Is Evmetro Right? Paid Trolls

I'm not going to make a judgment on this issue until I've done some more research, but the pattern of behavior I've seen online does seem to suggest more than just random trolling, at times. Moreover, some sources claim that the government has actually used trolls to interfere with forums and chat rooms to influence opinion. Forget left and right, I'd like to know if anyone else has any reliable information about this phenomenon, in terms of who is engaged with it and how widespread/sophisticated it is. So far, I'm only seeing zerohedge, but the article seems legit.

Thoughts?


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-02/government-trolls-are-using-psychology-based-influence-techniques-youtube-facebook-a
Here's and article from zerohedge:

 

I wouldn't be surprised if government engaged in propaganda. GWB was a master at it, and Obama tried it to make the ACA popular. Companies do it too, posting fake product reviews everywhere.

However, i said before that someone would get a pretty bad return on investment paying someone to troll this forum. There are maybe 100 regulars on here, and none of them will be swayed by arguments from the other side.

I don't even see Evmentro's premise of Hillary shills being correct, because I don't see any obvious Hillary lovers on this board. There are a lot of Trump fans, but they just used to be Obama bashers before Trump came on the scene.

The only obvious example of a paid troll that comes to my mind was that LeeroyHim guy, who posted 20 new threads about Ben Carson every day. Then, he disappeared when Carson dropped out. Or maybe he was just an overzealous fan. Alucard may have been another one with canned one liners.

 

Probably about half the Putinphile out there are likely trolls...

 

No, what you're witnessing is people coming out to show their disgust with Trump. It's not just this forum. Even his own party has a problem with what he says. It's no shock that there would be more people coming to this forum to discuss how bad he is and how we should vote for Hillary. Republicans made a mistake by selecting the only candidate that people like less than Hillary. It has nothing to do with "paid for" trolls. Just look at the numbers. Trump is the most disliked presidential candidate in recorded history.

 

The Pentagon paid for fake patriotic events at NFL games, etc.

 

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Just under Hillary Clinton.

 

While getting my degree in political science I have interned for two congressmen and one senator and we all have different jobs. What the OP calls trolls, campaigns call outreach. While we were all given instruction to spread positive feedback about our candidate there are some interns that spend their entire time hitting social media to give positive feedback and this includes everything from Facebook to forums to Twitter and is focused on the campaigns voter districts or states.

That being said they are not paid trolls they are usually kids earning college credits. Some of us were good and some of us weren't but we all did it when we had time. Most of us get stuck on stuff like gathering information such as reading mail, answering phones and reading email to gather information on constituent concerns and turning them into reports or conducting polls but some were tasked with advertising the candidates.

 

True, but 6 points higher. That's a lot of people.

 

Not necessarily the government, but politically involved groups paying people to maintain a presence on multiple platforms. Though there are only a few hundred daily posters, many thousands see these posts, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to derail a topic off course. In other words, many people just view these pages anonymously and don't participate. If I were a paid troll, I could probably work 4 or 5 major platforms a day. If you hired a few hundred of these guys, or perhaps a few thousand, you would have one hell of a propaganda machine.

I'm not really talking about this forum specifically, I'm just wondering how widespread this phenomenon is on the internet as a whole.

I'm almost certain of that. I know for a fact that China has them.

Trolling is not just the result of hatred for Trump. They are sadistic, stupid little jerks and, perhaps, people who are paid to maintain memberships and promote or oppose certain ideologies.

Yeah, and that is probably nothing compared to other things they've done.

 

Yet until you showed up no one really mentioned Trump....

 

That's interesting. If these guys are doing, I can only imagine how much more sophisticated this gets with large-scale left-wing and right-wing operations. For 10 million a year, you could probably buy a 100 trolls to sit around and (*)(*)(*)(*) with people all day long. You could also coordinate all kinds of things, if you were trying to achieve something specific.

Personally, I find it very disturbing.

 

You're underestimating how much people really dislike trump. They aren't being paid to dislike him. They literally just don't like him.

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Hook me up with the person that would pay me for supporting Hillary. I'd troll for her if I got paid for sure.

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So a thread talking about "paid for" Hillary trolls has nothing to do with Trump.... rigggggggggggggggggght.

 

A thread talking about the possibility of paid trolls which has already mentioned about a dozen other sources for such trolls? Umhmm Yeah, Does Hillary have paid staffers attacking Trump on line if she doesn't shes an bigger idiot than I thought. Trump probably doesn't right now because he does that (*)(*)(*)(*) himself and seems to enjoy it.

 

Trump is an amateur, he has no clue what he is doing. And no, the posters here are not Hillary paid trolls. Just like you're not a Trump paid troll even though you act like it.

 

They were acting like this long before Trump was a candidate. I used to go to Salon, before it became so insane and full of rabid psychos that I couldn't stomach it anymore, and they REALLY came off as paid trolls.

Hell yeah I wish I could get paid to fart around on the internet lol.

