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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAre Right-Wing Libertarian Internet Trolls Getting Paid to Dumb Down Online Conversations?
Are Right-Wing Libertarian Internet Trolls Getting Paid to Dumb Down Online Conversations?
They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences.
In the Wikileaks punch-up the commoners appear to have the upper hand. But its just one battle. Theres a wider cyberwar being fought, of which you hear much less. And in most cases the landlords, with the help of a mercenary army, are winning.
Im not talking here about threats to net neutrality and the danger of a two-tier internet developing, though these are real. Im talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.
The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilizations, but which has in reality been organized. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country.
http://current.com/community/93896214_are-right-wing-libertarian-internet-trolls-getting-paid-to-dumb-down-online-conversations.htm
Does all the endless NRA talking points spewed from from faux Dems make more sense when looked at in this light?
Robb
(39,665 posts)This is not to say there are not both, of course.
But a genuine fool can sound a lot like a paid stooge, through no fault of their own but a lack of facility.
Warpy
(110,912 posts)as soon as I spot them. I can tolerate different views and answer them appropriately. However, when someone interrupts and spews bumper sticker after bumper sticker, slogan after slogan, and sound bite after sound bite, they are evicted from my screen. Life is short and time is precious.
I don't care if they're stupid or evil.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)on the left also. There are a lot of subjects one cannot have a rational measured discussion about these days on this board.
I cannot believe people have so little of a life that they would do this type of thing but it there it is.
Peace, mojo
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)If someone is for banning it and I jump in and say they are wrong to do so, I value your body, your choice why don't I get called an abortion nut? Why don't folks post things like the OP and ask "Is this where people defending abortion come from?"
Maybe, just maybe, there are some issues that a lot of people care about in deeply emotional ways and who stand by their convictions.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)We have at least one fairly new poster here who has a very high post rate and once they passed 1000 turned fairly nasty and has the locked posts to prove it.
MightyMopar
(735 posts)ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)MightyMopar
(735 posts)southern_belle
(1,647 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Look in any major newspaper web site at any article about something controversial - GLBT rights, climate change, gun regulation, and the comments section down at the bottom is completely infested with screaming teabaggers.
I think we see a certain number of them right here.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)& infects their comment sections with his RW bullshit. It seems to amuse him. I know he's not getting paid for it.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)If they are hungry enough and their eternity depends on proselytizing, plundering the Internet is an easy way to gain salvation. It's a lot easier and less messy than joining a "patriot" regiment. Some get paid to be saved too.
madinmaryland
(64,920 posts)MightyMopar
(735 posts)Just kidding! I'm sure they're all good progressives, they tell us so all the time.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)MightyMopar
(735 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)it right!
PLARS1999
(14 posts)Even my kitchen table leans left, I had to put bricks under the legs just to keep my glass from sliding off the edge.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)It is possible I have missed those but it would really help make this board a more pleasant
place to be if people practiced a bit of kindness in communicating. Peace, mojo
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)hunh?
Gman
(24,780 posts)being they are dirt stupid.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)ellisonz
(27,709 posts)MightyMopar
(735 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)ellisonz
(27,709 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)cui bono
(19,926 posts)Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)I just find it fishy that almost every online forum I visit, conservative/libertarian posters outnumber liberal posters, even though we've just elected a Democratic president for the 2nd consecutive time.
Also, I can't tell you how many "RON PAUL 2012 OUR ONLY HOPE" comments I saw spammed in YouTube comments during the 2012 election season. That's one reason why I hardly ever visit the comments section anymore, especially on anything related to politics. I'm sorry, but I can't tolerate hearing people worship some bigoted hypocrite, as if he's God's gift to politics. Plus, I just find it weird how immediately following his retirement from Congress, the super-long rambling word salad he gave had at least 600K views in less than a week after the video was uploaded, and how most videos related to him have thousands of views. I find this weird because the guy had literally no shot at even winning his own party's nomination. Where was all that support for Ron Paul during the GOP primaries?
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Glassunion
(10,201 posts)Stehp won - Hur Dur
Stehp too - Derp Dur
Stehp thri - ?????
Stehp for - Mak Munee $$$$
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Only a churl like myself would point out that it all sounds like a mirror-universe version
of the crazy shit spouted on a regular basis by people like Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent...
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)to participate at DU.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)NoPasaran
(17,291 posts)What a shit stirrer that one was.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)OldDem2012
(3,526 posts)In 1948 Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects. Soon afterwards it was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."
Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."
In 1951 Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".
One of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), C. D. Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), Walter Winchell (New York Daily Mirror), Drew Pearson, Walter Lippmann, William Allen White, Edgar Ansel Mowrer (Chicago Daily News), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Whitelaw Reid (New York Herald Tribune), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), William C. Baggs (Miami News), Herb Gold (Miami News) and Charles L. Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman) these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.
Read the rest of the article....very informative.
If "they" would go to this extent to control the so-called "free press", why would they not be willing to to conduct similar operations in the Internet Age?
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)comment on the internet, is probably a lot more ubiquitous than we think.
it was big news when revealed how big the informal east german intelligence network was (including low-level schmucks getting paid to watch their neighbors).
i personally believe it's probably not so different here, just differently organized.
OldDem2012
(3,526 posts)formercia
(18,479 posts)Good comparison.
A prediction comes true:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3559850&mesg_id=3568354
FSogol
(45,359 posts)Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Really, how does comment content impact the real world, except to reinforce what people already think? Let them do it all they want, because it is about as meaningful as a post on DU. Posting a comment online is a way of venting one's own opinion and of use to the one venting moreso than anything else, really..
ieoeja
(9,748 posts)Black man gets elected. Teabaggers go insane wanting their country "back". The run on guns begins.
So the OP suggests in another now locked thread that the run on gun is racist. And gets banned for it. I am amazed that anyone at DU would even doubt that racism was the cause of the immediate run on guns. That run continued for 4 years without a single gun control proposal on the table.
Maybe I'll get banned too. But it seems amazingly obvious to me that racism is the reason that run began 4 years ago.
What do you people even think "take our country back" means? Don't you think it might mean take it back from the minorities?
oldhippie
(3,249 posts)I'm all for busting trolls, but that one was kinda hard to figure. I guess I'll have to mark that one down as another of the "subjects which must not be mentioned" regardless of facts or opinions. Lots of other things he said I would have thought deserved a PPR, but not that. I live and learn.