Has Daily Kos been overrun by xenophobic racist trolls?

[Democrats Ramshield]

Last edited Mon Dec 22, 2014, 12:50 AM - Edit history (1)

I wrote the following article at Daily Kos recently. This article was so overran with xenophobic racist trolls, that it was thread-jacked and trolled right off the recommended list.

Though the Daily Kos community is a great bastion of progressive supporters, in recent times it has become substantially overrun by xenophobic racist trolls who seem to, especially after the Michael Brown incident seem to have come out of the woodwork at DKOS. Here's the intro paragraph from that DKOS article which received 128 recommends before being trolled off the recommended list. (If you also have a DKOS account, please consider recommending this diary)

Spiegel quote: It is mostly white men who shoot young African Americans in the service of the state.
(Written by a Caucasian, American expat living in Germany).

THE AMERICAN RACE WAR!!
The German magazine Der Spiegel's English language edition is the equivalent of TIME magazine. As I'm a professional librarian and an American expat living in Germany, I've been asked by librarians often to review articles and I am pleased to do so. What emerges out of this Spiegel magazine series is the ugly history of Ferguson, Missouri and indeed America's past of chattel slavery and sanctioned militarized police state violence against African American males under color of law.

Link to article: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/13/1350195/-Spiegel-quote-It-is-mostly-white-men-who-shoot-young-African-Americans-in-the-service-of-the-state

Although it should be noted this article (above) was part 2 of a 2-part diary series, wherein part 1 is made available at the link below, whereupon it should be said that part 1 was written before the Michael Brown verdict. Therefore part 1 wasn't as heavily trolled, it received 360 reader recommends.

(Part 1) The German Spiegel publishes the truth about history of slavery & bigotry in Ferguson, MO.

Link to article: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/20/1331119/-The-German-Spiegel-publishes-the-truth-about-history-of-slavery-bigotry-in-Ferguson-MO

PS: Finally please note the following, after having received 360 reader recommends, this article on the day of its publication was rated as the #1 diary at Daily Kos out of all diaries published on the jotter's list DKOS rating guide. Yet the DKOS administration for whatever reason took the decision not to promote this diary on its Facebook page. Therefore this article only received in excess of 1,000 Facebook shares to date. Therefore your support is asked to please consider sharing part 1 and part 2 of this series.

Additionally I would like to note my personal disappointment in the DKOS management for not supporting my two part series on racism in America today from the perspective of an American expat reporting from Germany, in a librarian's review of mainstream European media sources as a work in professional journalism. The American progressive community is well served to consider the diversity of the international community on matters of the crisis in Ferguson. The world is speaking to America, shouldn't we extend ourselves to listen in a way that makes sense and adds value to our discourse on the issue of contemporary and historic American racism, which seems to be overwhelmingly supported by hate radio and right wing rabid trolls, who seem to haunt and stalk progressive bloggers with little or no protection from the administration of various blog sites.

[annabanana]

1. Troll ratio is directly proportional to

post effectiveness.

[Democrats Ramshield]

2. Anna you're absolutely right

Only articles that are effective at getting the progressive message out advocating tolerance seems to get the attention of right wing hate trolls, especially if they're in disguise.

[tosoris]

3. i hate dkos! i.e. great orange satan. DU is a much better place. people should quit dkos

trolls there are completely out of control. markos the site owner doesn't care.

lots of those trolls are paid professional trolls.

if you call someone there a paid professional troll you can automatically be banned at dkos.

i guess it must be because markos is using his own paid trolls to crawl on there. dkos has gotten too big. too ugly. too stupid. do yourself a favor. cancel your dkos account. forget about dailykos the great orange satan. you're much better off at DU. i'm new here and i love the place already!

xenophobic right wing trolls are a fact of life everywhere just like you said. difference is they're actually encouraged at dkos and that has be sick for a so called progressive website. how stupid can you get. there is very little that is good which happens over at dkos anymore. the site now has millions of registered accounts unmanageable and out of control. the site admins at dkos just don't want to pay enough admins to do the job properly; its obvious even tho dkos has made markos a millionaire he doesn't want to invest in hiring admins to do the work; self policing by its members in the community is a failure.

that place is full of wingnut trolls and their sock puppet armies. its getting out of control. they lurk in the shadows and rob people of their good reading experience.

if you wanna get trolled to death go to dkos

[monmouth4]

4. Me thinks you protest waaaay too much....n/t

[tosoris]

5. me thinks you speak like a loyal kossack lifetime subscription owner

[monmouth4]

6. Thank you.....

[pangaia]

22. Haven't been around long, have you.

Keep at it. You'll get it.

[Enthusiast]

7. Me too.

[RiverLover]

9. Were you banned from there recently or something?

[tosoris]

14. i'm not banned from dkos

i think its sad its been overrun by these paid troll gangs.
i'm really sick and heartbroken about it. its gotten so bad there its no longer fun being on their boards. i have to accept it will never change. we're not even allowed to talk about it on dkos because its considered a banable offense to call somebody a paid troll. how stupid is that for free speech?

i'm sure many others feel the same way i do. situation there is hopeless man. its hopeless. i gave up. i'm happy to have found a new home at DU. i can't say enough good about the DU community after being a long time lurker here.

[RiverLover]

16. Oh good, and we're happy to have you here!!

Thanks for sharing your experience at dkos. I just read the blogs & don't skim down far in the comments usually. Sounds like that's a good thing.

[tosoris]

19. tanks for the welcome

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. You ought to know that you shouldn't call people paid trolls here either

in case your lurking hasn't picked it up. It's just that you seem to put a lot of emphasis on your wish to call people paid trolls. Most juries will vote to hid a post that attacks another member like that. It's not a matter of 'free speech' - these websites are not designed to be places where you can make baseless accusations about other people when they disagree with you. They are communities, where we treat each other with respect.

[tosoris]

26. my comment was general

as for annettek at dkos she ain't a member of DU community at least not under that screenname. people should be free to speak their minds and have an honest openn discussion about paid troll activity at other left wing sites outside of DU where logically DU rules can't apply to non-DU members at non-DU sites.

i get i'm a new guy here but this much seems crystal clear even to me.
as for saying things about members of the DU community following under DU site moderation rules; thanks for the heads up about that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. The way you put it, it looked like you wanted to say specific members are paid trolls

You said "if you call someone there a paid professional troll you can automatically be banned at dkos". You seem to think that is unreasonable, when it's perfectly reasonable. I got the impression you wanted to be able to call people here paid trolls too.

If your purpose is just to moan about 'paid professional trolls' in general, then no-one will stop you. It'd be a miracle if anyone ever put forward any evidence for that tired old whine, which many people make when they're pissed off that people are disagreeing with them.

[tosoris]

34. i think you're reading something into my remarks which isnt there

Well I can't be held responsible for you reading something into my remarks that I never put there. I just got to DU and as I'm new here I can't have any informed opinion of what happens here on the subject matter you raise or anything else. Nor do I have any interest in discussing any issue relating to the DU community as I'm new here and don't have any idea. I am sorry I can't participate in that discussion, because I can't have any informed opinion as a new arrival, but if you'd like to discuss with me what my experience was at DKos being exposed to the work of paid trolls, I'd be more than glad to discuss that with you. I'd have to ask what your experience has been at DKos with paid trolls. You don't seem to think they exist there is that right? Your characterization of a tired old whine seems to be a bit over the top as they say in jolly old England. That's what you folks say there, where you're from isn't it over the top. As I understand it DKos is the largest progressive web site in the world with a couple million registered accounts. I think under those circumstances to suggest that people who've been there for a long time like myself have experience with paid trolls isn't the stuff of tin foil hats at all, nor is it a tired old whine as you put it. I think the discussion here is about progressive online communities outside of DU being infected with paid trolls. Clearly as you say no one will stop me from participating in that discussion and that information is welcome. Thanks. I hope we can avoid future thread drift. Look forward to your reply as to your experience with paid trolls at DKos.

[Democrats Ramshield]

35. I can't speak for Muriel but I think Muriel might of misunderstood.

Muriel will correct me if I'm wrong. Muriel is a more experienced member in this forum. As a new person here my reading is Muriel was trying to help you and some of our newer members reading this thread to understand this isn't a free speech zone to help keep the new members here straight. Although I can accept for sure that coming from the Daily Kos or the Nation or the Wall Street Journal, people would feel shell shocked but DU is a much nicer community. I think our new members have found a great home here with a bunch of really nice people who are always willing to extend themselves to help new members out so you don't have any problems here. Maybe she didn't agree with everything you said but hey, wouldn't it be boring if we all agreed on everything.

I think being able to have polite disagreements adds value to our experience here.

I think you will find the British have a great sense of humor about everything except when it comes to the football rivalry between Arsenal and Man Utd. That is on a different page altogether. (humor)

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. People on all kinds of websites put criticism down to 'paid trolls', without evidence

It's generally an indication they regard themselves as so important that someone has to be paid to disagree with them, which is very silly.

