>people were defending them.
I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking) and that company pays shills to defend them.
I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking) and that company pays shills to defend them.
After all those years on the internet I think I can also feel the impact of systematic forum activity; controversial topics that get swift, well articulated replies with links and upvotes. Another comment, declaring the winner of the debate!
Is it individual experts who weigh in, organically? Groups who are passionate about the topic and organize via Discord? Or professional shitposters and memers? Who can tell. But a few internet-addicted Reddit aficionados could cover a lot of topics in a lot of communities for a small salary and huge impact.
"In April 2016, Correct the Record announced that it would be spending $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about Clinton in a "task force" called "Barrier Breakers 2016".[1][5] In addition to this, the task force aimed to encourage Sanders supporters to support Clinton and to thank both "prominent supporters and committed superdelegates".[6] The organization's president, Brad Woodhouse, said they had "about a dozen people engaged in [producing] nothing but positive content on Hillary Clinton" and had a team distributing information "particularly of interest to women".[7]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record
If you watched r/politics and political humor back that it went from organic looking to the consent manufacturing factories they are today.
I do have an opinion: Citizens United should be overturned, or we should have an Amendment clarifying that money isn't speech, so we can get rid of Super PACs. I also think the advertising industry should be regulated such that it's a shadow of what it is today.
In the meanwhile you apparently hold an opinion that is perfectly in line with the argument of the parent that you somehow assume is in support of Republican/regressive politics for no good reason. If you've got a better example of a SPAC that funded internet trolls you could just post a single Wikipedia link to that instead of making vague statements about slant.
There's one thing that the republicans are right about, and that's that Wikipedia, HN and most of reddit are biased against them, and that's because they're biased towards the truth and the whole republican platform is based around denying reality.
> If you've got a better example of a SPAC that funded internet trolls you could just post a single Wikipedia link to that instead of making vague statements about slant.
Sure, let me introduce you to the Willkies [0] and anti-abortion PACs [1]. Both examples of people pushing their issue opinions into the public square (with doctored content and a lot of money I might add) or directly into getting people elected to make policies they'd like.
> reality is biased against republicans
100% agree. My only thing here was taking HRC's campaign totally out of context. This is how US politics works since Citizens United (ironically also a case where a group of people wanted to release a super negative video about her in the political ad blackout period [3]).
0: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/fetal-photos-jac...
1: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...
I would expect any big multinational corp to have few permanent people / external agency on permanent contract just for this. And considering how these corps in discussion are almost cartoonishly evil, there is probably a lot of work being done constantly.
https://www.g2.com/products/dataminr/competitors/alternative...
Not sure if any of them also include PR/shilling, though.