So many Trump supporters on the internet

[Utah_liberal]

I've been a DU member a long time, but not a good one because I tend to visit here only during elections. It's a relief to come here now because I like to come here to to get away from all the Trump supporters that seem to far outweigh any Democratic supporters elsewhere on the internet. I'm talking about non partisan sites such as facebook, youtube, and the comment sections of just about any news organization. It's really freaking me out. There's even lots of pro Tumpers in the Huffpost comment sections. If were to base who would win this election based on what I see surfing the net, I would think he already has it in the bag. Has anyone else experienced this? One more thought. It seems like DU is less active now than it was in recent years. I'm not sure on that but is it? I am hoping that Trump supporters just tend to be way more vocal, and that I'm getting a false impression of how many people support him.

[SFnomad]

1. Koch Brothers internet posting rooms flooding the internet, trying to sway opinion n/t

[L. Coyote]

6. Trolls, bot armies on the march. I call it "political pollution" of social media.

Web brigades in Russian, known in English as troll armies, are being used by Trump.

from wiki:

In 2013, a Freedom House report stated that 22 of 60 countries examined have been using paid pro-government commentators to manipulate online discussions, and that Russia has been at the forefront of this practice for several years, along with China and Bahrain.[18][19] In the same year, Russian reporters investigated the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency, which employs at least 400 people. They found that the agency covertly hired young people as "Internet operators" paid to write pro-Kremlin postings and comments, smearing opposition leader Alexei Navalny and U.S. politics and culture.[20][21]
“ Each commenter was to write no less than 100 comments a day, while people in the other room were to write four postings a day, which then went to the other employees whose job was to post them on social networks as widely as possible.[20] ”

Some Russian opposition journalists state that such practices create a chilling effect on the few independent media outlets that remain in the country.[19]

Further investigations were performed by Novaya Gazeta and Institute of Modern Russia in 2014–15, inspired by the peak of activity of the pro-Russian brigades during the war in Donbass and assassination of Boris Nemtsov.[22][23][24][25] The effort of using "troll armies" to promote Putin's policies is a multimillion-dollar operation.[26] According to The Guardian investigation the flood of pro-Russian comments is part of a coordinated "informational-psychological war operation".[27] One Twitter bot network was documented to use more than 20,500 fake Twitter accounts to spam negative comments after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov and events related to the war in Donbass.[28][29]

[tallahasseedem]

3. They are everywhere...

It's very frustrating!

[L. Coyote]

4. They are not supporters, there is an army of bots working Trump posts, paid workers.

Not sure which country they are in though. They are anonymous. Likely some are in Russia working for Putin.

This podcast is a good listen: Who are all these Trump Twitter bots?

Here's an article that illustrates what "troll armies" are all about:

Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

HELSINKI, Finland — Seeking to shine some light into the dark world of Internet trolls, a journalist with Finland’s national broadcaster asked members of her audience to share their experience of encounters with Russia’s “troll army,” a raucous and often venomous force of online agitators.

The response was overwhelming, though not in the direction that the journalist, Jessikka Aro, had hoped.

As she expected, she received some feedback from people who had clashed with aggressively pro-Russian voices online. But she was taken aback, and shaken, by a vicious retaliatory campaign of harassment and insults against her and her work by those same pro-Russian voices.

“Everything in my life went to hell thanks to the trolls,” said Ms. Aro, a 35-year-old investigative reporter with the social media division of Finland’s state broadcaster, Yle Kioski.

Abusive online harassment is hardly limited to pro-Russian Internet trolls. .........

[timlot]

5. They're everywhere, like roaches.

They are just a more active bunch. Just about every major city has conservative talk radio spewing propaganda everyday.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. I deactivated my Facebook account because of postings on

my time line, political and crazy Jesus junk.