Notice any evidence of paid crowdsourcing to flood comment sections, etc., by conservative groups?

[obamachangetheworld]

Hi all,

I have recently become suspicious that conservative groups, possibly superpacs are using paid crowdsourcing services such as Amazon Mechanical Turk to flood comment pages and other interactive forums of discussion. There was a recent story about this service in the LA Times and I'm just feeling a little creeped out thinking the GOP is using this type of service, where people are paid small amounts of money, often $0.01 or $0.02 to write small pieces (90+ characters) promoting a certain business or viewpoint. Has anyone seen any evidence of this? The implications in my mind are Orwellian in nature.

Thanks for any response!

[DontTreadOnMe]

1. Where have you been!

They OPENLY post JOB LISTINGS on Craigslist... "work at home"... maybe someone should apply for these jobs and do some real investigative journalism -- follow the money.

[obamachangetheworld]

3. Seems like a major abuse of trust

Maybe I will try and do some kind of investigative journalism on this in my free time, although it would probably be far more effective if someone with training did it.

[calimary]

2. Wouldn't surprise me. They do astroturfing too - with letters to the editor

in an attempt to "manage" the public perception. "Gee, look at all these CONservative views - d'you suppose that IS the way most people feel? Maybe we really ARE in the minority..."

I'd just hope the Dems are doing something similar. We simply CANNOT just sit by and let this go on without responding - without weighing in, without making sure that theirs is NOT the ONLY opinion getting exposure out there. It has to be fought. EVERYWHERE. At EVERY POINT, and at EVERY MOMENT.

[Frustratedlady]

14. I've noticed that in our local paper.

Generally, the paper posts an even amount from both sides, but I've noticed that lately, the LTEs have been leaning to the right...the hard right.

The statements are way out in right field and are, in no way, anywhere near the truth.

[lob1]

4. I got 4 strange guys here right now forcing me to read the Bible

and simultaneously watch Bill O'Reilly reruns. I'm tempted to call the police, but the guys keep throwing money at me.

[Iggo]

18. I know it's only the 10th, but...

...but this is clearly the best post of the month.

[lob1]

19. Hey, thanks, Iggo.

I survived the stranger attack, except for a bunch of paper cuts from them throwing all that money at me. The took the damned money when they left, too.

[SoutherDem]

5. I don't know if this is what you are talking about but

I have noticed many website comment pages are full of pro Republican or anti Obama comments. I have noticed this on CNN, USAToday, NPR, almost all I go to. It can be a bit frustrating to see a majority of the comments to support the Republicans. I have not thought of people being paid to do this I just thought is was that they are the ones who assume any news which doesn't support them to be biased.

[obamachangetheworld]

6. Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about

I'm gonna try and sleep on it, talk to a few politically involved family members and then try and think about how to make this known to more people, such as me, who have no idea this was going on. I had suspicions in the past, but never put 2 and 2 together until I read the article on crowdsourcing in the Times.

[freshwest]

7. They also use bots to make nonsense posts to discourage communications; and skewing google results.

This is a serious problem and I'm glad you are noticing it. I don't know how to counter it but it is their way of making social media ineffective for progressives to network and also manufacture consent for their radical conservative ideology. Do what you can to investigate and report back as best you can. Also look around on DU for people that do OPs in other places and inform through Kos, Think Progress, Buzzflash, alternet, truthout and Reddit.

[DCKit]

8. It's got to be the Republics.

No Democrat would pay such shitty wages.

[DFW]

9. Yes. They do it regularly, and they usually use more than one nickname

The best example I have seen so far is the Washington Post board. Always the same names, and always the same comments, same grammar (or lack thereof) and homogeneous commentary and terminology. As if Frank Luntz had issued a handbook. For that matter, knowing him, he may have done just that.

Raw Story has a few of them, too, although the WaPo board is the most infested of the few I take the time to look at (day job and all). Some of us could do worse than to join the WaPo board and fight back with a few comments of our own. I do it on occasion, but time is a problem.

[GoCubsGo]

11. It has been going on for years.

The Yahoo! boards have been overwhelmed with them for more than a decade. HuffPoo has gotten to where most of their commenters are paid trolls, although they were not so bad before Arianna sold out to AOL, who brought in reinforcements from their troll-infested boards.

Anywhere you go, they're there. I go to web sites that have discussion boards that have absolutely NOTHING to do with politics, like the TV web-streaming sites, and comments sections on baseball web sites. And, there they are, spreading their shit all over the joint. BTW, there's a reason for the same comments and same grammar. A lot of those trolls have multiple log-in names, which lets them maximize their income. A lot of the time, it's really easy to tell which ones are the same person. It's kind of like watching the trolls who come here, get PPRed, and come back under a different name. You know it's the same person by the color of the crayon they use, so to speak.

[davidpdx]

12. No doubt about that

And nasty trolls they are. Probably 80% are unmarried Republican men living in their mother's basement. So much for the closet....

[valerief]

13. No, they're all offshored jobs. nt

[12zelda12]

10. John Doe is Scott Walker

Part of the John Doe investiagation here in Wisconsin has do with Walker using the tax payer's money to pay trolls to go through the Wisconsin Journal and Capital Times blogs. if it's being done here, it's being done all over the country. When I first started blogging, i went on ABC news blog. it was interesting what they allowed people to say and what was blocked. Saying anything about Jesus socialist bible passages were banned interestingly. The major News organizations only want you to hear what they want you to hear and the Scott Walker win was something they wanted you to hear loud and clear. The four major news organizations are owned by Repubicans essentially. I spoke with Ed Schultz and Rush Limbaugh was installed by the Republican Party 20 years ago because they saw that the airwaves could be purchased pretty easily and 1500 stations were bought at that time. The Internet partially saved us from being taken over earlier - because of sites like this but we are in trouble. Any thoughts about getting our message out to the vast majority of people who have no idea this is occurring?

[stubtoe]

15. OMG yes. They're tenacious, they're nasty, and they're everywhere.

I'm sure lots of them are paid. I'm also sure lots of them are bitter old guys with nothing better to do all day.

At any rate, message boards have become sewers. Check out comments on political articles at NPR sometime. Any attempt at reasonable dialog is futile.

[emulatorloo]

16. Yes, they seem to be everywhere.

[jillan]

17. They are all over Huffington Post. I love arguing with them. They have the talking points but

have no coherent answer when you ask a follow up question. It's fun