Do you believe that state sponsored orginizations with a political agenda use forums like fluther as a means of influencing social consciousness?
Asked by
YoBob (
12846
)
August 24th, 2011
Ok everyone, time to put on your tin foil hats.
Imagine yourself as the leader of <insert whatever loony fringe political group you want here>. Seems you would get a pretty good return on investment by hiring a few folks to spend all day hanging out on groups like fluther and pushing your loony point of view as if it is a normal man on the street opinion.
But, do you think this is actually being done?
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11 Answers
Anything is possible (infiltration and COINTELPRO, for example). However, I don’t own a tin foil hat and don’t plan on making one. Until the day that there is evidence showing that this is being done, I’ll assume it is not.
Hasn’t that already happened in Fluther with the Democratic Party?
@CWOTUS ba-ZING! lol
I think that could be done… But with mainstream points of view, that have at least a major national following (liberals, conservatives, democrats, tea partiers, progressives, etc, etc).. they don’t really have to hire anyone. Their followers will do the work for them.
Yes of course! The Tea Party pays me real well and the checks always cash!
They will do once they work out how to automate it. Advertisers will also use such technology to sell. I have thought Obama was great since I saw him sink that pint of Guinness in Ireland.
Damn! Why didn’t I think of this? Maybe I should open up my services for bidding. I’ll sell out. What the hell? Monetization. You can pay me in bit-coin.
Wait… are you asking if any of us are plaid pants paid plants?
No, I’m sure that political astroturfing is limited to newspapers, blogs, radio, Twitter, Wikipedia, and the other examples listed here.
Internet forums, after all, are a sacred place. No one would mess with them. ~
There is some tension in the OP, however, as the question itself asks about state-sponsored activities, while the details section asks about fringe group operations. Some clarification would be useful.
There are some people I talk to on the Internet that are so intellectually dishonest and willingly ignorant of facts I present them that I seriously wonder if they are paid shills or political operatives.
But I’m a fan of the maxim: you don’t need to resort to a conspiracy theory to explain something when good old-fashioned stupidity will explain it just as well.
Not Fluther, because the base is way too small, but they definitely use Facebook and the larger (hundreds of thousands of participants) social networks.
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