidate on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media services. The super PAC says its new "Barrier Breakers digital task force" will to respond "quickly and forcefully to negative attacks and false narratives found online," in addition to thanking major supporters and "committed superdelegates" directly.


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by frojack on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:31AM

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:31AM (#337213) Journal

    Astroturfing makes me angry. It should make you angry. It should make you fucking well see red.

    Triggered much?

    Whoever that clown is who wrote that better grow a skin if they intend to live on this planet. Someone remind them they got spanked 30 seconds after they were born.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:45AM (#337224)

    Ah frojack - hating on liberals is more important than opposing astroturfing.
    Tomorrow you'll be telling us how great spam is because it makes liberals whine.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:55AM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:55AM (#337233) Journal

      TFS isn't about liberals or conservatives. It fits both equally.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:13AM (#337244)

        Because "triggered much" is an insult intended for conservatives.
        Are you so deep in your bubble that you don't even realize when you parrot your tribe's memes?

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:34AM

          by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:34AM (#337347) Journal

          Oops. Looks like "triggered" triggered something here :-)

          I'm usually not counted to the conservatives (nor would I count there myself) and don't think I sympathize with most of frojacks posts. But while choice of words can indicate a bias, the way a message is expressed does not necessarily invalidate the message itself.

          --
          Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
          • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:20AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:20AM (#337400)

            Who said anything about his targeting of the message at liberals invalidating the message?

            The message was idiotic to begin with - that astroturfing is A-OK.

            The fact that he unintentionally revealed his reasoning for that idiocy as being basic partisanship just made it crystal clear that there was no meaningful logic supporting his conclusions. For that he deserves twofold criticism - criticism for an idiotic premise and criticism for being so blinded by his own partisanship that he could not recognize the idiocy.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:17AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:17AM (#337245) Journal

    So corporations making accounts so they can crapflood channels of communication with propaganda doesn't piss you off? Anybody here that is a refugee from /. should have plenty of experience with this, after all how badly was the postings filled with "Metro is the future, embrace the future luddite!" when Win 8 megabombed? Or how about Sony shills trying to spin the network hack? Apple and HP during bumpgate?

    This isn't about "responding to critics", they could do that through official channels, its about crapflodding and making sure anybody who tries to bring up legitimate issues is buried by a mountain of trolls. Considering the Internet is the LAST place where we can actually have discussions without being just pounded by propaganda (hell you can't even have a rally anymore without wondering if half the people around you aren't undercover cops sent there to wreck it for their masters) it should piss you off!

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:08AM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:08AM (#337272) Journal

      Obvious crapflooding is obvious. Fawning praise is easily recognized as such. No it doesn't bother me much. It doesn't fool anyone anymore.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:36AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:36AM (#337284) Journal

        But you are missing the point of it, which is to drown the signal in so much noise that no communication is possible.

        How far down are you willing to dig to find actual discussion when there are 300 "Hillary is teh bomb, you are a misogynist if you don't embrace teh vagina!" posts? A dozen? Two? They have found that crapflooding works and it works very well because people will give up and move on if you fill a thread with enough shit. Again go look at some of the articles that were crapflooded on /., there were articles that pushed 200 posts were a good 80% of them were nothing but crapflooding with either shilling or "You don't like this? You must be a nigger" levels of trolling. Just post after post after post after post so if you were lucky you'd get one real post out of three pages of nothing but shitposts.

        These corps and their pets like Hillary do not spend a million bucks on things that do not work, for that amount of money how many Chinese or Indian workers do you think they can hire to just bury a thread in hundreds of shitposts? They know most simply won't waste their time trying to dig through a mountain of shit just to get a few bits of info so they move on...and they win.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by frojack on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:23AM

          by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:23AM (#337340) Journal

          Oh woe is us, they are drowning out our voices.

          We have to find a way to silence them.

          Because even though WE understand their tactics, OTHER people are not as smart a US and they won't understand they've been astorturfed, Because they aren't as smart as US. WE are soooo much smarter than OTHERS....

          You really are a bit of an elitist aren't you Hairy....

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @09:43AM

            by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @09:43AM (#337397) Journal

            Nice strawman, shame about this match...WHOOSH!

