"Astro-Turf Trolls for the Blogosphere"

Economist Mark Thoma on the astro turf blogs..

Great. Organized, paid blog trolls:The marketplace of ideas is far from ideal. This goes on in a variety of different formats, people are paid to call into radio shows, to write letters to the editor at local papers, to attend public meetings, if there's a public forum on an important issue you can bet someone, somewhere is doing their best to figure out how to manipulate the discussion in their favor. This is just the extension of an old technique to a new format (e.g. here's the same consulting group explaining how to manipulate talk radio).

But the basic dishonesty of it all bugs me.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols