Reply #35: Tips for spotting "paid" bloggers. Whether they are pr people for private industry [View All]

[McCamy Taylor]

or government employees covering for their boss or ideological moles....

1. They will present themselves as the absolute most common denominator for the forum on which they are posting, so for example here at DU they might be liberalchik or GoreWon2000. Real people posting here are more likely to select a more personal nickname, because their posts are going to prove their progressive political qualifications and they do not have to do it with their name.

2. They will pretend to be just ordinary folks and yet they will have an enormous fund of knowledge about one issue that just defies all logic. Here is a real life example. Years ago at Salon, some poster who called himself something like CaliforniaChik would show up every time the issue of managed care reform was discussed. He wrote like a Valley Girl ("I don't follow politics. I just want to hang out...") and yet he always had something to say about any kind of legislation that would rein in insurance companies that were cherry picking customers, failing to pay providers, denying claims---and it always was advocacy for the insurance companies presented in a way that seemed to favor consumers. That was obviously an insurance company paid mole. No one could understand every single economic issue involving medical managed care and post only about that and no other issue on a message board where so many subjects were discussed. I have seen the same thing during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. There was this one "typical housewife" called Mrs. something (I forget what) who would only post about how misunderstood the Serbians were. So watch out for the expert on just one topic . Real bloggers who are good at one thing also tend to be good at lots of things.

3. Then there are the "character witnesses", the ones who swear that they have inside knowledge or that they know certain people who have done great things for them and if you only know what so and so at X company or in the administration has done, you would change your mind. There was some guy who was a one man fan club for Chairman Martin of the FCC here for a while. Most suspicious thing I have ever seen.

I am not sure why these people allow their blog name to get associated with a certain government official or industry or company. It is the worst thing that they can do. Maybe they think that no one will make an association that quickly. However, the human mind is designed to learn through association. We only have to see a name twice in association with a topic to say "Hey, that poster likes to write messages in support of the nukes are green movement. Wonder if he is paid?" A quick test thread to see if the poster in question is drawn out settles the matter. And since the same people will tend to write several threads in a row about a topic, this increases the chance that the "professional poster" will be caught. Changing names does not help since nothing catches the eye at DU like low post count.