Will Sock Puppet Deception Sway Your Vote?

-
As the discussions of ballot propositions heat up, it is fun to read the comments sections of news articles. It is a way to explore the rationale for decision making and a gauge of public perception.  It is a way to learn new arguments that may be compelling for or against the initiatives.  It is interesting to see how others attempt to persuade voters to make a decision, one way or another.

But are there deliberate efforts to blanket comments sections and social media with the same cut-and-paste messages?  Is there an effort to do so under different usernames to build the deceptive appearance of swelling support?

A quick Google search suggests this is the case.

For example the comments section of the Stateman article that deliberately deceives readers by making detection of the DNA encoding herbicide resistance to "pesticides", you'll find a comment from "Noah Dazinger" a name attached to someone that shows up frequently in comments sections arguing against transgenic technology.



If you take the content of this post and google it, you can see that it appears on many sites across the web, oftentimes with different usernames.  What you find is that the same sock puppetry is placing the same information in multiple places.

This one is from this site 


Here's one from this site, same cut-n-paste information under a different username.

 

And this one from this site.



And this one from this site.

And this one from this site.

And the same thing on this site, under the name "Farmy"


And on this website she (I'm pretty sure I know who it is) cuts the pasted post into two separate posts.


And there are many, many more.

The work appears to be from the same person that runs GMO Free USA.  A quick check of the usernames reveals many other cases of redundant cut-and-paste web pollution, a single user attempting to create a sense of agreement and consensus where there is none.

My advice.
  • Don't take advice from anyone hiding behind a username.
  • Check what appear to be actual names. 
  • They are often people that do not exist.If they have what appears to be a legitimate identity, check when they started the account.  It usually is within days of posting.

Again, classic activist deception about science.  Will they win your vote this way? 

Popular posts from this blog

Food Babe Visits My University

-
Image
It was 6:30 pm in the lab and I was just thinking about the last things I'd need to get done before I could go home.  Typical night.  Usually I'm riding home about 7 pm, but an email popped up asking me if I was going to go watch the Food Babe.  A click on a link would take me to the note on a UF Dean for Students Good Food Revolution Events website.  Vani Hari would be spreading her corrupt message of bogus science and abject food terrorism here at the University of Florida. Oh joy. There's something that dies inside when you are a faculty member that works hard to teach about food, farming and science, and your own university brings in a crackpot to unravel all of the information you have brought to students. She might have started from honest roots.  Her story says she was duped by an organic yogurt stand (join the club) into buying taro toppings that were filled with artificial, non-organic colors.  She realized that she could use social media to coalesce
Read more

Film Review: The Need to Grow

-
Image
The recurring ads on Facebook pulled at me to watch The Need to Grow , a documentary film about food and farming.  As someone connected with these areas professionally and personally, I thought it would be worth a watch.  Here is a review. First the good things.  The film is nicely shot and well written.  The majority of the work builds on themes such as nutritious diets healthy soils, and efficient energy. Those are the central underlying values of the film, and ones that I wholly endorse.  However, where the film falls apart is in its approaches to achieve those end points.  Two of the "experts" recruited for the film are none other than Jeffrey Smith and Vandana Shiva, two people with little training in science or farming (and no, Vandana Shiva is not a physicist as the film claims).  The narrator is actress Rosario Dawson, who early in the film makes the proclamation, "Agriculture is the most destructive human activity on the planet." It is clear where t
Read more

Coordinated Disinformation Campaigns on Twitter

-
Image
 Today on twitter I kept seeing the same message coming up, over and over again.  What the heck is going on?  Mia's mom wants major restaurant chains to know that she's not exactly up on the science. The link goes to the Center for Food Safety, an organization that really isn't that is much more of an anti-technology club than a food safety concern.  They speak out against any application of biotechnology, such as the release of the disease-suppressing GE mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.  Somehow when CFS launches a twitter campaign they plaster the Tweet Stream with the exact same message over and over again.  My feeling is that they do this to create the impression of a mass consensus, a movement to essentially bully retailers and restaurants. In this case it is the AquaAdvantage Salmon, a fish grown in inland tanks in Indiana.  First invented in 1989, the salmon has had a rocky road to market, despite the magic of growing to market size in half the time and on a fraction
Read more