One of the principle Netvocates targets? Environment/Energy.

If you've been reading the general forums, you've probably stumbled on the hired trolls story already. Frankly I'm surprised people are surprised -- to me it's been blunt obvious that corporatists and politicos have been into the blogosphere with hired help for years now.

But FWIW, you all here might want to know that us E/E types are one of their primary targets:



...and this guy's blog is in general pretty good, too.

http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2006/06/netvocates-privatised-propaganda.html

Prewarned is prearmed :D

PS - pls. keep this kicked for 24 hours so the regulars can see it...

Yes.

before the primary in May 2006. They were ostensibly advocating for the other candidate, but they were likely just trying to make trouble for Brown.

What's really fun is when they change usernames and then use not just the same arguments, but on occasion that same phrasings and even the same misspellings.

:eyes:

of obvious environmental disasters. The current yap about how ethanol is somehow going to make oversizee SUV's ecofriendly is at the top of my list. It's been repeatedly proved wrong and yet it still comes back.

Maybe we should hire troll patrols?

Maybe we can get an automated system to see who is writing what from what IP address to see if they're OK by those of us who are really in the know about who and who is not a troll.

Or, maybe we could just look at ideas as their offered in posts and decide on their merits or demerits based on their content? Nah, there's nothing conspiratorial in that, is there?

I think the administration here does a pretty good job at keeping the place true to it's intentions. Sometimes fringe stuff shows up here, but what I think is fringe, others may think of us mainstream. I'm not concerned that evil corporations are attaching mind control rays to some of the posts here, so I will like something like nuclear energy.

Of course, I don't live in mortal fear of things big meanie evil types like "corporatist" or worse, "politicos." In the last category, I'm glad that the troll patrol didn't ban Elizabeth Edwards when she posted here, on the grounds she was married to a "politico." I was rather thrilled that she came here, which presumably she did to advance her husband's political prospects. Actually, I had the vague impression - and I could be wrong - that this was a political website and that "politicos" would be welcome. They make a big deal over at DailyKos that John Kerry logs on there - and I don't know that he has never come here either. I would be pleased if he, or my hero Al Gore, did too, even though they are "politicos." Joe Trippi logged on here, and at SmirkingChimp, and he was a paid "politico" at the time, working in Howard Dean's campaign for the Presidency. I was thrilled to hear from him, and he responded to one of my posts.

As for the corporatists, well, I'm a liberal capitalist: I'm not fond of socialism, and I have personally known many people who worked for large corporations who were fine and just people. I think well regulated capitalism is the best economic form in the world. My personal view is that everyone is marketing something, and I call that process, "an exchange of ideas." I log on to the www.world-nuclear.org website, which is run by the nuclear industry, and presumably has paid staff. It is an advocacy group for corporations, including the big bad Westinghouse Nuclear, and Toshiba Nuclear, and probably some mean corporations like Exelon, to be sure. Still I am very thankful for the information there, which I regard as balanced and accurate, even though it is decidedly "corporate" in nature. As a thinking person, I can judge for myself what I do and do not wish to expose myself.

Corporations can do bad things, or they can do good things. I grew up on Long Island and came of age in the 1960's. Many of my neighbors worked for Grumman, a Corporation that made fighter craft that dropped bombs on kids in Vietnam, and strafed farmers and stuff like that. However it also happens that Grumman engineers built the lunar lander for the Apollo missions. Who put men on the moon? No it wasn't John Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon. It was the Grumman Corporation.

I will say this: There are a number of people on this website who freak out and make all kinds of posts about Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity. In fact, if I had never joined SmirkingChimp, where I first wrote on line, I would have never known who these people were. (Obviously I do now, although I still have largely missed the chance to have had more than one sentence that any one of them has ever spoken on any subject.) I have always asked myself when someone is ranting about Ann Coulter, for instance, and what she said on such and such show, why, for love of Pete, they just don't shut the damn TV off?

DU is a special place in that the administrators offer everyone the right to use an "ignore" button. This gives everyone personal editorial powers to exclude anyone of insufficient ideological purity. I've been checking the use of that button out lately. It works great. This will give everyone the power to protect their fragile little ears from "corporatist" and "politicos." I really don't think that everyone here, many - though obviously not all - of the people here being discerning, bright, and literate, really need a special warning about putative professional trolls.

DU is meant to encourage open discussion amongst its Democratic/liberal membership. If trolls appear, this damages the forum (as trolls intend). It isn't clear to me how trolls should be dealt with. I think perhaps it would be good to allow folks to question the sincerity of posters, to accuse them of being trolls; but of course this would result in pointless name-calling.

A better solution? Encourage members to post under their real names. Perhaps two tiers of membership (beyond the current two tiers of member or donor): anonymous or real name. (I notice that Amazon allows reviewers to post under their real names.)

If anyone fears posting under their real names will invite harrassment by strange or hostile people, I might mention my own tiny experience with a public posting, of sorts: Recently, I had a letter to the editor of mine appear in the NY Times, expressing a very personal perspective on a controversial subject. I was a bit worried that I might hear from the mentally ill or the dyspeptic, but I received no such communication whatsover.

Anonymously,

megatherium