5 ms·

I wonder how many private (i.e., non-governmental) groups in the U.S. use this practice, either for business purposes (e.g., Yelp and Amazon reviews, Twitter po

I wonder how many private (i.e., non-governmental) groups in the U.S. use this practice, either for business purposes (e.g., Yelp and Amazon reviews, Twitter posts and responses, or popular and influential forums (such as HN!)), or political purposes. On one hand, it's the 'Big Lie': People naturally doubt such deception is occurring until they see a smoking gun, and even then many deny it. On the other, it is such an obvious, inexpensive way to drive public opinion, I'd be shocked if it wasn't widely used. Even paying U.S. minimum wage, you probably are paying under 50 cents/post. That's 10,000 comments in your favor for < $5K -- without knowing data on the influence of such things, it seems cost-effective compared to advertising. Imagine a local politician or a super-PAC doing it before an election in just one locality. Also interesting: Many people I know think they can detect astroturfing when they see it. I'm sure that's true sometimes, but the astroturfers have more experience and are more sophisticated in their craft than we are -- they do it all day, every day. They know what makes something look credible, and you can see that discussed in the article. EDIT: I just found this: Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy by Edward T. Walker Although 'grassroots' conjures up images of independent citizen organizing, much mass participation today is sponsored by elite consultants working for corporations and powerful interest groups. This book pulls back the curtain to reveal a lucrative industry of consulting firms that incentivize public activism as a marketable service. Edward Walker illustrates how, spurred by the post-sixties advocacy explosion and rising business political engagement, elite consultants have deployed new technologies to commercialize mass participation. Using evidence from interviews, surveys and public records, Grassroots for Hire paints a detailed portrait of these consultants and their clients. Today, Fortune 500 firms hire them to counter-mobilize against regulation, protest or controversy. Ironically, some advocacy groups now outsource organizing to them. Walker also finds that consultants are reshaping both participation and policymaking, but unethical 'astroturf' strategies are often ineffective. This pathbreaking book calls for a rethinking of interactions between corporations, advocacy groups, and elites in politics. http://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-Democracy/dp/1107619017 http://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-D...

cryoshon 12y ago
I will be sure to read the book that you suggested, as this topic is of great interest to me. A few thoughts: 1. Astroturfing has been the norm for a few years now-- probably more years than I suspect, but the biggest difference was pre-2011. 2. Most people don't even have astroturfing on their radar, and if the public ever did get any ideas, you can be sure they would be astroturfed into actually believing that astroturfing is a legitimate marketing technique rather than repugnant lying. 3. Astroturfing varies wildly in quality, and I'm sure that some people could spot the weaker campaigns-- the most recent major campaign that was weak was probably the pro-Russia astroturfing of Reddit during Russia's invasion of Crimea. 4. The quality of astroturf is inversely proportional to the time and thus money it requires to produce. A cheap statement "X is great, support X" blasted into every topic is easy to spot, whereas custom tailored shilling and misdirection is often far more insidious. 5. I'd expect that most governments engage in astroturfing and shilling heavily-- if not on their own population (which is extremely likely) then on other populations. As evidence, consider that Eglin AFB is the "most addicted to reddit" community. I'm not sure what to do about this other than call it out when I see it, which is woefully ineffective.
- rhino369 12y ago
  >Sure, the majority of sales happen in this timespan, but that doesn't mean someone intent on pirating the game will give up and pay just because it isn't available now. I'm not really surprised that a base full of youngish men with a heavy tech background (its a test base for air planes) like reddit.
freshhawk 12y ago
It is very widely used. It's one of the most cost effective PR strategies out there for some businesses. A good PR person might still be better, a story in a big blog/newspaper affects opinion much more than reddit comments, but if you can manipulate how many shares and comments those stories get you can guarantee more of those stories will get written, especially with modern analytics driven news blogs like BuzzFeed/Gawker/HuffPo). The term to google for is "Reputation Management", and they will mostly publicly offer services to watch for conversations about your brand and help you take down fake reviews from competitors, which they will present as a huge problem, and do SEO on your press releases. But who did your competitor hire to post all these fake reviews? It's like the SEO business, they all have some consultants that offer to "motivate and organize your brands fans in order to make their own positive opinions more prominent" or some other BS they can put on an invoice instead of "astroturf the crap out of the important sites with our bot army". Here's an uneven article about the business that links to a lot of good info: http://www.businessinsider.com/reputation-management-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/reputation-management-2013-12 It's now a normal thing to do, like SEO and PR, among insiders it's not ethics that separate white from black hat, it's the risk of your client being exposed and the severity of the blowback. Fake reviews on Yelp/Amazon were the first big business. Giant astroturfing campaigns have become fairly normalized. They work very well and are very cheap. It's easy for sites like reddit or HN to spot a bunch of brand new accounts all spamming similar text, it's very hard to spot the accounts that are all real people, with good english, who are paid to write about mostly whatever they want all day on these sites under a bunch of accounts - who then take a specific position on a specific subject when told to. I've just come to accept that I won't be able to detect the good ones, no one can. And it's easily available and cheap and effective, so I also assume that the ethics of it won't stop people and so it's probably pretty rife. Also, "persona management software" is some pretty cool stuff - that's how you remember which political opinions and brand preferences and subculture each of your accounts is supposed to be presenting and managing the appropriate proxy configurations, scheduling posts/comments and so forth. I know less about the political side of things, as far as I know there is no proof of it being deployed at scale inside the US (except during political campaigns obviously, but for some reason people care less about that and it's always done through a PAC or blamed on a rogue PR firm) but there is a lot of proof of contracts to develop the capability thanks to the HB Gary leaks and the Snowden leaks, and it is being done semi-openly outside the US (where it is legal). Pre-Snowden people doubted the NSA was doing bulk surveillance inside the US, but people in the know assumed they did because there had been other leaks and whistleblowers and they had the motivation and the means. This is where I'd say we are with astroturf propaganda. If it's not being done at scale right now then it's known to not be cost effective.

cryoshon 12y ago

I will be sure to read the book that you suggested, as this topic is of great interest to me. A few thoughts: 1. Astroturfing has been the norm for a few years now-- probably more years than I suspect, but the biggest difference was pre-2011. 2. Most people don't even have astroturfing on their radar, and if the public ever did get any ideas, you can be sure they would be astroturfed into actually believing that astroturfing is a legitimate marketing technique rather than repugnant lying. 3. Astroturfing varies wildly in quality, and I'm sure that some people could spot the weaker campaigns-- the most recent major campaign that was weak was probably the pro-Russia astroturfing of Reddit during Russia's invasion of Crimea. 4. The quality of astroturf is inversely proportional to the time and thus money it requires to produce. A cheap statement "X is great, support X" blasted into every topic is easy to spot, whereas custom tailored shilling and misdirection is often far more insidious. 5. I'd expect that most governments engage in astroturfing and shilling heavily-- if not on their own population (which is extremely likely) then on other populations. As evidence, consider that Eglin AFB is the "most addicted to reddit" community. I'm not sure what to do about this other than call it out when I see it, which is woefully ineffective.

rhino369 12y ago
>Sure, the majority of sales happen in this timespan, but that doesn't mean someone intent on pirating the game will give up and pay just because it isn't available now. I'm not really surprised that a base full of youngish men with a heavy tech background (its a test base for air planes) like reddit.

freshhawk 12y ago

It is very widely used. It's one of the most cost effective PR strategies out there for some businesses. A good PR person might still be better, a story in a big blog/newspaper affects opinion much more than reddit comments, but if you can manipulate how many shares and comments those stories get you can guarantee more of those stories will get written, especially with modern analytics driven news blogs like BuzzFeed/Gawker/HuffPo). The term to google for is "Reputation Management", and they will mostly publicly offer services to watch for conversations about your brand and help you take down fake reviews from competitors, which they will present as a huge problem, and do SEO on your press releases. But who did your competitor hire to post all these fake reviews? It's like the SEO business, they all have some consultants that offer to "motivate and organize your brands fans in order to make their own positive opinions more prominent" or some other BS they can put on an invoice instead of "astroturf the crap out of the important sites with our bot army". Here's an uneven article about the business that links to a lot of good info: http://www.businessinsider.com/reputation-management-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/reputation-management-2013-12 It's now a normal thing to do, like SEO and PR, among insiders it's not ethics that separate white from black hat, it's the risk of your client being exposed and the severity of the blowback. Fake reviews on Yelp/Amazon were the first big business. Giant astroturfing campaigns have become fairly normalized. They work very well and are very cheap. It's easy for sites like reddit or HN to spot a bunch of brand new accounts all spamming similar text, it's very hard to spot the accounts that are all real people, with good english, who are paid to write about mostly whatever they want all day on these sites under a bunch of accounts - who then take a specific position on a specific subject when told to. I've just come to accept that I won't be able to detect the good ones, no one can. And it's easily available and cheap and effective, so I also assume that the ethics of it won't stop people and so it's probably pretty rife. Also, "persona management software" is some pretty cool stuff - that's how you remember which political opinions and brand preferences and subculture each of your accounts is supposed to be presenting and managing the appropriate proxy configurations, scheduling posts/comments and so forth. I know less about the political side of things, as far as I know there is no proof of it being deployed at scale inside the US (except during political campaigns obviously, but for some reason people care less about that and it's always done through a PAC or blamed on a rogue PR firm) but there is a lot of proof of contracts to develop the capability thanks to the HB Gary leaks and the Snowden leaks, and it is being done semi-openly outside the US (where it is legal). Pre-Snowden people doubted the NSA was doing bulk surveillance inside the US, but people in the know assumed they did because there had been other leaks and whistleblowers and they had the motivation and the means. This is where I'd say we are with astroturf propaganda. If it's not being done at scale right now then it's known to not be cost effective.