            Nice babble but I notice you completely chickenshitted out on the question so I will highlight it for you...how many shitposts will you go through to get the info? 10? 20? How many do you think will ever hear anything but corporate propaganda if everything that isn't "Gee isn't corp A great Biff? It sure is Bob, they are the bestest!" is buried under 500 "You are just a little nigger faggot, you know that?" posts?

            It has nothing to do with elitism, or are you so damned head up your ass clueless you think they just spent 1 million fucking bucks on nothing? That money is being used to bury all non pro Hillary discussion under a wall of shit, simple as that. and more importantly there are things that can be done to stop this, such as 1.- Limits to the amount of anon posts per IP address, 2.- anons being rated no different than regular users through some sort of reputation system, I'm sure there are seveeral other things that can be done if we were to put our mind to it.

            But if you just want to sit back and hand the Internet to corporate and political interests? Just say so, I'm sure big business and big government loves the lazy and apathetic.

            --
            ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:25PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:25PM (#337593)

            The above average caliber people who come to this website from many different walks of life can spot obvious astroturfing and shilling and say "obvious astroturfer is obvious." At the very least, the critical thinkers here will follow a discussion, point for counterpoint, maybe some of us back in the peanut gallery will request citations every now and then, and sooner or later it at least becomes obvious which viewpoint being presented has the better debater. That viewpoint may not be the end-all-be-all of viewpoints, but we understand that. Perhaps somebody will come along and argue the other viewpoint more eloquently. If the viewpoint is rubbish, no person who's here for reasonable debate will bother salvaging it and there it will rot having been summarily tossed out of the arena of ideas. Hopefully you gather what I'm getting at.

            The problem is that the hearts and minds to be won or lost on the real issues are the masses of sheep/cows who are Facebookers, Twits, change.org frequenters, all the people posting to your local newspaper's Disqus comments section, etc.

            At least, that is a problem as long as a democratic republic is the best kind of government we know to work.

            This AC doesn't have a better form of government to propose. In sci-fi, we often see an advanced expert system or post-singularity AI take the reigns of a technocratic government where everyone prospers. Yet, that seem to me to boil down to supposing we have a government made of incorruptible angels. I don't see how this is workable in the real world.

            I've seen radical proposals such as allowing all people to choose which government they want to pay taxes to. Say I choose to join a minarchist libertarian government whose only form of social safety net is universal basic income and universal healthcare. (Seems we get a lot of immigrants each year from the anarchist "fuck you I've got mine" Randian bootstrapper paradise government lol.) I get to smoke weed after work. Yay. Say my neighbor is a member of a theocratic authoritarian government such as the one Cruz seems to want. Its people pay it taxes for a convoluted social safety net and dysfunctional criminal justice system, but hey, they're happy paying for-profit prisons to imprison infidels. (Another source of immigrants each year for my minarchist utopia lol.)

            One day my neighbor gets pissed because I smoked a particularly pungent blunt after a stressful day and reports this to his police. Smoking weed is strictly forbidden under his government. How does that confrontation go down? Don't try to think of all the stupid details like wafting odors or somesuch. It could be anything. Maybe my neighbor notices that I often get kebaps at a local Muslim take-out place and tries to get his government to arrest me for doing business with Muslims or something. I don't see how it can work. (Yeah, he'd probably try first to get the kebap stand shut down but say that resulted in an armed standoff between my government and his already and an uneasy treaty to agree to disagree on the matter of whether Muslims can own and operate businesses.)

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:39PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:39PM (#337601)

            Just give up already. How many times do you have to be bitch slapped before the point sinks in?

            Oh, I get it. You're one of those "No matter how wrong I am proven to be I will continue to stand my ground!" Because anything else would be admitting weakness. You are terrified of humiliation and humbling yourself by admitting wrong doing. Because that's for pussy liberal hippies. Your abusive, alcoholic, low life father must have done a real number of you.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:43AM

          by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:43AM (#337348) Journal

          More noise should trigger the development of better filters. Maybe we finally get a forum with an implementation of a web of trust. Like, you rank some pseudonym as trusted by a certain percentage, and those it ranks trustworthy as well are automatically ranked trustworthy for you as well (to a certain lesser degree). If you manually overwrite, your trust for the initial pseudonym can be reduced automatically as well, and if you trust a pseudonym but disagree on their trust-ranking towards a third party, this could trigger a nice discussion as well (if the ranking is public).

          It takes some discipline to not rate people by sympathy but only by credibility, but might work.

