Gee, a story from 2016 which disparages a "Democratic PAC", suddenly appears as their headline days

[still_one]

before the midterms

"Someone Paid Thousands Of Foreigners 20 Cents Each To Hide HuffPost’s Negative Coverage Of A Democratic PAC
HuffPost’s story about End Citizens United dropped to the second page of Google search results from right near the top."

A HuffPost article that critically covered a Democratic political action committee abruptly disappeared from the top results in Google search after a contractor hired thousands of workers outside of the U.S. this spring to help suppress negative coverage of the PAC’s activities.
HuffPost’s April 2016 report investigated the tactics of End Citizens United, a political action committee founded by three former staffers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s official organ dedicated to electing Democrats to the House of Representatives. ECU, which worked to elect Democratic candidates who support campaign finance reform, used aggressive and expansive email campaigns to rake in millions of dollars in online donations. The PAC’s pushy tactics angered other nonprofits working toward campaign finance reform, which came to think of the PAC as an arm of the Democratic Party stealing their donors with deceptive email marketing.

Until this spring, HuffPost’s story was the second to come up in a generic Google search for “End Citizens United.” But in the spring of 2018, an anonymous U.S.-based contractor paid at least 3,800 workers in countries around the world through the crowdsourcing firm Microworkers to manipulate what stories would come up when people searched for the PAC in Google. The contractor paid each of the workers 20 cents to click on stories and sites that portrayed the PAC positively, bumping those stories up in Google at the expense of critical coverage. HuffPost’s story dropped from the second place on the first page of the Google search to the second page of search results. "


and they add this line to the article:

"End Citizens United did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment before publication."


Gee, they couldn't wait for the comment before publication?


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/end-citizens-united-microworkers-campaign_us_5bd8b5bce4b0da7bfc14afd0


Then after bringing in all this they imply that nothing illegal may have been done


I wonder who paid Huffington to publish this at this time

[blogslut]

1. I don't think that's how Google search works

Top search results primarily emanate from the number of outside links to a site, not the number of people who visit a site.

[still_one]

2. Most of this is assumption and speculation on their part

[stuffmatters]

3. Thought it was wierd too, also that Huffpo gave story outsized headline status

Not exactly a story of any importance EXCEPT to excite & support Repug conspiracy theories. While the Repug Party is spending hundreds of millions to lie, fear monger and deny voting rights on a level never seen in American modern history, Huffpo looses their shit over ex Obamans trying to manipulate placement on google? There's no small business in America that hasn't tried to figure out how to do this BTW.

[still_one]

4. exactly.