There are situations where it's feasible that someone is paid to post somewhere - fake endorsements of products, for instance, where there is a profit to be made. It might be believable that in a close situation where the decisions of the readers of a site can make a bit of a difference, one faction might pay people to post a certain opinion (or, more likely, to encourage people already on their side to post, without payment). On a partisan site like DKos or DU, that's pretty much limited to Democratic primaries (and the obvious product spamming that gets quickly deleted). But you're not going to be able to tell the difference between genuine enthusiasm for a candidate (or denigration of one) and fake opinions that are paid for. No-one ever tries to show the analysis they've done to tell the difference, anyway. They just assert that people from another faction are 'paid'.

That someone would pay to get people to disagree with Democrats Ramshield's diary entry (a pompous claim that Europeans are far more educated than Americans, and can tell Americans everything they should do about race relations) is ridiculous.

It's a 'tired old whine' because it turns up on all kinds of sites where people have highly inflated opinions of themselves. It's common enough here.

[tosoris]

40. I'm not interested in discussing matters regarding DU

No one has posted about DU here. Please stop taking our discussion off thread.

As for people being paid to give astro turf opinions it happens in marketing all the time in addition to political stuff. i just typed in google "paid trolls' there is a ton of articles about it so for something that doesn't exist it seems to be commonly written about. How much money they make i don't know. It is not a career I would ever be interested in.

https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=48aVVIPuEYH9caf2gMAF&gws_rd=ssl,cr&fg=1#q=paid+trolls


Seems to be the "tired old whine" is paid trolls are like Big Foot. You hear about him but you never seen him. As for "a pompous claim that Europeans are far more educated than Americans" ....uhh I thought you were a European, Aren't you in England? Do you disagree with the various studies out there that say America is behind at grade levels in our public school system or can you give a link to the contrary. Look I don't want to get deep into that issue because I don't want to help you keep taking our discussion off thread. The info I have is from not only are we behind western europe in our schools; we're behind Japan, South Korea, Singapore etc.

U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248329823/u-s-high-school-students-slide-in-math-reading-science
"In mathematics, 29 nations and other jurisdictions outperformed the United States by a statistically significant margin, up from 23 three years ago," reports Education Week. "In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009."

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. The thread title includes "other progressive blog sites"; that describes DU

You wrote "DU is a much better place ... you're much better off at DU. i'm new here and i love the place already! ...i'm happy to have found a new home at DU. i can't say enough good about the DU community after being a long time lurker here. ". For you to suddenly claim that "No one has posted about DU here" is ridiculous. You yourself started this sub-thread by posting about DU.

Just because someone, somewhere, gets paid to say something on the web, it doesn't mean that people who disagree with DR are paid trolls. I see that recently, DR put up a diary on DKos that included a video from a RW 9/11 truther organisation with some very dubious views - and they linked to a Southern Poverty Law Center page for background on the organisation. Rather than say "oops, OK, ignore that video", DR went on a rant about how that person was a 'troll'. Linking to an SPLC page about a source is always a good thing. It looks like DR's immediate response to criticism is to cry 'troll!!!!'.

DR's claim is that Europeans know more about American history than Americans do, and this makes them better liberals who can point out where Americans are going wrong in race relations. This is condescending claptrap, and when people pointed out Europe has plenty of racism problems of its own, DR never tried to engage that. And it's pompous because DR keeps on going on about how many recs he's got, and dismissing people who don't write as many diaries - an attitude he also shows in this OP.

Math, reading and science scores do not tell us anything about knowledge of history.

[tosoris]

46. As you keep taking us off thread i wont respond further. i'm not interested in communcating w/ you

Wow I had no idea you were involved in some kind of a DKos food fight with DR and/or whoever about whatever. Please don't mistake me with someone who is remotely interested in anything else you have to say. I won't be communicating with you further on this thread or any other thread. I left DKos for DU because I think it's a nicer community here. I don't have the remote interest in whatever it is so please don't address future remarks to me because we're done. You've completely repeatedly again and again taken us off thread. I don't think anyone else is responding to you. As for me I'm done. I won't any respond further because this with you now has turned into something else that has nothing to do with this thread.

[muriel_volestrangler]

49. All I just did was point out what you had been saying in this thread

and then I addressed DR's diaries on DKos and trolls - which are the topic of this thread. How can you possibly say I'm 'taking us off thread'?

[tosoris]

55. Please respect my request not to address any further posts to me

Im here at DU trying to help build the DU community. I'm not remotely interested in whatever past dkos food fights existed.

I am not trying to be rude to you. I just politely want to ask you to respect the fact I will not respond further to you. Be honest I'm amazed at how good of a community DU is and frankly ashamed that I didnt make the efforts to discover DU earlier. Now I have I'm glad to be here and I don't want to get on the wrong foot with anybody. I honestly would like to ask you to please not address further posts to me because I won't be responding.