          --
          Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
          • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:04PM

            by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:04PM (#337488) Homepage Journal

            That only works on smaller sites like this one. You get the bazillion posts like /. has and it breaks down. That's why I'm here and not there.

            --
            mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:16PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:16PM (#337432) Journal

          These corps and their pets like Hillary do not spend a million bucks on things that do not work, for that amount of money how many Chinese or Indian workers do you think they can hire to just bury a thread in hundreds of shitposts? They know most simply won't waste their time trying to dig through a mountain of shit just to get a few bits of info so they move on...and they win.

          I know for a fact that the Clintons are not that bright, and have nowhere near the amount of online sophistication you're attributing to them. They spend all kinds of money on things that don't work, and they do not have good judgement when it comes to anything tech-related. In fact, they're quite fearful and make poor choices. (A member of the general public might be able to discern that from the business surrounding Hillary's email server).

          But take your cited example of Hillary flooding sites with a social media campaign. It's ham-fisted, and everyone knows it. No one is fooled by the manufactured semblance of public approval. So it's really a million of her donors' dollars, wasted. They might elicit a genuine "Right on!" from the 1500 people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan who consistently give money to the Clintons, but no one else is really taken in, not even sycophants out there who are gunning for internships.

          I would go further and say that generally speaking, corporate social media campaigns fail, and will always fail, because they ring so false. Even when a company is being forthright that the words are coming from them, I have never yet seen it done well. A good portion of my career was in advertising, and I can tell you that as much as all those companies wanted to be hip and cool on social media, the managers, the MBA's, and, most importantly, the lawyers, who run those companies are congenitally incapable of being hip and cool. The managers and MBAs are utterly tone deaf when it comes to dealing with non-sociopath humans (READ: us), and the lawyers want to pre-process every post to pablum, with a turn-around time of 10 business days (which is so, so very effective in an immediate medium like social media, eh?).

          It will always be that way, unless and until the politicians and corporations re-write their own DNA from the ground up.

          In short, we shouldn't be so afraid of them on social media, but instead point and laugh at how utterly incompetent they are.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:09PM

            by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:09PM (#337491) Homepage Journal

            I know for a fact that the Clintons are not that bright, and have nowhere near the amount of online sophistication you're attributing to them.

            Whether or not that's true, they can easily hire competent people, and during his presidency Bill showed that he was good at that kind of thing. He was, after all, one of the best presidents in my 64 years.

            I would go further and say that generally speaking, corporate social media campaigns fail

            Then why are people so eager to overpay for a shirt because it has a swoosh or an alligator on it? The fact that you don't notice this is proof that they are, indeed, VERY competent at it.

            --
            mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:14PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:14PM (#337527) Journal

              Then why are people so eager to overpay for a shirt because it has a swoosh or an alligator on it? The fact that you don't notice this is proof that they are, indeed, VERY competent at it.

              By definition, you would only see the successful campaigns. They can be covert, but they can't be invisible.

            • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday April 27 2016, @02:58AM

              by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday April 27 2016, @02:58AM (#337732) Journal

              they can easily hire competent people, and during his presidency Bill showed that he was good at that kind of thing. He was, after all, one of the best presidents in my 64 years.

              Yes, but the trouble is they don't. They hire cronies. And you could have the smartest people in the world, but they wouldn't be able to accomplish crap if they answered to an ADHD bunny on crack. "One of the best presidents" is unclear, but if you're like most people who have a favorable impression of Bill Clinton it's because he lucked into a speculative bubble that hadn't burst before he was done with office. It had nothing to do with him, and if anything his de-regulation set the stage for the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the out-of-control Wall Street we're suffering from today.

              Then why are people so eager to overpay for a shirt because it has a swoosh or an alligator on it? The fact that you don't notice this is proof that they are, indeed, VERY competent at it.

              What you're talking about is advertising/branding, when what we were talking about was social media campaigns. Two different animals. Advertising and branding work, but corporations are terrible at social media because their organizational DNA is antithetical to the medium. In all my years working on Madison Avenue, I saw really one organization use social media well: Charity: Water. But they're a non-profit that digs wells in places around the world where people don't have access to clean drinking water, not a giant soulless corporation trying to sell you a shirt with an alligator on it.

