A Hillary PAC is spending $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

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Any of you ever post on Democratic Underground? The consensus there is that Hillary's a corporatist and a cryptofascist who'd sell America out for a nickel. It's kind of hilarious.
 
Isn't this commonplace for candidates in the online era?

http://nhpr.org/post/digital-revolution-sanders-reinvents-online-campaign

This is the Bernie version, which is based on the Obama version.

While I'm sure there are astroturfers, I don't think these are the organizations directly paying for those astroturfers for either side... but these groups do help make the tools that astroturfers may eventually use if they were interested in participating in GOTV, phone/facebanking and social media campaigns.
 
i-say-we-let-im-go.jpg
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I say we let her go!
 
demon said:
The notion that Clinton isn't deserving of massive criticism for embodying things that supposed liberals have been rallying against in general for years now (like corporate money in politics, voting for the the biggest and most costly foreign policy disaster in decades) is both absurd and disgusting. All of a sudden those issues don't matter with Hillary now that she's a frontrunner for president "cuz reasons". Comments like this:

are a reason I've been losing faith in a real movement to make substantial change to a system that is fundamentally broken. In the end party fanboys will fall in line. Real criticism of Hillary? Deflect with fanboyish bullshit about "bernie bros" (what am I to call all the female Sanders supporters I know?) and move on, I guess. Hillary supporters accusing "bernie bros" of brainlessly supporting their candidate should take a good look in the mirror.
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Pretty much this. And I'm someone who will be voting Dem, even if it's Hillary.
 
demon said:
The notion that Clinton isn't deserving of massive criticism for embodying things that supposed liberals have been rallying against in general for years now (like corporate money in politics, voting for the the biggest and most costly foreign policy disaster in decades) is both absurd and disgusting. All of a sudden those issues don't matter with Hillary now that she's a frontrunner for president "cuz reasons". Comments like this:

are a reason I've been losing faith in a real movement to make substantial change to a system that is fundamentally broken. In the end party fanboys will fall in line. Real criticism of Hillary? Deflect with fanboyish bullshit about "bernie bros" (what am I to call all the female Sanders supporters I know?) and move on, I guess. Hillary supporters accusing "bernie bros" of brainlessly supporting their candidate should take a good look in the mirror.
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Of course Clinton deserves criticism on all of that. But claims that she's "a neocon", that she's "secretly conservative", whatever are all ludicrous and that's what dominated the leftward anti-Hillary narrative right now. That's what everyone I follow keeps harping on, just how much of a lying weasel snake she is
 
The Technomancer said:
Of course Clinton deserves criticism on all of that. But claims that she's "a neocon", that she's "secretly conservative", whatever are all ludicrous and that's what dominated the leftward anti-Hillary narrative right now. That's what everyone I follow keeps harping on, just how much of a lying weasel snake she is
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Have you considered that the problem is with who you follow, not pervasive through all her opponents?
 
here comes the queen

clinton and her campaign are the worst.

i'm with her is the shittiest slogan ever. shameless grab at woman, faux feminism, etc.

but of course her supporters use it while throwing out sexist remarks at bernie supporters.
 
Is there also a PAC that pays people to just post 'YASSSSS SLAY MY QUEEN' whenever Hillary is mentioned?

Because I need to get in on that money.
 
Trojita said:
David Brock is the guy that wrote a book, that he made a lot of money on, victim blaming Anita Hill for sexual harassment she received from Clarence Thomas. He called her a slut.

This isn't coming from a place of great reputation.
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There's no reason (I know of) that Brock's got a bad reputation among the DNC. He was basically Bill O'Reilley until he got sick of himself. Its an interesting story to say the least. From wikipedia:
Brock now describes the book as a "character assassination" and has since "disavowed its premise".[3] He has also apologized to Hill. In his subsequent book, Blinded by the Right, Brock characterized himself as having been "a witting cog in the Republican sleaze machine."[4]
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Indefensible. I'm a Democrat who is genuinely considering voting against Hillary in the GE now. There will be many.
 
Bam Bam Baklava said:
I would correct nonsense like this for free.

pmSzosJ.jpg
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I don't even know what this is supposed to say. That everyone in the counties that Bernie lost in is a Wall Street crony? That we should ignore the entirety of the voters in NYC because they support Hillary?

