3 ms·
No, every well financed institution does not hire people to role play hundreds of sockpuppets to create a false impression of support for its message.
by comex 12y ago
No, every well financed institution does not hire people to role play hundreds of sockpuppets to create a false impression of support for its message.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y agoActually the US has an entire (metaphorical) army of think tanks and other propaganda outlets which do exactly that. The sockpuppets tend to be more influential than drive-by commenters though. Some of them actually pretend to be respectable journalists and opinion-formers. The Church Committee in the 1970s blew the lid on this. Operation Mockingbird is a famous historical example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird The National Endowment for Democracy is more recent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democrac... Given history, it would take someone with more faith in open government than I have to believe there are no equivalent online operations today.