              --
              Washington DC delenda est.
              • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 27 2016, @03:23PM

                by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday April 27 2016, @03:23PM (#337976) Homepage Journal

                Yes, but the trouble is they don't. They hire cronies.

                They hire both, unless they're named Bush. Then they only hire cronies.

                if you're like most people who have a favorable impression of Bill Clinton it's because he lucked into a speculative bubble that hadn't burst before he was done with office.

                That bubble didn't bring crime down or end generational welfare like bills he signed did.

                What you're talking about is advertising/branding, when what we were talking about was social media campaigns.

                That's what astroturfing is about.

                --
                mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
                • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 28 2016, @11:08AM

                  by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday April 28 2016, @11:08AM (#338355) Journal

                  Your perception of the competence of Clinton's hires is based on the reality distortion field projected by image makers and the media. It's not a knock on you, it's all most people in the world have to go on. In this context I base my assessment of them on direct knowledge and knowing those people personally. It was never intentional, but my strange career has taken me behind that curtain of fame and power. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leadership or management skills, no moral compass, and incredibly flawed judgement. Many people "know" those things. I do know them. They are grifters of the highest order, and not one blessed thing about you, me, or any human on earth matters to them more than their own power and bank account.

                  The bubble did bring crime down, because for a short time people had jobs. Bill Clinton did not end welfare, he just decided corporate welfare was much more profitable for him than the other kind. In that, his policies and outlook are indistinguishable from every other Republican or Democratic president of the last 35 years.

                  Astroturfing is not advertising/branding. It's meant to be reputation management, and is more akin to PR. That is, in fact, why PR firms went on a hiring spree for social media "experts" starting about 6 years ago. But they suck at it, because, as I've asserted, corporations are simply not able to use the medium; lawyer-approved talking points do not for a successful social media presence make.

                  --
                  Washington DC delenda est.
                  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 28 2016, @06:08PM

                    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday April 28 2016, @06:08PM (#338574) Homepage Journal

                    AllI know from my own knowledge is that I worked for the Illinois Department of Public Aid since 1987, and things where I worked changed drastically for the better shortly after Clinton took office, the bad neighborhood I lived in got its own neighborhood cop (one of the things Clinton had promised) and Federal money for the poor and especially for getting them jobs started coming in. When he signed PWORA Thompson (I think he was still Governor then, iirc) moved everything around and started the Department of Human Services and moved mu bureau in.

                    For all I know, the Clintons may be cockroaches in person, but all I have to go on, like yourself, is what I experienced.

                    --
                    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
        • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:55PM

          by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:55PM (#337484) Homepage Journal

          My problem with /. wasn't crapflooding with astroturf but crapflooding with stupid unfunny jokes that scrolled on and on and on with nobody actually talking about the topic itself. I still go there, but usually only to friends' journals.

          --
          mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:41PM

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:41PM (#337602) Journal

          Well, there's an answer, but it's another arms-race kind of evolutionary cycle. Just like spam filters "sort-of" work against spam, there could be analogous things added to other channels of communication. But each thing you add will be worked around as it becomes popular, so you'll need to work around their work arounds, and then...

          With web pages I use a combination of ad blocker and not installing flash. But note the continual approaches to making ad blockers useless. And my wife won't give up flash, because some sites she dotes on demand it. So avoiding intrusion is countered by its requirement that certain features be avoided. At one time I just had javascript turned off, but too many sites now require it...so I enabled it and use an ad blocker...but that creates a weakness in my system that can be a wedge for entry.

          Eventually we'll be required to have an powerful AI dedicated to nothing but screening attempts at communication...the way people used to use a secretary, only more integrated into the internet. But if it's not locally hosted, someone will take advantage of it. (And even if it is, there's likely to be some EULA or law that requires vulnerabilities built in.)

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 2) by patella.whack on Tuesday April 26 2016, @05:56AM

        by patella.whack (3848) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @05:56AM (#337332)

        Oh man, you vastly overestimate the sophistication of the Proles.
        If a person like you simply dismisses the onslaught as ineffective, then we're missing out on a smart ally.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:51PM

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:51PM (#337478) Homepage Journal

        Obvious crapflooding is obvious, but skilled astroturfing isn't always.

