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Comments like this are what make musings about astroturfing so toxic.

I don't know what it is about us message board nerds that makes this so hard to grok, but you cannot suggest that someone is a shill without overtly calling their integrity into question. Questioning someone's integrity is intrinsically uncivil. Don't be uncivil.

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What I'm hearing is you'd like to make the topic of astroturfing "off-limits", because you feel its discussion is "toxic".

That's exactly what "message board nerds" do: focus on the gestalt rather than the substance. Call people out as not p.c. to silence an opinion.

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