Please respect that decision. I see you've made lots of posts here and I assume youve tried to do a lot to build up the DU community therefore you've likely invested a lot of time and effort. That has made it possible for people like me to have this place to come to. I respect that work you guys have done. You people have done a really excellent job building up the DU community. I shall definitely be recommending to all my friends at dkos to consider moving to DU because it's a lot better here. I in the future want to invest my time energy and money to build up the DU community. I am not interested in helping millionaire Markos get still richer. Im a new member and I don't want to offend you or anyone else, but I don't want to communicate with you further on your old dkos food fights that dont even involve me with whatever/whoever you may or may not be invested in and/or advocating for. I dont care. Honestly please I dont want to know I'm just plainly not interested.

Please respect I will not respond further to you. Thank you.

[uppityperson]

59. asking to be ignored and saying you will ignore a duer is sure the way to "build community"

Golly!

[icymist]

74. +1,000

[Agschmid]

56. Hopefully someone is paying you to troll us here...

Otherwise the value proposition seems pretty weak.

[uppityperson]

60. it is something.

[uppityperson]

45. you aren't interested in learning about du, and no one has posted about du here on du?

Informing a new poster about what is generally allowed on this website seems an OK thing to do.

Welcome to du.

[tosoris]

50. thanks for the warm welcoming

I appreciate as a new member here getting some pointers and help from existing members.

I can see already this is a far kinder community than dkos ever was. In way it kind of makes me mad I didnt come to DU sooner. I'm glad to be here now. Glad to be making new friends

I'm glad to be making an opportunity to finally vent about how negative my experience was at dkos. i'll be recommending to all my friends at dkos to come over to DU. I have lurked at DU for a couple of months. It seems the level here of personal engagement is great. I must say I really like it here. I think if more people at dkos knew what it was really like here, there would be a lot more people like me that would move from dkos to DU. I must say I was never a big fan of Markos. To be honest i didnt know much about the fella but now I've learned more about him, I feel I don't want to contribute to making millionaire Markos even richer. I want to instead help support and build up the DU community.

I think it's a much better investment of my efforts and time and money. like I say i'm sorry I didnt learn about DU existence earlier but I'm glad to be here now. i have lots of respect for the work it took to build the DU community. You guys did an excellent job I have to say

[Gman]

27. I usually just look and see when they joined

When I see someone bashing to get an idea of what's up. It's usually shortly afterwards that I don't see them anymore.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

52. I hate to tell ya...

but after you've been here a while, you'll notice the exact same ideological divides being fought out. Whichever side you were on there, exists here, and so does the counterpart faction for the side you thought were trollish.

Plus, the vast majority of 'registered accounts' over there were created during a yearlong spam account creation episode, and are either unused, already banned, or soon to be banned after their first comment or two. If there are 25k or so 'active' users (and maybe 2k REALLY active users) that's probably more realistic.

[90-percent]

8. The very concept of paid political trolls

The very concept is so anti-democracy and so totally unfair. An internet message board is a form of the best of democracy; spirited and informed public debate by average citizens. To strive to influence that discussion to something favored by your corporate overlords is despicable.

Have any of these trolls had enough and blown the whistle on their efforts simply as a result of having something of a conscience left?

Most boomers like myself grew up with posters of rock stars, race cars or girls. These trolls must have had their little teenage bedroom walls plastered with posters of Josef Goebbels!

-90% Jimmy

[DFW]

10. The most blatant group I've seen is at the Washington Post

Always the same scum, repeating the same hate stuff, some of it from Fox, some from National Hate Radio.

They use several names, or versions thereof, and they must spend all day at this because any time I pop in there to their comments section, they are all there, all the time, spewing the same crap. It is so blatant that this is a paid "professional" team, it is both disgusting and boring at the same time. There must a floor at Fox Noise or the RNC for sickos who do nothing else all day.

[Democrats Ramshield]

12. To DFW - Well said brother

The problem is the silent majority of progressives have been sleeping through the paid troll attacks for too long. I say it's time to wake up the sleeping giant and defend our progressive values and progressive bloggers everywhere. We have to do that because as we can see hate never takes a holiday.

[OrwellwasRight]

70. And the WaPo

Doesn't do anything about it. I've complained to them about the ignorance and hate they let proliferate on their boards -- never gotten a response. It's shameful.

[DFW]

72. One does get the impression their new management isn't opposed to its offensive "guests."

Quite the contrary, Much as it disgusts me as well.

[Jim Beard]

75. Better watch out

Jeff Bezos will send a drone to attack you.

[DFW]

78. He had better have one hell of a GPS system and a LOT of drones to spare

I'm in a different country every day for work, take a lot of planes and hi-speed ICE and Thalys trains.

