Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing

The popular and influential Blue Hampshire blog on progressive New Hampshire politics recently busted a group of campaign staffers for registering anonymously on site and boosting pro-Hillary Clinton diaries on the group blog.

Noted Blue Hampshire's managing editor Dean Barker:

Recently, we admins noticed this comment thread on a recommended diary, and the oddities it posed made us look a little deeper than we normally would.

As the comment thread revealed, users pinballwizard, elf, shley24, MTAY all registered in succession to recommend the diary. A further look by us revealed that:

* they had registered within minutes of each other, including another user a bit later, janbaby, who was not among the recommenders,

* the same IP address was used by all of them, and is registered to the Clinton campaign,

* two other recommenders, blues and kmeisje, also registered from the same IP address.

To be clear, and to reiterate what's stated in our Getting Started page: paid campaign staff are welcome in this community, but are asked to disclose their affiliation to a campaign, either through their signature line, a disclosure statement on a diary, or even in the choosing of a username. The fact that all the users mentioned above came from a Clinton campaign IP, but did not register with campaign email addresses, and avoided making comments or diaries, instead only recommending pro-Clinton diaries, strikes us as gaming the system and a form of "recommend astroturf." As a result, we have banned those accounts, and will do so again for undisclosed paid staffers of any campaign if need be.

Barker notes that his blog post "is meant to be a warning shot across the bow of all campaigns," that this kind of behavior won't be tolerated.

He further notes that he was assured by a Clinton staffer that "this was not an orchestrated effort but the product of over-eager staffers and volunteers, done without her awareness, and that it will not be repeated."

(Hat tip to TechPresident)

See Also:

• Astroturfing in The Virtual World

__Image: __Haavoc