Once again, let's not go overboard. This is real, but so is companies just having people online who naturally do these things. God knows you can't poke Google

Once again, let's not go overboard. This is real, but so is companies just having people online who naturally do these things. God knows you can't poke Google around too much without a Googler making an impassioned plea for them. Same goes for Facebook, or any of the other large SV employers. And then there's just fans. Seems like I remember Amazon coming to the conclusion, after digging through spurious bad reviews of products, that many of them were just from people who had other brands and didn't like that one. So they made up fake reviews. That's not some mysterious spy agency; that's the guy who runs the garage down the street. And that's why these things are so effective -- they blend into the noise that is the crap that is the internet at large. I'm concerned about this in general, but I need more information about how this is being used as part of an extra-judicial punishment before I start bouncing off the walls.