
Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook - kushti
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/21/hillary-pac-spends-1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook.html
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6stringmerc
"It's not propaganda when we do it!" \- Every Politician, Ever

Kidding aside, I'm not a fan of astro-turf avenues of engagement. There's no
point 'discussing' with a shill. Much like there's no reasoning with a hungry,
rabid dog when you're holding a delcious cut of steak. Though the analogy may
be flawed, it is worth considering how intensely votes are courted, generally
speaking.

~~~
oh_sigh
Propaganda is, by definition, anything which promotes or publicizes a
political cause or POV. Are you really against that? Or are you just afraid of
the word "propaganda"?

~~~
6stringmerc
It's a loaded term to insinuate that the cause or POV is using less-than-
transparent mechanisms to garner a desired reaction. I've got no problem with
political discourse, or even espousing controversial ideological proposals.
That's all natural and healthy.

What I dislike is using tactics to frame one side of a narrative as impervious
to criticism, which in this case, seems to be the desired outcome from the
entity providing $$$.

~~~
oh_sigh
How would it be impervious to criticism? It seems like these people are going
around looking for statements that are incorrect about her and correcting
them.

~~~
6stringmerc
They are being paid to "correct" them by the person who has a vested interest
in how the "corrections" portray the facts, linguistically. Let's toss out a
hypothetical example:

Fact: Hillary Clinton is being investigated regarding her use of a private
email server.

Fact via "Correction": Republicans have instigated an investigation into
Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for political gain.

See what I'm alluding to? If not, then okay, but I don't think I can get much
more granular.

~~~
tamana
Can you give a non-hypothetical example?

~~~
6stringmerc
Not at this time; apparently the operation is just getting started according
to this documentation.

If the group does their job well, then - partially kidding here - there should
be a representative coming by relatively soon to correct my perception of what
the group is motivated to do and how it looks in real life.

As in, the burden of transparency isn't on my suspicion, but rather in their
actions. To correct my suspicion, they should have no trouble showing all the
cases of non-propaganda-resembling "corrections" they've performed. Then
there'd be no reason for a person like me to suspect gamesmanship in the
endeavor.

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erpellan
I must now assume that any comment on this page of the 'so what?' or 'everyone
does it' variety or any downplaying whatsoever is in fact a paid shill. That
includes any disagreements with this statement :)

~~~
superobserver
You might not be far from the mark, actually. The funny thing about at least
one Hillary supporter that I know is how vocal they are about all other
politicians being just as bad as, if not worse than, HRC, and that ergo, HRC
is no worse than anyone else, and ergo HRC is as equally viable as anyone
else. It's quite a distorted Weltanshauung.

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snowwrestler
In case anyone wants to read the actual press release, which is referenced but
not linked from the article:

[http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-
of-...](http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-of-correct-
the-record/)

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r-w
This may give her a stronger online presence in a naïve sense, but it also
undermines all of her genuine supporters. Now every Hillary supporter on the
Internet looks like they’re being paid off.

Really makes you wonder what kind of administration she’d run. Seems like
money always turns up wherever she turns up; the direction of causality is up
to your imagination.

~~~
raddad
Don't politicians pretty much buy their votes? Only difference is where the
money comes from and how they spend it. I haven't looked into it, but I wonder
what the price for a vote is these days?

~~~
FooNull
Depends on whose vote

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Dirlewanger
FEC reform is the number one thing that the US federal government needs but no
member of Congress will ever touch. All presidential campaign funds must be
100% publicly funded. I don't care how much more it taxes onto federal tax or
how un-American it is. This shit will never end otherwise.

~~~
maxerickson
I'm turning into a single issue troll with this, but I think we can make a
positive change at the state level by changing ballot access. Just stop
allowing parties to nominate candidates.

The machines can still endorse a candidate, but we could gut the national
election process one state at a time by requiring any individual that wants to
be listed on a ballot to submit petitions for that ballot, rather than
receiving the blessings of a privately run national organization.

~~~
tamana
How would that solve any problems?

Submitting a petition to be on a ballot is a basic effort for national party.
That's practically the the reason a national party exists in the first place.

~~~
maxerickson
It would make the conventions irrelevant. The national party chooses the
candidate to place on ballots using whatever rules they set for the national
convention. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be all the procedural
nonsense that we see put towards trying to win the national conventions,
people that thought they had a serious shot at getting a plurality of votes
would organize to get themselves on ballots. We'd have a ballot this fall with
10 names on it, not 2.5.

