Corporate Trolls Among Us
I had heard about corporate trolls (people paid to troll for corporations) before, but I had never looked into it much. If even half of what Sharyl Attkisson says in this TEDx talk is true than this is a much bigger problem than I realized.
I recommend you watch the whole video it is only ten minutes long. I've highlighted some key bits below.
Highlights from the video
Astroturf - a perversion of grass roots. Political, corporate, or othe special interests disguise themselves and publish blogs, start Facebook and Twitter accounts, publish ads or letters to the editor or simply post comments online to try to fool you into thinking an independent movement is speaking.
*emphasis added.
Astroturf seeks to make you feel as if you are an outlier when you are not.
Wikipedia - an Astroturfers dream come true. Billed as the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the reality can’t be more different. Anonymous editors control and change information on behalf of special interests.
Example: in 2012, Philip Roth tried to correct a major fact error about an inspiration about one of his book characters, but his edits were always changed back to the false information. Roth finally got a hold of a person at Wikipedia and was told that he was not considered a credible source…on himself.
Wikipedia contradicts medical research 90% of the time.
Strategies to recognize signs of Astroturf:
- Hallmarks of Astroturfing - use of inflammatory language such as "crank, quack, nutty, lies, paranoid, and conspiracy." They often claim to debunk myths are not myths.
- Astroturfers often attack the people or organizations involved rather than focusing on facts.
- Astroturfers tend to question those that question authority.
So the question is: how many Facebook Astroturfers are out there telling people that Steemit is a ponzi scheme or a scam? How many Astroturfers are saying the same thing about Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?
What if the Astroturfers know that we know about them so they try to double Astroturf us?
I think if you are getting your information from a news article, blog post, comment, youtube video, or any other source that is not the primary source of the information you could be getting turfed or trolled.
Eyes open, no fear, be safe everyone.
Totally agree, and thanks for the good post. The so-called 'fake news' or 'fake media' seems to be an issue globally, not just in Korea. Reliable outlets are getting scarce, unfortunately.
Followed you :)
고맙습니다. Yes, it is very hard to find any reliable news these days.
Stellar profile on a phenomenon I knew existed for my lifetime, and at fever pitch the last 15-20 years especially. Sharyl Attkison might be the Walter Cronkite figure of her time, she does a great job of telling the truth and bowing down to no one in the media. Astroturfing may be the only bi-partisan practice in politics today. Every one is "wing-nut, conspiracy theorist," etc. Absolute golden content on why the truth is so hard to attain, especially from the bigger the media conglomerates' interest reporting. Thanks for adding a much needed word to my vocabulary @treebuilder, found your article on the q-filter hash tag, the search is jacked with stellar content, which makes my steemit searches now very easy!
Thank you for this extremely important post! For years I'd had this unsettling and almost overwhelmingly frustrating feeling that it is close to impossible to know who you can trust and what to believe regarding the information that we're being served by the media and even on social media. So when I watched Sharyl Attkisson's TED Talk some months ago I realised that I was not being paranoid. The level of lying and deceiving is beyond disgusting. I've resteemed this post.
@treebuilder just saw this post & upvoted!! You need to join @richardcrill and I at the @steemexperience! We're always on the discord channel & you can post a link to your posts so we can upvote them! You can just go to www.steemexperience. com and it will take you straight to the discord server. Miss you guys & we're hoping to see you all on our trip!!!
I've already signed up for @steemexperience, I just haven't posted anything on there yet. I'll get on there and have a look around and try to start posting :)
Oh good!! Sorry I didn’t even look first to see if you had joined! Well you can always post your links to your posts in the post-promotion room so we can uovote them 🙌🏼
Eye opening article! Hey, thanks for visiting my post earlier, and thanks for the support!
Carry On!
You got a 28.36% upvote from @mitsuko courtesy of @treebuilder!
Thank you for collaborating with me to promote this post as explained at https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/10-ways-to-fund-a-steem-growth-project.
Release the Kraken! You got a 48.83% upvote from @seakraken courtesy of @treebuilder!
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