Monsanto built a step-by-step strategy to destroy my reputation

Even if there were such laws, they would be very difficult to enforce. Monsanto certainly isn't the only company that does this. I'm sure that fake book reviews are very common.

Worse, there are entire subjects that have been pushed aside by interested parties systematically building a consensus through media that some topics are "discredited" or "unfounded" or "unproven" theories, or even "conspiracy theories," to the point where most people will automatically dismiss them if they are brought up in conversation. The difficulty is that if you don't have a direct interest in the subject, you are very unlikely to spend the energy to investigate the subject yourself and make an informed decision, and those who want to suppress backlash know that.

"Roundup? I never use that stuff. Who cares?"

Possibly attempting to suppress evidence or similar laws against biasing court cases. It might even take down executives eventually; they knew, and they attempted to cover it up. It might not be illegal, but it can certainly be used as evidence to help prosecute things that are illegal.

IANAL, but I don't believe that a smear campaign against her would be illegal in the US. I mean, she's arguably a public figure, so a libel case wouldn't stand.

Indeed, it would have been a better article if she had focused on how common this stuff is. And just used her own experience as the lead.

If done well, how would something like that ever be possible to detect? Unfortunately, well-resourced malicious actors can stack the decks :( I now question every time I saw fairly vehement defense of Monsanto in comments sections and wonder if that defense was at least inspired by paid internet commenters and posters, even if it wasn’t directly them. Who really controls the narrative?

There’s a subreddit about this /r/hailcorporate. Some stuff there seems pretty benign but sometimes you get really blatant advertising by brand new accounts. It’d be silly if they weren’t also commenting.

This definitely does happen, and occasionally it's really blatent.

It has been happening for years, on HN too. Astroturfing used to be extremely obvious and you could quickly verify by looking at someone's comment history. No longer the case I'm afraid, since accounts are either bought outright or pre-processed by intermediaries to have varied histories.

You don't have to look too hard to find the most obvious examples. Hop on over to an HN discussion about the ongoing Hong Kong extradition bill protests. You'll find plenty of accounts that use whataboutist arguments to change the topic to Western interference on the geopolitical landscape, or that the protests are more violent than how Western media portrays them. Then check out the accounts more closely and you'll see that they're only a few weeks old, the only comment sections they've been active in are about the US trade war with China, Chinese imprisonment of Uighurs and the Hong Kong protests, only spouting pro-China comments.

But something this focused on one specific individual I haven't seen before, not on HN at least. I don't think it would be nearly as obvious as what China's doing, though.

She's commenting on the scientific research and evidence on a certain topic, which happens to be largely but not only about one individual company. That's what journalists do. Your comment is very disingenuous.

Hi, Monsanto media relations! Welcome!