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TEN_YEARS_LATER

                                             April 19, 2011


It appears that some of the marks are starting
to wise up... and it only took them around ten
years to get there.

  "Corporate-Funded Online Astroturfing"
   by George Monbiot, published in the
   April 2011 issue of "Z Magazine",           One of it's primary
   originally published in the "Guardian".     sources is a report
                                               from the "Daily Kos",
                                               which was apparently
                                               echoing the claims of
   "After I last wrote about online            a "cyber-security firm".
   astroturfing, I was contacted by a
   whistleblower who was part of a                 There are limits to
   commercial team employed to infest              the range of people
   Internet forums and comment                     who would be
   threads on behalf of corporate                  persuaded by this.
   clients ... he posed as a
   disinterested member of the
   public.  Or, to be more accurate,
   as a crowd of disinterested
   members of the public.  He used
   70 personas ... "

                                   "The question that has yet to be
                                   satisfactorially answered is:
                                   what should we do to fight these
                                   tactics?"


                                   It's a question.  Whenever I mention
                                   the need to verify identities, someone
                                   points out that whenever web sites
                                   raise the slightest barrier to entry
                                   at all, traffic drops off radically.

                                       We're voting with our clicks
                                       and those votes are for a
                                       complete lack of accountability.

                                       Lie to us, please.





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