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> As part of a far-reaching social media strategy, the Bloomberg campaign has hired hundreds of temporary employees to pump out campaign messages through Facebo

> As part of a far-reaching social media strategy, the Bloomberg campaign has hired hundreds of temporary employees to pump out campaign messages through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These “deputy field organizers” receive $2,500 per month to promote the former New York mayor’s candidacy within their personal social circles Accusations of paid shills have been thrown around so freely on the Internet, it's refreshing to have actual textbook examples for once!

Proven 7y ago
Paid shills? All government employees should be banned from participating in elections related discourse because they are paid shills for big government and never support small government and balanced budget. If private sector employees shill for their boss, that's none of my business and likewise Twitter should leave them alone.
ForHackernews 7y ago
Wow, how can get paid $2,500/month to post Bloomberg spam? That sounds like a fantastic deal! If you extrapolated that to an annual salary, about 35% of Americans work jobs that pay less than that.
- danmg 7y ago
  have a tiktok account with more than 200 followers
  - toxican 7y ago
    brb making a bunch of terrible videos
- shmageggy 7y ago
  And Bloomberg can afford it by spending a small fraction of his wealth. Standard fare for modern inequality
  - thedance 7y ago
    Bloomberg taking the most practical approach to wealth inequality. All the other candidates just talk about it but Bloomberg is sending billions hurling down the wealth gradient!
    - dreae 7y ago
      Realistically tens of millions at best. Assuming the Bloomberg campaign hires 200 people for this strategy (the article states "hundreds") it would take 167 years for him to spend $1 billion on it.
      - shmageggy 7y ago
        He's already spent $460 million.
        w4 7y ago
        Why is this being downvoted? It’s accurate: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bloomberg-spends-about-7-million-day-his-campaign-latest-filing-n1140001 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bloomberg-spe...
        barbecue_sauce 7y ago
        That figure is for his entire campaign, not just for salaried internet trolls.
        jjeaff 7y ago
        Presumably, the astroturfers are not the only money that is making its way to regular employees.
        ska 7y ago
        Presumably the vast majority of that on conventional ads and campaign infrastructure though, which hardly has the same effect.
- DethNinja 7y ago
  And that is very minuscule fraction of his wealth. This is really scary because it means that if somehow billionaires and companies that received assistance from Quantitative Easing decided to spend their wealth, it would cause considerable inflation.
  - rubyn00bie 7y ago
    He could spend his entire fortune and it wouldn't even make the smalle blip in our economy. While he's wealthy, $55 billion isn't really much money in the American economy with a GDP of over 21 trilion. Quantitative easing has literally zero to do with what you're proposing, the amount of money infused was pretty small compared to the size of our economy (arguably way too little), and the rest of us would've been even more fucked had it not happened. Correlating QE to billionaire spending and inflation is like correlating how much change you find in your couch to your maximum potential earnings. It doesn't make sense. And don't get me wrong, I totally hate Bloomberg and I know he has literally zero business being president. I'm not shilling for him, he's a piece of crap, don't vote for him... I just really fucking hate it when people say things that sound "right" or even "informed" about economics that aren't because the whole science gets shit on daily by people who have no business talking about it without stating "I know nothing" before posting. If you don't make posts on physics theories don't make them about economics; it's actually even more hurtful because getting through the misinformation is harder and more prone to error.
    - nwienert 7y ago
      QE had a huge effect on our economy and the wealth distribution in our county and was a disastrous policy. Edit: to be clear, we essentially bailed out the banks with absolutely no repercussions except to the working class through deflated bonds and interest rates.
      - rubyn00bie 7y ago
        In regards to wealth distribution: no, absolutely not; it didn't have an effect on wealth distribution other than leaving it as-is and then mostly flat-lining it for a few years (before continuing the status-quo of increasing wealth inequality). Here's the Gini coefficient from 2000 until now for the USA; which, measures income inequality: https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-for-us-individuals-families-and-households/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-... It was anything but a disastrous policy, it was a disaster mitigating policy... it was one completely underfunded by any sane measure, but did mitigate disaster. Yeah, the banks got bailed out and no one got tried. Those two things are completely independent of each other. One has to do with economic policy and the other one is with governmental policy. Don't blame the bailout because the motherfuckers didn't go to jail.
- 101404 7y ago
  That would be a great story. If Bloomberg employed hundred thousand people in his shilling campaign, and then Trump took the credit for reducing unemployment. Or maybe people should just stop relying on Tw/Fb/etc for their news.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
m0zg 7y ago
Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareblue_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareblue_Media is a textbook example of how wildly unpopular Dem candidates lose elections after rigging their own nomination and outspending their opponent 2:1. See also Media Matters and Correct The Record. In the runup to the election, every single forum was full of rather obvious shills. If Bernie doesn't hire these people, they _will_ be deployed against him, and later (unsuccessfully) against the incumbent.
conistonwater 7y ago
How is hundreds of political campaign volunteers considered far-reaching? Surely it's less than the number of normal non-shill people involved in the campaign legitimately. I feel like the scale of these numbers is off in a way that suggests the campaign messed up in more than one way.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  It's more about time per person and organization, someone who is paid and working on a specific goal in communication with others doing the same thing will probably be a lot more effective than a loose group of supporters. That is assuming they appear to not be organized and paid...
- bestnameever 7y ago
  > How is hundreds of political campaign volunteers considered far-reaching? Are these volunteers or are they being paid?
  - conistonwater 7y ago
    Sorry, wrong word, I think they're being paid.