[Democrats Ramshield]

11. To 90-percent - Great post

I'm a Progressive Hippie just like you are. To that end let me please invite you and the other readers here to like our Facebook community page for Progressive Hippies, if you would please.

Facebook community page link https://www.facebook.com/pages/Progressive-Hippies/341828275978781


----
Also I wrote an article about the Progressive Hippie community on Facebook which for interested readers may be viewed at this link below. Your Facebook shares and likes are very much appreciated and season greetings to one and all.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/29/1348191/-The-dirty-f-king-hippies-were-right-about-the-Wall-Street-suit-and-tie-generation

[librechik]

32. I would love it if this became a real political party.

give the Teahadists a run for their money. Visit Teapartiy events and stick daisies in their guns!

[TRoN33]

13. I know AnnetteK in Disq-operated comment sections across the sites.

This commenter is well known for having multiple accounts to make it looks like right wing outnumbers the left. AnnetteK has been passed around in progressive commenters to warn about this certain troll. Personally I don't think AnnetteK is girl anyways.

[tosoris]

18. tron33 is correct. annettek is a paid troll

you're right about annettek man thats for sure. shes a hated rightwing dkos troll and her multiple accounts of sock puppet armies are the stuff of legends and they're every where.

shes definitely a rightwing paid troll. she crawls onto left wing sites to do some dirty work. i too agree. i dont think annettek is a female either. i think annettek is probably the worse rightwing troll i have ever seen. whoever they are; theyre scary. approach with extreme caution. . . annettek is not for the faint heart. annettek is a serious hater.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

54. She might be 'hated' by some, but she's also got 5 bar mojo on DK

and hasn't been banned, so she obviously fits in with some group or other, and is careful enough not to get herself HR'd enough to degrade her mojo.

[tosoris]

71. don't know about AnnetteK's case. Ordinarily I'd say your right but its a troll we're talking of

They probably are going to have fellow trolls and their sock puppet armies give them all their mojo at dkos back quick. I have seen dkos trolls lose a bar or two of mojo by being HR'd. Next time I saw them they had all their mojo back. Seems odd. Seems hopeless unless you can out the troll into abandoning their account which is never a problem for the dkos trolls because they always got multiple accounts. It pretty much seems hopeless unless the admins get into it. Why would they do that on the word of diarist nobody? it's hopeless man. That is another reason why i gave up on dkos. Thinkin' about it gives me a headache. Now i get up in the morning; have my coffee and i don't miss checking dkos anymore. I got better things to do with my time. that part of my life is done. I feel great because it's behind me and I'm free of it.

[Derek V]

15. No

I think you're talking about a place called the United States.

[RandiFan1290]

17. Training Teabagging Activists In Guerilla Internet Tactics

[RiverLover]

25. Great. Koch's teaparty teaching invading the "blogosphere'

I'm back to being SERIOUSLY offended when people compare populist progressives to their brand of sick & twisted populism.

[Bobbie Jo]

68. Oh absolutely.

SERIOUSLY.

[octoberlib]

20. Lee Fang wrote an article

about paid right wing trolls for the the Nation. Most of them are employed by conservative think tanks . They have teams of people that do nothing but scour the Internet all day. They go so far as to leave bad reviews on liberal leaning books and movies at Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes. The Nation is also besieged with them.

[Democrats Ramshield]

21. Octoberlib - I couldn't possibly agree with you more

Particularly as a progressive blogger I have been their victim. Also I agree with your characterization over at what has happened over at the Nation. I think it's horrible, it really is. It seems to be a right wing thing, as if you get bonus points for winning ugly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Since you strangely didn't give the link on Kos to the original article, here it is:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/residents-of-ferguson-struggle-with-daily-racism-a-987986.html

[Democrats Ramshield]

28. To muriel thanks for the link Also The link to the Spiegel article is at the bottom of my diaries

in part 1 and part 2 both already. The reason I put the links to the full Spiegel articles at the end of my diaries is to encourage people to please finish reading my review article in it's entirety before giving a link to send them off to read the full Spiegel article that I've just reviewed as a matter of chronology. This reflects my training as a librarian when undertaking reviews. I wanted to extend myself to provide a brief explanation of that for anyone who wasn't familiar with my writing style and to apologize for any confusion this may have caused.


