Progressive sites and shill accounts -- Digg and DailyKos

[vets74]

The shill accounts come out of Far Right activist groups. We saw a highly-publicized attack on the Digg rating system earlier this year. Digg.com had to rework its whole system and clean out an enormous number of shill-attack accounts. Thus:

“The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

This is a big deal. From oleoleolson on Alternet:

Digg.com is the powerhouse of social media websites. It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site. It reached one million users in 2007 and likely has more than tripled that by this point. Digg generates around 25 million page views per month, over one third of the page views of the NY Times. Front page stories regularly overwhelm and temporarily shut down websites in a process called the “Digg Effect.”

"Reality has a liberal bias." An unsabotaged Digg.com reflects exactly this bias.

Literally thousands of stories (were) artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section... and cannot reach the front page. So by doing this, this one group removed the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content). This group is known as the Digg “Patriots”.

DailyKos has been hit with exactly this form of attack.

Censorship at DailyKos is effected by clicking a HIDE button on an article's comments. Every comment has a HIDE icon. Each main article/diary/posting also has a required "Tip Jar" comment -- there's always a place to register a censorship HIDE click.

These HIDE clicks are tallied by the DailyKos system against any normal account that is shill-attacked.

Special interest groups that effect censorship at DailyKos include fossil fuels, a determined anti-Obama team, and hyper-feminists that come off as contrived. The fossil fuel shills attack in-the-works green projects, but apply their full effort to nuclear power. Along with censorship, there's such as a bogus claim that the Fukushima disaster is killing 400,000 people with radiation.

-- Big Coal is pretty desperate these days -- when Global Warming becomes the dominant paradigm, they have big problems. Big Coal diaries get published several times a week. Hundreds of comments and censorship clicks are entered.

-- Anti-Obama shills usually present themselves as hyper-leftie I'm-so-disappointed nut cases. The President is depicted as a right-center NeoCon phony. These accounts post up versions of every RNC/Rovian talking point. You can read 100 times a day how these shill accounts have given up on Obama forever and will never vote for a Democrat again.

Complain about shill account operation and you're hit with a HIDE censorship click immediately.

So, does "Kos" Moulitsas follow what Digg.com had to do for defending his site ??? Does he clean out shill-account censorship ?

Not exactly. If anything, the opposite.

"Kos" Moulitas has to know what happened to Digg. He has to know about Leadership Institute in Virginia and their recruitment program for Internet dirty tricks. The guy's not dumb. So the mystery of the situation, post-Digg Patriots, is that "Kos" has outlawed even discussing shills. Identifying a shill rightie-talking-point comment is outlawed, even when sourced to a Fox "hosted" teevee show.

The existence of shill account was denied and then enforced for the site.

Meanwhile, contributors who were attacked by the shills with large numbers of censorship clicks are now accused of "bannable dickishness." No analysis of the attacks is undertaken. None of the type of work done at Digg.com is done to identify such as a "DailyKos Patriots" dirty tricks crew. Censorship by organized groups is taken at face value.

An Irish bar joke can get a user banned.

One of the main guys running the site moved on to another job. This was Tim Lange, who uses the screen name Meteor Blades. We knew Tim before there was a DailyKos, before there was an Internet. Tim's departure sets up a standard Irish joke -- a guy shows up late then he's been in for questioning, or if he's taking a job in America then that's a cover for having to do time for bank robbery or smuggling. Tim gets the treatment with a pint o' the brew:

Will Meteor Blades be allowed to return to the front page when he gets out of prison?

I couldn't stop laughing. The best of the joke is that Tim is a huge guy, in his 60s, been way around the block, and sports a pirate eye-patch from losing an eye. "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie... yes, indeed. Wanna do a prison joke, Tim is perfect.

Well, if you understand things Irish, the sweeter the slam, the greater the compliment. It's a culture for guys, where a pinched nerve while playing rugby is a "special treat." Tim's part Seminole, but for Irish humor he really is perfect.

Not at DailyKos. Edgy humor gets censorship by the bucket.

This simple bar joke unleashed an all-time blizzard of censorship. The comments read like a hyper-leftie version of Rush Limbaugh. It's not enough not to get the joke. The default response is tweaked to espouse censorship. That's typical of shill-driven unpleasantness.

Any posting that supports President Obama or goes for humor or runs afoul of special interests brings out the rightie shills by the score.

"President Obama is a long distance runner." Pragmatism Has Worked and Will Continue To Work

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/06/1014103/-Race-and-Criticism-of-Obama-on-Dkos">Race and Criticism of Obama on Dkos

Where in the World is Meteor Blades ?

This seems simple enough: "Coming to DKOS should be fun, not a Tea Party hate-fest." What we saw with the Digg Patriots was simple censorship. At the main left/center web sites it's a combination of censorship with nasty/name-calling/ugly slime.