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:20AM

      by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:20AM (#337277)

      Yes the spammy aspect pisses me off. But after fighting the spam wars for two decades now I understand that it was our (our being we UNIXheads who designed this crap) fault for assuming things about human nature that are self evidently not true. In my forebearers (I don't date to the beforetime of ARPANET) defense, the original design was for a network populated by reasonable adults with fairly reliable audit trails between posting accounts and real people with real jobs they didn't want to lose by abusing the network.

      We have to take seriously the task of redesigning the Internet assuming everyone is hostile until proven otherwise. That includes assuming anonymous (or disposable account) forum posters are paid shills. As someone with controversial views (understatement, right?) I can sympathize with those who are afraid to post with a real name. But we can probably think up a persistent yet anonymized way to post with history and reputation. A VPN and a Gmail account get you most of the way there now unless you are resisting a 1st world nation state actor.

      I hate Mrs. Clinton with the fury of an exploding Sun (and her asshole rapist husband too) but I can't bring myself to single her out for additional hate or abuse over this issue because it is a certainty that if the other candidates aren't doing likewise yet it we can assume they all will be up to speed by the general and all future cycles. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars massaging their coverage in print and TV, a million or two for social media and net fora is chump change.

      Don't hate the player, hate the game. Change the rules if you don't like the way the players are taking advantage of the current rules.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:52AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:52AM (#337290) Journal

        Oh I agree 110% we need to change the Internet, I was one of the first to argue that browsers in their current form are fucking retarded and about the worst possible way you could design a system for displaying information. I mean just accepting code from bumfuckistan on some server, code that can change at any second, and by default just treating that as safe and running it? It makes the shit we had to deal with in the 90s like BonziBuddy and Comet Cursors look like the pinnacle of security!

        But until we have something better up and running we really need to protect what we have because if we don't? If the PTBs have their way the net will become a combination of Pravda, the STASI, and the Home Shopping Channel. And frankly it won't take much to fight back against this, if someone started showing up to Hillary rallies asking "Do you know PACs are paying trolls to slander in your name and stop discussion of the issues?" and posters online just keep hammering this home on every pro Hillary article and vid? Then we CAN force the issue.

        But we have zero hope of changing anything if we just sit back and passively let them have it, after all that is the entire point of professional astroturfing and crapflooding, to signaljam the channels with so much noise that everybody gives up. And sadly if we don't fight back against this it has real world consequences, just look at how many people still believe that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. If we don't fight back then they get to control popular opinion, bury dissent with noise, and basically steer the entire country any way they please.

        What we have now isn't great, came from a bunch of pants on head dumbshit design choices, but its honestly all we have anymore that isn't 100% controlled by corporate interests and for that reason alone its worth fighting for.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:28AM

          by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:28AM (#337305)

          If the PTBs have their way the net will become a combination of Pravda, the STASI, and the Home Shopping Channel.

          Have you looked at the Internet in the last year? Look as a normie sees it, make a fresh VM, browse with the shields down and start at Yahoo!, Bing or some other lame ass start page for normals.

          if someone started showing up to Hillary rallies asking

          She has admitted to multiple felonies[1] in the email caper, the Clinton Foundation is transparently a money laundering shop and there are dead bodies pretty much anywhere you look in the history of the Clintons and Bill has abused at least as many women as Bill Cosby. Her supporters know all of these facts and are not voting for her in spite of those crimes. They are voting for her -because- of them; they demonstrate the ruthless lust for power and the willingness to do absolutely anything in service to the Party that they seek in a leader. Do you seriously believe learning that she has paid trolls operating on the Internet would be the final offense they couldn't abide?

          [1] Since one of her troll shills will probably dispute the fact, I will go ahead and back it up now. Operating a mail server outside government control is a violation of the records retention laws (no FOIA possible, no historical record, etc.) Receiving classified material on that system and not reporting it as a security breach is itself a crime. Sending classified material over her system is obviously a crime and she turned over the email archives proving that herself. Ordering staff to remove classified markings so they could be sent to her mailbox is a crime, as was actually obeying that order a crime for the minions. She sent material not marked classified later deemed to have been classified, and as knowing the rules and correctly marking classified material is a duty of her office, she is criminally liable for the failure. Retaining the records after leaving office, both classified and even a lot of the normal traffic, is a crime. She destroyed records, which is of course another crime. She will of course not be indicted for any of it because our government is utterly corrupt.

          • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:23AM

            by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:23AM (#337401) Journal

            Dude I'm from Bill's home state, we know ALL about the bodies...but how many of the general public know? Again this is PsyOps 101, keep nasty questions out of the mainstream as much as possible and use words like "nutter" and "conspiracy theory" to cover up the few that slip out...but the nice thing about the Internet is you can get a groundswell going with frankly very little effort. As much as I hate the org I have to give that 15 year old girl with BLM credit, by simply bringing up her "brought to heel" comments on camera she forced the issue into the limelight and its frankly STILL going, just a couple weeks back Bill was on camera trying to defend her remarks because others picked it up and REFUSE to let it die!

            Maybe its because I'm a child of the 70s, when we saw a US president toppled by people refusing to accept his corruption and illegal acts, but I've seen enough these past few years to know that we don't HAVE to buy the bullshit, we don't HAVE to accept the lies they are pushing as truth, but it requires actually fighting back and refusing to let them control the conversations!

            --
            ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday April 27 2016, @04:54AM

              by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday April 27 2016, @04:54AM (#337782) Homepage

              The current problem is that frequently the "groundswell" itself was astroturfed. A great many "activists" do it for a living. At this point there's no good way to distinguish. My solution is to regard "groundswells" with the same suspicion as any other "movement" until I'm completely sure who and what motivations are behind it.

              --
              And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
          • (Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:16PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:16PM (#337457) Journal

            She has admitted to multiple felonies[1] in the email caper, the Clinton Foundation is transparently a money laundering shop

            It's more accurate to characterize the Clinton Foundation as an influence laundering shop. Rich "Friends of Bill" give the operation a chunk of money, say $40 million. Bill creates an "Initiative" to use that money to "help" people somewhere, in some way. Maybe $10K of that $40 million goes to buy some kids in Haiti some backpacks. The rest goes to salaries for the friends and family of other Friends of Bill who need to pad out their resumes in some way, operating expenses for the rest of the "Foundation," and fees paid to consulting companies run by Friends of Bill.

            The donor gets access to Bill Clinton's rolodex of Friends of Bill and PR value of co-founding a philanthropic venture with Bill Clinton. That latter part is particularly attractive if you're a heinous mofo from the 3rd world. That access, in turn, results in favorable legislation/trade deals, government contracts, etc.

            No money actually goes directly through the Foundation to Bill or Hillary Clinton's pockets. They make their money from honoraria for speeches. Those $250K speeches Hillary gave to Goldman Sachs? That is the form that kickbacks take, but that's a direct transaction between the company and the Clintons.

            By the way, the whole scheme is not of the Clinton's making. Their pal, Vernon Jordan came up with it.

            She sent material not marked classified later deemed to have been classified, and as knowing the rules and correctly marking classified material is a duty of her office, she is criminally liable for the failure. Retaining the records after leaving office, both classified and even a lot of the normal traffic, is a crime. She destroyed records, which is of course another crime. She will of course not be indicted for any of it because our government is utterly corrupt.

            Yes, she committed multiple felonies. She must go to jail. The email server episode demonstrates how inept she is when it comes to technology and law. Her decision to set it up in the first place was entirely political. She wanted to control the narrative of what was said about her stint as Secretary of State when it came time to run for President again. A private email server has a much different discovery process than a government server. I would not be surprised if she had incriminating messages on that server wherein she was peddling influence, or at least setting up the in-person meeting when she said the really good stuff.

            The million dollar question is, will the FBI prosecute her? It is rather a litmus test for the Rule of Law in the United States at this point. Do they let a brazen felon into the Whitehouse? If they do, then We the People will have final confirmation of what we have long suspected, and increasingly know.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:58AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:58AM (#337309) Journal

          If the PTBs have their way the net will become a combination of Pravda, the STASI, and the Home Shopping Channel.

          People keep ignoring a simple fact [youtube.com].

          (grin)

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:55AM

            by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:55AM (#337352)

            You forgot copyright violations.... often, but not always, involving porn. But that is history, now the Internet is for Netflix.

            • (Score: 2, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:03AM

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:03AM (#337358) Journal

              You forgot copyright violations....

              Copyright violations?
              "What's taters, precious?"
              I can only see fair use... as in: if it's on the internet, it's fair game; the information wants to be free anyway.