Click to show the partisan requirements here and note the huge disparities
with independents:

[https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candi...](https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates#Party_nomination_processes)

So not only is there the huge well organized machine you mention could easily
collect signatures, there is also generally a much easier (and tightly
controlled) path to the ballot.

edit: It's quite likely that the president would be selected by the Electoral
College, but personally I'd prefer that to the current process where the
president is selected by the superior voter targeting strategy.

------
projectileboy
Is this surprising to anyone? I assumed that all corporations, politicians and
celebrities pay armies of minions to cultivate public opinion. How could it be
any other way? I hardly think Bernie Sanders' campaign doesn't do the same
thing.

~~~
pstuart
I'm guessing the Sanders' campaign has enough volunteers doing that.

/meta

------
r-w
Maybe the real problem is that people in this country still think that the
more they hear something, the more it’s worth hearing. If they’d only keep
those little slivers of truth about Hillary in mind among the sea of lies—if
there were any mental permanence to their observations about her—then maybe
she’d stop being able to slip through the cracks like she has about the
emails, the speeches, and (foreseeably) _this_ Big Brother-esque move.

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koolba
Paying for shill comments would probably be cheaper:
[https://xkcd.com/1019/](https://xkcd.com/1019/)

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patrickg_zill
What it means (in combination with the analysis that a huge %age of Twitter
followers are not real) is, there are even less humans that like her, than we
think.

She is like a rich person that bribes people to hang around her.

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trhway
1M - how come so cheap? With a 1B+ scale campaigns one would think that such
an important tactical theater would receive more spending. Probably it is one
of the indication of a reason - not enough resources spent/committed - why
Hillary doesn't do that well with the young.

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tawpKek
Vintage thread on consensus cracking:
[http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread429408/pg1](http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread429408/pg1)

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quanticle
Can anyone tell me why this is wrong, exactly? Or, for that matter, why this
news?

Edit: to be more clear, I don't expect the same level of objectivity from
Reddit or Hacker News comments that I do from an actual news story, so I don't
have the same ethical issues with the Hillary campaign paying people to post
comments on her behalf.

~~~
gshulegaard
Hmmm...well I can only speak for myself, but I see a number of problems with
this. To spare time though, I will focus on the two things I perceive to be
the biggest problem:

"Due to FEC loopholes, the Sunlight Foundation’s Libby Watson found this year
that Correct the Record can openly coordinate with Clinton’s campaign, despite
rules that typically disallow political campaigns from working directly with
PACs."

PACs which raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions,
associations and other private business groups have always been questionably
legal. However, they have been allowed to exist under strict regulation so
long as they remained completely separate from candidates' campaigns.

It would appear, however, that a PAC is now coordinating with the Hilary
campaign while not being under the same fundraising restrictions.

To me, PACs have always been subversions of the American governmental process
and now one operating more or less as the "long-arm" of an individual
candidate's campaign just makes them even more troubling.

The second thing is this type of brigade behavior, especially with funding
behind it, is particularly dangerous since it has a disproportionate ability
to influence general public perception. It may not influence you or I much
individually, but I am not sure Hacker News readers/commentators are a
representative sample of the "average American".

------
harigov
I don't see this as a problem at all, as long as these commenters are
representing the opinions of Hillary. I actually believe that
people/organizations should be given an opportunity to respond to these
comments "officially" using the same channels that commenters make use of.

~~~
wille92
What about pro-Hillary comments coming from unofficial social media accounts?
The article didn't say exactly where these comments would be coming from. I
assumed they would be "astro-turf" type users that purport to be everyday
reddit users but are actually affiliated with this Hillary PAC.

~~~
oh_sigh
So what if they are? As long as they don't misrepresent themselves, why not?

~~~
alistairSH
_As long as they don 't misrepresent themselves_

An astro-turf user is by definition misrepresenting themselves. They gain
credibility by presenting themselves as unaffiliated with the candidate.

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lifeisstillgood
Seems simple to police : have an account that has a "registration" number. You
get some basic training and access to a FAQ generator and can post "on
message" replies - all above board as you need it.

~~~
tamana
What about users who don't claim to be working for the campaign?

The problem isn't overt campaigning. The problem is covert astroturf
campaigning.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Well, don't do that. It's like having links to PACs -

there was a political campaign sending tweets to a shell account about which
wards it needs targeting (can't find the reference) - jail time was needed.

Same here. If people with no connection to a campaign are responding online -
fine. If there is a connection. Gosh, jail time

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tathastu
Obligatory: [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

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Upvoter33
much bigger problems exist, you know, like the quality of the news media.
commenters on message boards: not so much, paid or not.

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lasermike026
Sock puppets....

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user10001
I don't really have a problem with that since a person would only go to Reddit
or Facebook to be brainwashed anyway.