 

Actually that wouldn't be very effective. While we were encouraged to spread the word it's doubtful it changed many people's minds. There also is no way to track your results. What campaigns spend money on is hiring professional advertising agencies to handle this stuff such as television and radio promotion and websites.

What we did was go to our meetings and our coordinator would keep saying to go spread the word around on social media. So it was like an added extra. I have never seen a campaign hire a fleet of people to swarm the Internet with posts. I also know many other interns for other campaigns and they never encountered that either. However I have seen the DNC go all out (I only worked for democrats) in a close race with doing this type of thing. I have seen them gather many volunteers to swarm every bit of social media, make calls, put up ads and go door to door in tight races. That is not typical however.

 

I'm not talking about getting congressmen elected. I agree that it wouldn't be very effective at the level of local elections or states, but nationally? If we are talking about the RNC, the DNC, or very large PAC's, I can see them doing it. We know the government is doing it to influence opinion, so it clearly has an effect (maybe lol).

For instance, there are certain things that virtually all globalists can get behind, and there is no doubt that large-scale, global issues, like immigration, could be pushed in the fashion I am suggesting.

 

What difference does it make? She's still loathed...

 

Well unlike the video... this makes a lot of difference.

 

I am quite certain that a poster named Jeanette is an employee of Russian intelligence.

She derailed a thread on Brexit this morning, and started a new thread with a post from RT, the Russian propoganda outlet (currently much in favor with the fearmongering nativist right).

Other posts in her feed are almost exclusively pro Russian, and often blatantly false.

 

Evmetro has made this claim several times now. He claimed to have done considerable research on it.

When challenged, he asserts his self righteous claim of moral superiority.

But he has yet to produce a shred of this research he claims to have done, or cite any evidence to support his claim.

He is a Trumpster. In the face of facts (and the clear shortcomings of his candidate) he has to create an artificial narrative to justify his own cognative dissonance.

 

I've seen Jeannette on here, and she certainly comes off as one. The posts are constant and all have the same theme--they're even restricted to the same section of PF. There's a pro-Israel guy I suspect as well, but I can't recall his name.

By the way, RT occasionally covers legitimate things that you'll never find here in the states. Occasionally, I look at Chinese state media and Russian media when I want an unapologetic view of American ideas and policy. Believe it or not, you'll find some devastating critiques, on occasion. I used to go to a Hezbollah website to get news and analysis on a few particular subjects, and was surprised at how much time they put into their arguments. Basically, one of the best ways to get a solid critique of any given group is to go find the people who hate them the most. They will tend to have the strongest arguments and pull no punches.

 

Lol ya right..

Trump won the nomination by HISTORIC numbers

Who are you kidding man

 

When I asked if he was right, I was asking about paid trolling in general, to achieve any political objective, not exclusively Hillary trolls. Based on the zerohedge article, it's real and very sophisticated. I find it extremely disturbing that there are people paid to (*)(*)(*)(*) with us on the internet and influence our opinions.

 

The ZeroHedge article in the OP struck me as being paranoid and when I clicked on the links they went to conspiracy sites.

That said let's deal with some hard facts about what we do know for certain.

Corporations do monitor social media for references to themselves and their products. They take it seriously because it impacts sales and profits. As far as using trolls/shills are concerned I have never encountered any however I do know that most corporations do have policies for employees when it comes to engaging on social media.

Law enforcement monitors social media and that is well documented via the misnamed Patriot Act. Yes, they are looking for terrorists, both foreign and domestic, and for criminals who are using social media to prey on children. In some instances they do interact on forums where they are trying to find out who is planning the next attack in order to gain trust. That is essentially no different to infiltrating crime rings in the past but just using social media instead.

No, I personally don't have a problem with any of the above because that is just them doing their jobs and it would a dereliction of their responsibilities to not be doing so IMO.

I left politics to last because that is where we are at. Yes, social media is monitored closely and forums like this one are on the list of campaign workers to scan for references for their candidates. Spooky is right that promoting a candidate is done but not in an organised way as far as I can tell. The reason for that being that it really isn't necessary since most candidates already have their supporters in forums like these so why pay for what you are getting for nothing.

And yes, I know this because on a couple of occasions I have posted things only to have them repeated by a talking head the next day. Once or twice might be a coincidence but when Hillary quoted me virtually word for word about something I had posted that was the clincher as far as I was concerned.

Am I paranoid that various entities are monitoring what I post?

Not in the slightest because I am doing nothing more than exercising my 1st Amendment rights to freedom of expression and so are the other posters. Furthermore I am not advocating anything that is a violation of the Law of the Land either. We all have a right to openly criticize our government and that is healthy for our nation. I suspect that if the Founding Fathers were around today they would be participating just as vociferously.

And no, I really don't care if there are any paid trolls here. I tend to avoid those that I consider to be trolls anyway so they are just background noise as far as I am concerned.