Here's the link to the full Spiegel article (part 2) for anyone that is interested who hasn't read part 2 of my article to the end. The Spiegel article is entitled: "Racial Divide: The Tragedy of America's First Black President"

Also for people who aren't familiar with the Spiegel, I'd like to point out it is the equivalent of TIME magazine in the European Union, in it's award winning English language translation. Spiegel does the type of investigative journalism that use to be common place in the American press and traditional media. So it is I invite people to give the Spiegel quite a close read as their time and interest may permit, as I think getting an international point of view would add value to any readers perspective. Finally here's a link to part 1 again which Muriel provided earlier with the suggestion that in keeping with chronology it may be helpful to consider reading this Spiegel part 1 of the series first before reading The Tragedy of America's first black President as part 2 to reflect the order the two articles in series were published in.

Part 1 from the Spiegel, entitled "Residents of Ferguson Struggle with Daily Racism 'We're Like Animals To Them': An American City's Daily Racism"

(PS: To muriel thanks for the assist)

[nichomachus]

30. Funny you should ask

I just emailed a friend this same question about another progressive site. I frequent Truthdig. It ied to have a lot of civil and worthwhile discussion. Now it seems to be populated by a large number of people who are there to fling poo or to muddy the water.

No matter who writes an article, there are several people who will jump in to trash the author. Eventually, the discussion turns into a flame fest.

I suspect there is a group of Koch-sponsored trolls whose job is to go to progressive sites and poison the well.

[Democrats Ramshield]

31. A lot of people are intimidated at being flash mobbed and cyber stalked by trolls

Again, I couldn't agree more. It's an epidemic across the internet.

The change that you've noted is really impossible not to notice simply because it really and truly and honestly is everywhere all the time. It really doesn't make any difference what the site is or who the author is, or what they're writing about or how reasonable the thesis of their article is. It's the same, it's an organized paid troll effort that you're hit with because it's instant, it's perennial and it's co-ordinated. So these paid trolls and their sock puppets are definitely out there to deal pain to the progressive online community because what will happen is that you won't be able to enjoy your posting experience anymore. You will be cyber flash mobbed by paid trolls all the time and a lot of people are afraid of paid trolls because they become afraid and intimidated by cyber stalking. That makes the progressive movement less organized on election day and beyond. It makes us weaker everywhere all the time, on every subject, in every election and in every jurisdiction.

The problem isn't being addressed. In fact it isn't really being discussed openly. People everywhere are fed up with this. I say it's time for a change and if you think so as well, I encourage you to post on this thread and give us your two cents worth because we need to hear from you. Obviously in keeping with previous posts this is a generalized discussion of what happens on the Internet, and in no way is to infer what happens at DU.

[daredtowork]

39. This is an ancient problem for women who make pro-feminist comments

Troll flash-mobbing has been used to chase women off of Reddit, Wikipedia, and a host of other sites that allow for "crowd-sourced" moderation.

[Nye Bevan]

33. Where are all of these "paid troll" jobs advertised, anyway?

And do they pay by the hour, by the word, or by how many people you piss off?

[Agschmid]

57. I'm paid by the number of times I get mentioned in ATA...

Lately I am broke.

[True Blue Door]

36. There are all sorts of "troll gangs" over there that selectively knock off users who

piss them off. I got thrown out for pissing off some libertarians and, I think, some hyper-PC assholes who couldn't handle the outrageous statement that Islamic fundamentalism is illiberal. Lot of good people over there, but Markos is now a "bidnessman" who focuses on "the big picture."

[daredtowork]

38. The Internet is Saturated with Rightwing Trolls

Even my small city newspaper comment section is daily bombarded with their "viewpoint". I'm convinced that at least a portion of them are paid, like China's "water armies". Hell, some of them might even be FROM China (lower pay rate). At any rate, there is a dedicated effort to prevent the Internet from becoming a "voice of the people" by washing out any Signal with a lot of Noise. If a popular consensus can't be formed online/then the people remain divided, as they are in the real world.

As for Kos, I'm extremely disillusioned with him. He lives in my city - in fact he lives in my Council district. He is pro-property and is vocal about trying to get the left progressives off the Council. He promoted the pro-business law against people sitting on sidewalks (except all the trendy hipsters who get to sit around when they eat their artisan pizza, of course) - and he made the B.S. claim right on Daily Kos that it was because his wife felt scared walking around the city (I've lived here over 25 years and have never felt nervous walking downtown at night) - and he made several dehumanizing statements about the homeless that showed he had a stereotyped view rather than an educated view that is required by the complex situation here. Markos seems to be Third Way in his personal views, at least at the local level.

By the way, I also abandoned Daily Kos a few years ago because people were trolling my diaries about welfare. They ought to give diary-writers the power to mute comments to their own diaries there unless the diary is promoted to "Recommended" level. Then, if it's treated as an article, it should be open to public comment, with standard moderation.

[tosoris]

41. Wow you live in the same city Markos does

Sounds like he's a complete hypocrite. I'm so glad to be off dkos. I wouldn't want to drive 5 cents worth of internet traffic to enrich hypocrite millionaire markos.

