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Astro-turfing
I could imagine this software being used during elections, which I find somewhat disturbing. Although, the forum bots that I've seen have been really obvious.
When I read it, I thought about who could have been a sock-puppet on the Atari CC forums. I realized, that my online presence at Atari CC and here is rather sock-puppet like. I'm not sure I'm a real person now... I think I need to go wash my socks.
astroturfing doesn't have to be bots. Comcast commonly pays their employees to astro turf, both online and AFK.
Nvidia used to give out video cards to foum members so they could post FPS and 3dmark scores. I remember a lot of review sites lost a lot of credibility when the cover on that was blown.
1) Serapis! :up: :up:
2) I think it's a really interesting issue. On one hand, marketers prattle endlessly about how "social media" is opening the door for more honest dialog with customers/citizens/pedophiles/etc. But the door is also wide open to astroturfing because it's easy and it often works by muddying the waters.
I used to work in a particular area filled with astroturfing and it was rough to do business when people are blindly saying, "well, the Concerned Fat Elephants of America seems to really be concerned about you Skinny Hyenas because I got tons of mail from them."
Or, as we've seen in Wisconsin, the Unions setting up their own organizations to distribute "statistics" about the Great Glorious Unionism that can protect all of us if we only accept higher taxes. But that's for another thread.
Ultimately, I think it's critical for leaders to start to distinguish who should be listened to and who should be ignored. It's equally important for our media to start to learn the fracking difference. Our navel-gazing reporters are obsessed and uncritical with just about anything they see on Twitter; everything they see becomes representative and many younger reporters are being very easily manipulated.
Speaking of dirty tactics, is it appropriate to discuss Santorum here?
WB Serapis. :)