Be nice to Hillary Clinton online — or risk a confrontation with her super PAC

[Kilgore]

Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner.

In effect, the effort aims to spend a large sum of money to increase the amount of trolling that already exists online.

The plan comes as Clinton operatives grapple with the reality that her supporters just aren’t as engaged and aggressive online as are her detractors inside and outside the Democratic Party.

The lack of engagement is one of Clinton’s bigger tactical vulnerabilities, particularly when compared with rivals like Donald Trump, whose viral social media attacks are legion, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is backed by a passionate army of media-savvy millennials.

Some experts on digital campaigns think the idea of launching a paid army of “former reporters, bloggers, public affairs specialists, designers” and others to produce online counterattacks is unlikely to prove successful. Others, however, say Clinton has little choice but to try, given the ubiquity of online assaults and the difficulty of squelching even provably untrue narratives once they have taken hold.

At the same time, however, using a super PAC to create a counterweight to movements that have sprung up organically is another reflection of the campaign’s awkwardness with engaging online, digital pros said.

“It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical,” said Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital.

“That is what the Clinton campaign has always been about," he said. "It runs the risk of being exactly what their opponents accuse them of being: a campaign that appears to be populist but is a smokescreen that is paid and brought to you by lifetime political operatives and high-level consultants.”

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html

[JaneyVee]

1. LOL @ Bernie fans preaching about online confrontations.

[JoePhilly]

3. + 1

[Sparkly]

5. +1

[frylock]

12. Bernie fans preaching about PAID online confrontations.

They have to PAY people to defend Hillary. That is fucking sad. Please clap.

[oasis]

15. Whatever it takes to get the facts out should be encouraged. nt

[frylock]

16. Let me know when the facts get out.

[Octafish]

4. It shows.

Money can buy you troll.

[CoffeeCat]

6. I don't get why David Brock would ever announce that Hillary relies on paid trolls

Setting aside how pathetic it is that Hillary has to rely on paid keyboard jockeys, because she can't inspire adequate online support--why in the world would David Brock announce that this is a thing?

Why advertise that your opponent enjoys an burgeoning, loyal following of organic support--but you don't--so you're forced to fight it with fake, paid automatons?

Now, every online Clinton supporter is a potential troll. A potential suspect. Brock just halved any Clinton supporter's credibility, because any Clinton online supporter could be a paid troll.

Furthermore, hiring paid trolls is pitiful and unethical. The Public Relations Society of America denounces the practice and calls it unethical. When BP hired a PR agency after the BP oil spill, to manage its online FB page--this was big news because it was sleazy, unethical and dishonest.

I really don't get Brock's strategy here. It hurts the Hillary campaign--on many levels. The whole thing is embarrassing for the campaign.

[Juicy_Bellows]

13. It really is odd to come right out and say it.

In that regard, I admit a modicum of respect at their unashamed gall.

It's almost like they want to be filmed doing immoral shit - the desires of people like this are not to be taken lightly.

See? that's me, right there, woefully bending the rules of ethical behavior because I can...

[pinebox]

7. This makes me want to get on twitter and bait them XD

[hobbit709]

10. Yep.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. I love what Correct The Record is doing

[Wednesdays]

9. Well, they always said

We have the best democracy money can buy.

[PDittie]

11. Let's name names, shall we

Besides Peter Daou and his wife at Blue Nation Review there Susie Madrak, formerly of Crooks and Liars, and Melissa McEwan of Shakesville. All front-pagers at the BNR propaganda outlet.

http://bluenationreview.com/

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/05/hillary-clintons-propaganda-website-blue-nation-re.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/31/1477890/-Blue-Nation-Review-fake-news-blitz

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/07/hillary-clinton-s-hit-men-target-bernie-sanders-at-blue-nation-review.html

Here's what I observed about Madrak back during the Iowa Coin Flip-gate:

http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2016/02/whats-most-you-ever-lost-on-coin-toss.html

(Crooks and Liars has mostly played it down the middle with their front-pagers in Madrak's absence, keeping a commendable lack of bias one way or the other. Not at all so for the Shakers.)

Last month DUers exposed Daily Newsbin, and even got the editor to respond (indignantly):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511639395

There's more $Hill sites like this out there, but most of you already know the drift. The paid pushback is most strongly evident at Facebook and Twitter, and even as the primary season winds down, they are refocusing on Drumpf (who very likely has his own well-compensated trolls hard at work. Some of the responses to TacoBowlGate last week were uproarious in the spin applied).

It's the new frontier in dirty tricks campaigning. Charles Colson and Lee Atwater and Karl Rove are mere pikers in comparison to a duplicitous shitass like David "I Savaged Anita Hill" Brock.

[bananas]

17. Thanks for the info.

Been busy, not much time to follow this stuff.
Bookmarked this thread and just read it now.
Thanks.

[Buns_of_Fire]

14. Some people have to be paid to be jerks online.

I do it simply for the joy and fulfillment it brings me.

(Besides, if you get paid for it, you lose your amateur standing.)