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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:16PM
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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