I don't get it. Some people shout "Wall Street!" with no context or reasoning and think they're making an argument.
 
demon said:
The notion that Clinton isn't deserving of massive criticism for embodying things that supposed liberals have been rallying against in general for years now (like corporate money in politics, voting for the the biggest and most costly foreign policy disaster in decades) is both absurd and disgusting. All of a sudden those issues don't matter with Hillary now that she's a frontrunner for president "cuz reasons". Comments like this:

are a reason I've been losing faith in a real movement to make substantial change to a system that is fundamentally broken. In the end party fanboys will fall in line. Real criticism of Hillary? Deflect with fanboyish bullshit about "bernie bros" (what am I to call all the female Sanders supporters I know?) and move on, I guess. Hillary supporters accusing "bernie bros" of brainlessly supporting their candidate should take a good look in the mirror.
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It's bad when the their guy does it, but when it's ours? Eh, not too big of a deal.
 
royalan said:
I'm confused as to why this is such a bad idea...
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Consider it from all ends of the spectrum.

You're a Hillary supporter. We can assume this means you generally trust her, and by extension the actions of this superPAC openly coordinating with her campaign. To you this means that some people are just spending time correcting misinformation about her on the internet, there's nothing wrong with that.

You're not a Hillary supporter. Given her pretty huge unfavorable ratings we can assume you have a degree of distrust against her, and by extension this superPAC. You don't think that this simply ends with 100% honest rebuttals to any "misinformation" on the internet. To you it sounds like sleazy astroturfing.

Personally I don't like it. If you want to correct misinformation do it through open channels, not through the anonymity of the internet. It makes tracing things back to the campaign nigh impossible, you wouldn't even know if the superPAC is legitimately just correcting misinformation or astroturfing. It also basically gives an easy out to non-Hillary supporters in a debate, much like "bernie bro" is mostly used as a way to lazily delegitimize the views expressed by his entire supporter base, this basically sets up a way for Hillary opponents to do the same.
 
Bam Bam Baklava said:
I would correct nonsense like this for free.
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Why are Hillary supporters suddenly obsessed with this image? Was it posted officially by the Sanders campaign? If not, there are delusional supporters on both sides that are not representative of the whole, so why are you guys still going ham over this illustration?
 
seat said:
Why are Hillary supporters suddenly obsessed with this image? Was it posted officially by the Sanders campaign? If not, there are delusional supporters on both sides that are not representative of the whole, so why are you guys still going ham over this illustration?
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Because it takes a lot less effort to debate the obvious crazies and idiots than the rational people.

Note: This is true of supporters on both sides.
 
seat said:
Why are Hillary supporters suddenly obsessed with this image? Was it posted officially by the Sanders campaign? If not, there are delusional supporters on both sides that are not representative of the whole, so why are you guys still going ham over this illustration?
Click to expand...

I think there are some Hillary supporters (myself included) who are genuinely annoyed with the need to delegitimize any win that Hillary scores. That doesn't mean we need to parade that image around, but it deserves to be mocked. And then we move on.
 
cheezcake said:
Consider it from all ends of the spectrum.

You're a Hillary supporter. We can assume this means you generally trust her, and by extension the actions of this superPAC openly coordinating with her campaign. To you this means that some people are just spending time correcting misinformation about her on the internet, there's nothing wrong with that.

You're not a Hillary supporter. Given her pretty huge unfavorable ratings we can assume you have a degree of distrust against her, and by extension this superPAC. You don't think that this simply ends with 100% honest rebuttals to any "misinformation" on the internet. To you it sounds like sleazy astroturfing.

Personally I don't like it. If you want to correct misinformation do it through open channels, not through the anonymity of the internet. It makes tracing things back to the campaign nigh impossible, you wouldn't even know if the superPAC is legitimately just correcting misinformation or astroturfing. It also basically gives an easy out to non-Hillary supporters in a debate, much like "bernie bro" is mostly used as a way to lazily delegitimize the views expressed by his entire supporter base, this basically sets up a way for Hillary opponents to do the same.
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Hmmm, thanks for the response. This answers something I just asked in PoliGAF.
 
seat said:
Why are Hillary supporters suddenly obsessed with this image? Was it posted officially by the Sanders campaign? If not, there are delusional supporters on both sides that are not representative of the whole, so why are you guys still going ham over this illustration?
Click to expand...

A bit of Google-fu only gives me this image from a Hillary supporter on Twitter and then links to an anti-Sanders subreddit.
 
Hmmm... candidate regularly accused online of being fake and exploiting campaign finance rules plans to exploit campaign finance rules to post fake comments online.

Yeah, that should turn things around.
 
Just so that everyone is clear. This isn't the Hillary Campaign that doing this. It seems some poster are jumping to the conclusion that Hillary is behind this.
 
