General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The government figured out sockpuppet managment but not "persona management". [View all]starroute
(12,977 posts)I spent time tracking some of them (using the old DU search function, which made it easy), just to reassure myself I wasn't imagining things. They'd show up, post 24/7 for a week -- mostly using one-line posts in minor forums -- to get their post count over 1000, and then start depositing disinfo.
The main objective seemed to be muddying the waters over questions of election fraud. There were entire threads of these puppets just agreeing with one another and using standard DU phrases like "good catch" to shore up their distortions and red herrings.
Perhaps the worst effect was that they drew some sincere posters into agreeing with them. And then self-appointed vigilantes sprang up to accuse people of being infiltrators -- and sometimes they'd accuse the sincere posters as well, and it got very nasty. This is why there are rules against that sort of thing now.
It's still a puzzle where the infiltrators came from -- whether they were paid professionals or just right-wingers working in tag teams like the gang that were found to be targeting digg in 2010. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/08/06/886069/-Right-Wing-Extremist-Digg-YouTube-Trolls-Outed) However it started out, theough, the HBGary material suggests that the idea has been taken up in a serious way on the professional level.