IP Democracy: Net Neutrality Astro Commenting

Ten days ago I posted an item about what appeared to be an organized campaign of blog commenters who always oppose net neutrality regulations and who use vaguely similar language. I wondered if these commenters were in fact paid shills for broadband providers or their PR firms.

Since then, a host of other bloggers have written about this phenomenon. Mark Glaser has this piece at MediaShift. Matt Stoller posted this piece.

Today Cog at Abstract Factory has this more in-depth item about the phenomenon of robot-like, yet all-too-human blog commenters. Cog did a little research on an anti-net neutrality commenter called “Net Chick” and concluded that she’s probably a paid shill.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have been defaced by a comment spammer. Not your garden-variety p*rn/drugs/gambling comment spammer, who would have made certain to include at least one link to an advertising-supported website somewhere in either the post or the profile page. Nor is this the work of a mere desperate narcissist spammer, who would have made some link to a personal blog available.

No; “Net Chick” is an astroturf comment spammer: an astro-spammer, if you will.

Tim Lee at The Technology Liberation Front picks up on Cog’s comments by noting that he too has received these strange comments.

The posts almost never make substantive arguments, and they’re often made days or even weeks after a particular post is made. Moreover, the comments consistently appear only on pages related to network neutrality.

Mike at TechDirt wraps the whole thing up by noting that it’s not surprising that the telcos (?) would hire people to go around making blog comments against net neutrality. What is surprising is just how bad a strategy this is.

To be honest, it’s not at all surprising that some PR firm or whatever would think it’s a good idea to waste money hiring people to do this — but it’s really impressive just how bad they are at it, and just how easy it is to spot the comments.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 31, 2006 3:18 PM to IP Democracy