Shill-swill slime.

So here's what DailyKos has to offer today. The first user comment to a "Kos" written diary that defends his actions at censorship:

Could you teach any of the Dem leadership how to just make a decision and stick with it? (207+ / 0-)
by lineatus on Thu Sep 08, 2011 at 02:07:42 PM EDT

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/08/1014670/-Purge-update">Purge Update

That slime comment got 207 approving RECOMMEND clicks. Big time approval comes from 207 DailyKos accounts for insulting the Democratic Party leadership.

My, my.

Other comments get up-or-down clicks from fewer than 60 accounts. Most got 10 or 20 clicks. Seems reasonable that this slime posting attracted a big time pile-on. DailyKos Patriots ??? Who knows ?

Is this type of pile-on a repeating pattern ? Do an unusual percentage of these accounts make a business of dissing Democrats ? I'd have to generate details of DailyKos censorship and anti-Democrat pile-ons to carry out a defensive analysis similar to the Digg.com work.

Digg.com did the right thing. DailyKos is going in the opposite direction -- letting the multiple shill accounts carry out censorship unhindered and doing nothing to limit shill-swill attacks on elected Democrats.

"Kos" Moulitas seems to have no idea what he is doing. He is living in a personal universe where the Digg Patriots attacks did not happen. Leadership Institute does not exist. Special interest-financed shills do not exist.

There is no reason for him to defend a pro-democrat web site. He's running on ego.

[FSogol]

1. Hate to say it, but it sounds familiar.

:shrug:

[drm604]

2. Yep

[vets74]

4. Industry groups spend millions invading Internet sites

Global warming denial is the big ticket for the Big Coal crews.

They were also running in terror of a resurgence of nuclear power prior to the Fukushima disaster. China and India and South Africa are building large numbers of modern design power reactors. Here's an article accompanied by a number of amazing comments.

New Japanese PM Noda "The number of reactors in the future will be zero"

The main premise is close to correct. Trade Minister Bo Lv Jixiong representing the previous Prime Minister, Kan, "Overall, most people hold to reduce the number of views of nuclear power plants, rather than increase." Yoshihiko Noda is the current Prime Minister.

But the point, here, is not details. Adding reactors to the current plants is how Japan has grown power production for 20 years. Nuclear power safety concerns... that's real stuff. No question. But not like this.

Read the language of the comments. The sheer authoritarian certainty of the demands. This doesn't sound like your usual Green Party logical argument....

Shill-swill ??? You decide.

From my point of view this mess could be Philip Morris cigarette company, handing out new cartons to their employees on Fridays.

[MrsCorleone]

3. Yep. DU is undeniably shill central. nt

[vets74]

5. Publishing false information also devalues DailyKos

Carelessness dealing with a "DailyKos Patriots" rightie attack is bad enough.

Lying about the whole of the House Democratic Party leadership with an official management-reviewed article gets even worse.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/08/1014631/-House-Democrats-recommend-Super-Congress-raise-Medicare-eligibility%C2%A0age">House Democrats recommend Super Congress raise Medicare eligibility age

That is simply false.

The statement will be copied by rightie candidates and their propaganda outlets. DailyKos will be a prime engine for disinformation with respect to Democrats and Social Security. The article, by Joan McCarter, has not been pulled. The title has not been amended.

The Hill .pdf from Medicare analysis

That has the facts. All the other way from dkos negative propaganda aimed at Democrats.

WTF with DailyKos ??? That's not a random poster. That's the site management.

[vets74]

7. False information: North Anna nuclear plant safety inspection and the Mineral VA earthquake

Big Coal spends millions of dollars a year on anti-global warming propaganda. A noticeable part of it goes to damning solar and wind energy investments, plus fostering community fear of nuclear power.

Fact is, burning coal kills 4000 people per kilowatt hour for every person who has been killed by running the nuclear plants. If you eliminated the non-standard-design incompetently-run Chernobyl plant -- there aren't any more of those -- then the ratio would be over 30,000 to 1. Obviously, nuclear power also has an extraordinary advantage for global warming effects relative to burning hydrocarbons.

No one gets killed doing solar and wind farms.

Well, go to the Community Spotlight list at DailyKos today and there's an item North Anna Nuclear Update that pretends to be a news survey. It offers all sorts of little assertions, implying friction between NCR and Dominion Power as well as claiming that the earthquake damaged the plant.

This item even misstates the epicenter of the earthquake. That was under Mineral, VA, some 15 miles away. That is quite a difference from claiming Cuckoo, VA, at 6 miles distance from the plant. AP and Reuters confirm that a chimney and church were damaged by the quake -- not that this was the epicenter.