I may be in the minority but this doesn't seem like a big deal. $1M to politics is nothing and I've yet to see them actually "correct" anything.
 
googleplex said:
Just so that everyone is clear. This isn't the Hillary Campaign that doing this. It seems some poster are jumping to the conclusion that Hillary is behind this.
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Of course not...

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.

“SuperPACs aren’t supposed to coordinate with candidates. The whole reasoning behind (Supreme Court decision) Citizens United rests on (PACs) being independent, but Correct the Record claims it can coordinate,” Watson told The Daily Beast. “It’s not totally clear what their reasoning is, but it seems to be that material posted on the Internet for free—like, blogs—doesn’t count as an ‘independent expenditure.’”
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Little Nemo said:
Of course not...
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They can, does not mean they are.
Frankly i'd like Hillary to coordinate on stopping this waste of time and money.

If volunteers want to help correct some of the bullshit, that's fine. But do it on their own time, and without being paid.

The only way I can see this being more ok than shady is if they put a disclaimer on all of the posts. But doing so would have everybody dismiss it without even reading it.

It's shady when companies astroturf, this is not much different.
 
JimmySlippers said:
I may be in the minority but this doesn't seem like a big deal. $1M to politics is nothing and I've yet to see them actually "correct" anything.
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SuperPACs using loopholes to directly coordinate with a presidential candidate when they aren't supposed to looks bad in primary election so focused on campaign finance reform. Especially when your trustworthiness is already as bad as Hillary's is seen. Not that this will matter as Bernie isn't winning the nom outside of some crazy FBI shit. I guess trump could use it but the accusation coming from him means way less compared to coming from Bernie.

As far as the actual act, it's not really a big deal and most candidates now have some online reputation game anyway.
 
googleplex said:
Just so that everyone is clear. This isn't the Hillary Campaign that doing this. It seems some poster are jumping to the conclusion that Hillary is behind this.
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They're supposedly coordinating with her (although the Clinton campaign hasn't said anything about that), due to some loophole they claim to have found... that's the story people care about here, not the dumb reddit comments thing. If you don't think that every campaign + pacs out there isn't paying people to read and respond to comments online, officially or unofficially, you're crazy. At the very very very least, its easy cheap market research.

The story is a year old though... I'm not sure why its popping up now (well, I am sure). I have a feeling there hasn't ever been any coordination, because there are a few dozen people waiting to jump on it if there ever is. Maybe though... who knows. Who knows if Bernie's campaign coordinates with any of his super pacs, or any other candidate. Insinuating a crime basically means you're guilty nowadays doesn't it?
 
atr0cious said:
Royalan's employer is stepping it up lol
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royalan said:
I'm confused as to why this is such a bad idea...
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Lol

cheezcake said:
Consider it from all ends of the spectrum.

You're a Hillary supporter. We can assume this means you generally trust her, and by extension the actions of this superPAC openly coordinating with her campaign. To you this means that some people are just spending time correcting misinformation about her on the internet, there's nothing wrong with that.

You're not a Hillary supporter. Given her pretty huge unfavorable ratings we can assume you have a degree of distrust against her, and by extension this superPAC. You don't think that this simply ends with 100% honest rebuttals to any "misinformation" on the internet. To you it sounds like sleazy astroturfing.

Personally I don't like it. If you want to correct misinformation do it through open channels, not through the anonymity of the internet. It makes tracing things back to the campaign nigh impossible, you wouldn't even know if the superPAC is legitimately just correcting misinformation or astroturfing. It also basically gives an easy out to non-Hillary supporters in a debate, much like "bernie bro" is mostly used as a way to lazily delegitimize the views expressed by his entire supporter base, this basically sets up a way for Hillary opponents to do the same.
Click to expand...
I appreciate you laying it out this way, thank you. Nice response. :)
 
JimmySlippers said:
I may be in the minority but this doesn't seem like a big deal. $1M to politics is nothing and I've yet to see them actually "correct" anything.
Click to expand...

I mean it's not a huge amount or whatever but astroturfing sucks and it's shitty to see it be openly talked about as perfectly fine and good by people representing a presidential candidate, instead of them doing it quietly and shamefully in the dark as is right and proper.
 
The Super Pac should take the million dollars and put together a counterpoint website, that helps arm supporters with accurate policy information and links. With tips on being persuasive and what to do and not to do.
Not sure if that would fall under the loophole they are using. Maybe the end game is to get someone to file a lawsuit against the practice.
 
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