              (grin)

              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:09AM

                by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:09AM (#337359)

                Yea well... don't even. Folks knew what they were doing. I herded a Usenet server and the canonical newsgroup descriptions for most of the alt.binary.* groups began with "Copyright violations involving...."

                Good times.

          • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday April 26 2016, @05:39PM

            by Vanderhoth (61) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @05:39PM (#337573)

            I think you need to give credit to where this really comes from. The WoW cover of it is fun, but Avenue Q is hilarious, this is another one they did that I stumbled on a while back before I knew where the WoW song came from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM [youtube.com]

            --
            "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2016, @05:35AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2016, @05:35AM (#337793)

        Some of us just don't like having to maintain accounts with every website and/or someone being able to track down everything we've ever said on the net.

        Don't go claiming you verify every poster of every post you read. You don't know a throwaway account just by looking at the user name and shills can post meaningful posts to build up their reputations before shilling for their company. I could create an account, post this exact same message as not an AC, and some people will view it with much more weight than they view it now. Some of us know that's bullshit and don't bother creating accounts. I'm not interested in playing social games. I don't need friends to follow me. Each of my posts stand on their own. Accounts can be sold or hacked at any time too. You never know who is posting something even with user names.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @11:58AM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @11:58AM (#337426) Journal

      I recall that corporate shills/trolls were generally eviscerated on Slashdot. By the time astroturfing became a tactic, the community had already matured and had developed antibodies for it. I suppose I'd credit karma with that. When you have long-time users posting under consistent handles, they establish that they're real. Karma accruing to that username restrains, for the most part, acid replies.

      Slashdot really only started to fall apart because the site's owners chose to sabotage it.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:56PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:56PM (#337452)

        What about low noise level spam? The weekly slashvertisement about e-ink? Personally I found that incredibly annoying.

        The dangerous or effective astroturfing isn't the "stand up to the man in a single heroic Ayn Rand style 75 page long prepared speech" but more like TV detergent commercials who are perfectly happy to tell you 15000 times to buy Tide as long as the 15001-th time you hear it, you finally buy Tide. Its a major hit to standard of living that we all have to sit thru that crap 15000 times because one idiot buckled on the 15001-th time.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:59PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:59PM (#337486) Journal

        I recall that corporate shills/trolls were generally eviscerated on Slashdot. By the time astroturfing became a tactic, the community had already matured and had developed antibodies for it. I suppose I'd credit karma with that.

        Really? You managed to forget Cold fjord?

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:04PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:04PM (#337575) Journal
          And I guess you missed the million times Coldfjord got eviscerated. Besides one poster who disagrees with everyone is not the problem. It's when there's several hundred who disagree.
        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:23PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:23PM (#337615) Journal
          Actually, now that I think of it, Coldfjord might be false flag. After all, he's defending the indefensible, month after month. He's not likable. And as a result, he's built up a great hate-on in the Slashdot community for NSA and other US intelligence.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:39PM (#337442)

      For better or worse, I take a small number of impressions I get from the candidates, form an opinion, and vote that way.
      Liar, crook, crazy, has potential summarize my opinion of Hilary, Cruz, Trump, and Sanders.
      I try and avoid social media. It's already a crapflood of a communication channel. Thing is, when you crapflood a communication channel you're killing the channel, too, and your ability to send real information which will be received through it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:50PM (#337476)

        crazy like a fox

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:30AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:30AM (#337256) Journal

    Someone remind them they got spanked 30 seconds after they were born. Someone remind them they got spanked 30 seconds after they were born.

    Thirty Seconds, huh? Well that might explain the brain damage, in many cases.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:29AM (#337280)

    Oh somebody needs to grow up

    A... tumour?

  • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:01AM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:01AM (#337297) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, that whole sentence reads very interesting to a person who has come to believe that an angry outburst represents temporary insanity.

    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:43PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:43PM (#337474) Homepage Journal

    He works for the media, the ultimate astroturfer. Why have absolutely none of the Presidential candidates been asked if their DEA will bust pot distributors in states where it's legal like Bush did? Why did I not know that legal medical marijuana dispensaries were raided a decade ago despite reading newspapers and watching TV news? I found out yesterday in an email that dispensary owners are rotting in federal prison.

    Someone on CBS yesterday said America didn't care about that issue. Really?? I have close friends who depend on medical marijuana. All of us have friends and family who use pot who are running afoul of federal law.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org