3 ms·
> Facebook’s response to the Bloomberg campaign’s novel social strategy Novel? What? The practice has been around a really long time, and it has been around o
by adrianmonk 7y ago
> Facebook’s response to the Bloomberg campaign’s novel social strategy
Novel? What?
The practice has been around a really long time, and it has been around on the internet long enough that the term "astroturfing" was coined decades ago. And the term "paid shill" has been around longer than that. Today it's very common in several places including Amazon product reviews and political discussions.
Wikipedia gives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#History_of_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#History_of_incide...) an example from way back: 'an early example of the practice was in Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. In the play, Cassius writes fake letters from "the public" to convince Brutus to assassinate Caesar.'
I'm not a big fan of the practice (it involves ulterior motives), but the most unique thing I see about this is they did a clumsy job of it.
- xkemp 7y agoDespite your (and many others in this thread) assertion, this is fundamentally new because it hasn't previously been done in political campaigns in any meaningful scale. The mere existence of a few private campaigns of the sort doen't diminish how much of a departure this is with what has previously been considered acceptable in the political realm. If we assume that the widespread every-politician-is-corrupt cynicism goes along with/is rooted in a wish to see less corruption, you are also applying rather harmful tactics: by claiming everyone plays dirty, any differences between the candidates are erased, and so are any incentives to behave ethically. The cynicism is self-fulfilling: politicians only ever getting superficial accusations with no discernable relation to their actual behaviour will soon stop trying, because why bother?