Have you ever seen the house Markos lives in or seen his neighborhood? because from what i heard and from what i've seen on the web there would no homeless people in his clean squeaky neighborhood because those properties are all worth millions $$$. is it really true? DKos has made Markos a multimillionaire. He living in the world of the 1% whereas all the diarists making him rich aren't just working for slave wages, they're working for free. How sad is that?

I feel so bad for the homeless people in your town with somebody like millionaire Markos on their ass. World is unfair enough without hypocrites in it. Him not wanting the left progressives in the council is something I hadn't heard before. How interesting. Its really great to hear from somebody like yourself from the grassroots.

[daredtowork]

47. I haven't seen his house

I don't stalk him!

I just know he lives in my neighborhood from seeing his family in local diners and seeing him discus our district Council Member as his Council Member. I suspect he lives "up hill" from me (in a wealthier area). I also used to pass by the Kos offices that were right next to the low income pharmacy I use a lot, so I may have seen a lot of Kossacks over the years, though I wouldn't be able to put names to faces.

I agree Kos is a hypocrite, and he does run a media empire. Daily Kos is only a small part of it.

The very idea he could stereotype the homeless in Berkeley as out-of-towners who come in for a lifestyle lark (a rightwing meme!) when Berkeley is ground zero for the Disability Rights Movement and has a large population on fixed incomes because of disability - instantly impoverished by tech-driven inflation - makes me nauseous. What does it take to get a multimillionaire to just walk out doors, lift his head up, and look around?

[Democrats Ramshield]

42. To daredtowork - This is truly interesting

Just curious what city does Markos live in? I don't even know. I have to say I was interested to read your remarks.

[daredtowork]

44. Berkeley

I don't know him personally, so if he has moved out of my district recently, I wouldn't know that. It just ticks me off that he runs a notoriously progressive blog, lives in one of the most progressive cities in the U.S., lives in a district of that city with a progressive Council Member (which Kos wants to push off the Council along with all the other "lefties&quot - and he's actually on board with the forces that are creating chaos in the lives of the poor, displacing everyone who isn't lucky enough to work in the tech industry, and that has reduced the black population from 30% to 10% in recent years.

Here is Kos's disqus profile. If you want to follow is local politics, scroll down to where it says "Berkeleyside":
https://disqus.com/by/markosmoulitsaszuniga/

Here is the post I wrote a couple months ago where I grouched on this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10408275

[Jim Beard]

79. Thanks for the links

I am not a daily visitor to Kos, I have noticed a difference in the political priorities of the posters on Kos. I am relieved to know it wasn't just me.

[reddread]

77. ever seen a paid commentors home page?

http://www.acquisition-partners.com/

John Quiring in Fresno posted relentlessly (and still does under his actual FB ID) as ASKMRSMITH
on the Bee Discus feature in unyielding support of intitiatives that Mayor Swearengin backed,
besides an omnipresence on homeless issues with a monotonous liability insurance smackdown to compassionate
folks shocked by the city of Fresno's bulldozing of homeless encampments.
His last major assignment was pushing the privitzation of residential trash pickup, Measure G.
Which went down to defeat.
He expressed relief that one was over.

Without realizing some people are contracting their "services"
the one note energizer bunny talking point posts are quite puzzling.
Upon realizing that this person was in the business, it was all money, not fun or personal interest.
and completely dishonest.

[Quantess]

48. It depends on how you define "troll".

A fairly mainstream viewpoint does not necessarily equal "troll". Merely saying that they support the court's decisions does not equal troll. It depends on what else they write before labeling them a troll.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

51. You might want to remove that last line.

Troll types over at DK aren't above pulling in things you write at sites other than DK to complain and get you in trouble with DK admin, and would probably leap at the chance to get another leftist banned if they whine hard enough.

[tosoris]

63. Hey Erich I wondered what happened to you

I read your stuff. your last diary. All I say is wow dude. Really. It choked me up because I feel exactly the same way you do. 100 % brother. I went thru exactly the same thing. I know just how you feel and because what you wrote was so moving to me I want to share it by passing a link below 'cause what you said is exactly how I feel today.

What you wrote was beautiful, man because it was honest. I feel used and betrayed exactly the same way you do. This is why I'm at DU now. What you said was beautiful man 'cause nobody could say it better in describing the pain of knowing you've been used. The pain of knowing you've been betrayed. The shame you feel at feeling so stupid that you were taken in for so long until reality comes in .You just can't hide anymore. You just gotta give up and move on 'cause its the only honest thing left you can do.