Proven 7y ago

Paid shills? All government employees should be banned from participating in elections related discourse because they are paid shills for big government and never support small government and balanced budget. If private sector employees shill for their boss, that's none of my business and likewise Twitter should leave them alone.

ForHackernews 7y ago

Wow, how can get paid $2,500/month to post Bloomberg spam? That sounds like a fantastic deal! If you extrapolated that to an annual salary, about 35% of Americans work jobs that pay less than that.

danmg 7y ago
have a tiktok account with more than 200 followers
- toxican 7y ago
  brb making a bunch of terrible videos
shmageggy 7y ago
And Bloomberg can afford it by spending a small fraction of his wealth. Standard fare for modern inequality
- thedance 7y ago
  Bloomberg taking the most practical approach to wealth inequality. All the other candidates just talk about it but Bloomberg is sending billions hurling down the wealth gradient!
  - dreae 7y ago
    Realistically tens of millions at best. Assuming the Bloomberg campaign hires 200 people for this strategy (the article states "hundreds") it would take 167 years for him to spend $1 billion on it.
    - shmageggy 7y ago
      He's already spent $460 million.
      - w4 7y ago
        Why is this being downvoted? It’s accurate: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bloomberg-spends-about-7-million-day-his-campaign-latest-filing-n1140001 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bloomberg-spe...
        barbecue_sauce 7y ago
        That figure is for his entire campaign, not just for salaried internet trolls.
        jjeaff 7y ago
        Presumably, the astroturfers are not the only money that is making its way to regular employees.
      - ska 7y ago
        Presumably the vast majority of that on conventional ads and campaign infrastructure though, which hardly has the same effect.
DethNinja 7y ago
And that is very minuscule fraction of his wealth. This is really scary because it means that if somehow billionaires and companies that received assistance from Quantitative Easing decided to spend their wealth, it would cause considerable inflation.
- rubyn00bie 7y ago
  He could spend his entire fortune and it wouldn't even make the smalle blip in our economy. While he's wealthy, $55 billion isn't really much money in the American economy with a GDP of over 21 trilion. Quantitative easing has literally zero to do with what you're proposing, the amount of money infused was pretty small compared to the size of our economy (arguably way too little), and the rest of us would've been even more fucked had it not happened. Correlating QE to billionaire spending and inflation is like correlating how much change you find in your couch to your maximum potential earnings. It doesn't make sense. And don't get me wrong, I totally hate Bloomberg and I know he has literally zero business being president. I'm not shilling for him, he's a piece of crap, don't vote for him... I just really fucking hate it when people say things that sound "right" or even "informed" about economics that aren't because the whole science gets shit on daily by people who have no business talking about it without stating "I know nothing" before posting. If you don't make posts on physics theories don't make them about economics; it's actually even more hurtful because getting through the misinformation is harder and more prone to error.
  - nwienert 7y ago
    QE had a huge effect on our economy and the wealth distribution in our county and was a disastrous policy. Edit: to be clear, we essentially bailed out the banks with absolutely no repercussions except to the working class through deflated bonds and interest rates.
    - rubyn00bie 7y ago
      In regards to wealth distribution: no, absolutely not; it didn't have an effect on wealth distribution other than leaving it as-is and then mostly flat-lining it for a few years (before continuing the status-quo of increasing wealth inequality). Here's the Gini coefficient from 2000 until now for the USA; which, measures income inequality: https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-for-us-individuals-families-and-households/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-... It was anything but a disastrous policy, it was a disaster mitigating policy... it was one completely underfunded by any sane measure, but did mitigate disaster. Yeah, the banks got bailed out and no one got tried. Those two things are completely independent of each other. One has to do with economic policy and the other one is with governmental policy. Don't blame the bailout because the motherfuckers didn't go to jail.
101404 7y ago
That would be a great story. If Bloomberg employed hundred thousand people in his shilling campaign, and then Trump took the credit for reducing unemployment. Or maybe people should just stop relying on Tw/Fb/etc for their news.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

m0zg 7y ago

Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareblue_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareblue_Media is a textbook example of how wildly unpopular Dem candidates lose elections after rigging their own nomination and outspending their opponent 2:1. See also Media Matters and Correct The Record. In the runup to the election, every single forum was full of rather obvious shills. If Bernie doesn't hire these people, they _will_ be deployed against him, and later (unsuccessfully) against the incumbent.

conistonwater 7y ago

How is hundreds of political campaign volunteers considered far-reaching? Surely it's less than the number of normal non-shill people involved in the campaign legitimately. I feel like the scale of these numbers is off in a way that suggests the campaign messed up in more than one way.

SahAssar 7y ago
It's more about time per person and organization, someone who is paid and working on a specific goal in communication with others doing the same thing will probably be a lot more effective than a loose group of supporters. That is assuming they appear to not be organized and paid...
bestnameever 7y ago
> How is hundreds of political campaign volunteers considered far-reaching? Are these volunteers or are they being paid?
- conistonwater 7y ago
  Sorry, wrong word, I think they're being paid.