Tweet

There appears to be an increasingly sophisticated and planned effort by conservatives and polluter front groups to use “persona management” software to pollute social media outlets and website comment forums with auto-generated sockpuppet swarms designed to mislead and misrepresent real people.

Leaked emails from Aaron Barr, CEO of a federal subsidiary for HB Gary, disclose the latest efforts and technology used underhandedly for “ganging up on bloggers, commenters and otherwise ‘real’ people to smear enemies and distort the truth.”

This phenomenon was first reported by Happy Rockefeller over at Daily Kos.

ClimateProgress is following this issue, particularly when it comes to the online discussion about climate change, noting that readers joke about pre-programmed ‘denier-bots’ and “how the same arguments and phrasings keep cropping up in the comments’ section of the many unmoderated news sites on the web.”

Tweet

The DeSmog Project is proud to welcome Page van der Linden to the DeSmog team!

Page has an impressive background on environmental issues and is well-known in the blogging world as one of the Contributing Editors on Daily Kos where she goes under the name "Plutonium Page." You can check out her bio here.

Please join me in welcoming Page to the team and check out her inaugural DeSmog post here.