The thing that hurts the most is when you've left and nobody knows you're gone. You realize it was basically all for nothin'. The betrayal wasn't the worst pain for me. For me millionaire Markos was never the reason i was there. It was the people and it was the fact I wanted to help. This is Erich's diary below . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/12/1284047/-GBCW-Why-I-m-no-longer-here

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

66. I mostly wound up here.

A couple of staff types I respect asked me not to GBCW, which is why I flipped it from 'GBCW' to 'absent', but in the half year or so since I wrote that, I think I've maybe posted 3-4 comments tops over at DK in fundraising type diaries. I think forums can be a decent way to spread ideas, but while I originally started posting on DK for the politics, I ended up being there mainly for the community. I still communicate offsite with the Native American Netroots crowd, and try to check in, and occasionally chip in on DK fundraisers for those in need, but don't read DK daily like I used to.

[Jim Beard]

53. I have found myself rather tired of the chnge at KOS.

I really haven't posted there much since Marcoss hand pick second man, Armando was strongly critical of WalMart. He was a real turd and of course many others disliked him. We later learned he was an attorney for Walmart. I really don't care for the site anymore. Not much useable information plus having to read way down the article to find out the subject. Its the Yuppie boards.

Not many real financial progressives there or anywhere else. I don't see proposals on how we we can change anything, just complain and bellyache at what the republicans are doing. What are WE doing?

[daredtowork]

58. Wait what - Armando is 2nd in Command at Daily Kos?

Way back at the origins of Daily Kos, he was the perpetual Devil's Advocate - I thought from the conservative side (I didn't read to find out). And for a a while I thought he ran a blog called "Crossed Swords" where conservative/progressive viewpoints could meet.

If Armando is charge, wouldn't that make DKos officially a Faux Progressive site?

Next we will find out that there's Koch funding somewhere in the mix...

[Jim Beard]

61. Whatever, His response was smartalechy

and he was removed. After that I just lost interest in Kos. He was moderator or whatever at that time and I know there were many other people in addition to me that were very happy to see him go. It was a long time ago. His funding comes from whoever gives him the most money. That isn't hard to figure out.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

62. It's also interesting that so many people blatantly accused you of having sockpuppets

in the comments under that thread. Used to be that you either had to provide proof of such accusations, or face getting banned. But an awful lot of the centrist faction types went there with no apparent worries about getting kicked offsite. Did admin change the policy, so that you're now free to accuse people of being or having sockpuppets without getting banned if you can't show that they actually are?

[RiverLover]

64. What's a sockpuppet?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

65. At DK, most people are only allowed to write under a single account at a time.

(There are a few exceptions for people who write 'as themselves' and also as part of a joint account such as the 'Black Kos' account.)

A 'sock puppet' is thus someone who hides who they are while writing under multiple different user ids with multiple accounts. Usually the folks doing so are doing it so they can all 'like' or 'dislike' the same other posters or pieces of writing, thus artificially inflating sentiment for or against a given point of view.

So having sock puppets is both forbidden, and quite an insult, which is why you always used to have some sort of proof when you called some specific user one, or else get in trouble.

[RiverLover]

69. Thanks Erich. There's this whole alter-universe in cyberland. Such drama!

And it sounds really weird. LOL

Very good explanation though, thanks for taking the time!!

[tosoris]

67. I don't know what happened and I don't have a dog in that fight

I have no idea what happened to DR. Let me tell you something interesting I've seen. I've seen trolls use their sock puppets to take people off the rec list. Let's say you have a diary the troll will help you get on the rec list by getting their socks to rec you because they don't like the diary you're competing against. Then later when the troll wants to turn on you the troll accuses you of getting on the rec list with sock puppets. It's a marriage made in heaven for the trolls. The diarists in question never have any idea. Is that what happened to DR I have no clue. I don't have a dog in that fight. I want to forget all about the DKos fun and games. But these trolls will destroy progressive diarists anyway they can. That is what I do know because I've seen it now so many times. I reckon DR will be finished at the DKos he can't survive this. To Markos he is just another diarist nobody. He has a whole pool of them and they'll forget him the same way they forgot you and I because we're all invisible to the people there and millionaire Markos. All of us just got used. It's sad and it's true and it's the sad truth.

[tosoris]

73. I found this old craigslist thing on the net

I dunno if its real or not or what. I want to share it to get some feedback and discussion 'cause I'm not really sure what to make of it. It's a couple years old from 2011. It seems to be the kind of thing we were talkin' about in our discussion. Comments please. Thx folks.

It was attached to this story I found.

[Jim Beard]

76. The people they hired

found a good home on the article comments section of Yahoo. Not Yahoo boards but the comments on the article in Yahoo News.