At the Epicenter - Mineral, Virginia -- LA Times article citing AP

North Anna shut down both from automatic and manual SCRAM controls being flipped when seismic G-force sensors and the local G-force sensors detected the first waves of the August 23rd quake. This SCRAM process pushes the safety control rods into the power core. It takes all of 6 or 8 seconds to shut everything down. "Exceeded the operating standards" in the propaganda piece misstates the situation -- the quake "exceeded" the very low G-force standard for triggering a SCRAM, not anything related to damaging the plant.

Finally, NRC post-quake inspection at North Anna today is following the standard check list for post-SCRAM restarts. The schedule was published weeks ago. From McGraw-Hill Platts news relay service:

US NRC team starts post-quake inspections at North Anna nuclear plant
Washington (Platts)--30Aug2011/458 pm EDT/2058 GMT

A US Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection team arrived Tuesday at Dominion's North Anna nuclear plant in Louisa, Virginia, to evaluate preliminary data that indicates an August 23 earthquake created seismic activity that may have exceeded the plant's "design basis," agency spokesman Joey Ledford said Tuesday.

The two reactors at North Anna automatically shut after the plant lost offsite power during the quake. "Dominion would need to prove to our satisfaction that its systems are capable of performing their functions of protecting public health and safety before the NRC would consider authorizing the restart of North Anna," Scott Burnell, an NRC spokesman, said Tuesday.

Clearance for Dominion to restart the plant's two units "would most likely come from Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation," Ledford said. The team will remain at the site this week, review its initial findings starting September 5 at NRC's Atlanta regional office and return to North Anna September 12 to continue the inspection through that week, he said.

In contrast this twisty DailyKos item would have the September 12-16 inspection work come across as a response to an unknowable/secret/boogie-boogie nuclear phantasm.

The North Anna plant was 15 miles from the 5.8 earthquake epicenter. DailyKos is top-placing an item that misstates every fact from the location of the quake to NRC scheduling to whether there is a lethal threat from ordinary nuke plant safety procedures.

Fukushima even gets it's way into the fearmongering.

The DailyKos account http://www.dailykos.com/user/Joieau">Joieau came on the site in March, 2010, and has published dozens of anti-nuke items and thousands of anti-nuke comments. The worst of this is repeated claims that the Fukushima nuclear disaster is killing people. That's a bald lie -- two drownings and a heart attack are the only Fukushima deaths -- and the aerial radiation hazard is running 1/1,000th what Japan suffered back when the Soviet Union was doing nuclear testing. Tokyo has lower aerial radiation levels than immediately before the March 11th tsunami, likely related to much more careful handling of industrial materials.

Fear of nukes is one thing. This is a technology that requires much care. But over the last 60+ years the U.S. has proved that we can go without killing anybody. Deaths at nuclear plants have come mostly from falling off ladders and scaffolds, not from radiation. After the Three Mile Island near-catastrophe, the engineers really did figure out these problems.

"Kos" Moulitas recently banned dozens of virulently anti-racist, anti-gun members -- a large segment of the Black Kos affinity Group. But no move on this "Joieau," or any of the other consistent sources for industry propaganda on the DailyKos web site.

My, my.

Seems that individual control, a possible profit motive, and pro-democracy blogging have several problems over there.

[vets74]

8. False information: Previously banned industry shill now supported by site management

Joy Busey (Bussey) is reportedly the name of person running these "Joieau" postings at DailyKos and elsewhere.

Markos tells me I now have the ability to tell you that you are not welcome in my diaries, and request that you go elsewhere. Which I now do, with feeling. Thanks.
by Joieau on Fri Sep 16, 2011 at 02:50:58 PM PDT

LINK to this comment

That comment is recommended by these six DailyKos accounts: Wheever, Creosote, KiB, Andhakari, mamamedusa, Russgirl.

No surprise to that. The worst of these efforts at propaganda lay out a strategy of using website rules to hammer factual corrections. It doesn't take very many shill accounts to run a system that resembles a SEC college football play. These accounts pile on, one way or another in sync :::

Joieau
Russgirl
Into The Woods
indycam
eeff
Andhakari
mamamedusa
Jim P
louisev
Wheever
KiB

The same crew of accounts appear, front and center, for most anti-nuke diaries at the site. A statistical analysis is doable. Don't hold your breath for the site to do what Digg.com did to defend its integrity.

This person was banned two years ago. Now her shill work is encouraged.

(I am not blaming this mess on Obama.)

BTW ::: if you concerned about killing humans in the course of generating electricity then here's the Wiki entry:

...the problems of nuclear waste do not come anywhere close to approaching the problems of fossil fuel waste. A 2004 article from the BBC states: "The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel." In the U.S. alone, fossil fuel waste kills 20,000 people each year. A coal power plant releases 100 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant of the same wattage. It is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much radioactivity into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident. In addition, fossil fuel waste causes global warming, which leads to increased deaths from hurricanes, flooding, and other weather events. The World Nuclear Association provides a comparison of deaths due to accidents among different forms of energy production. In their comparison, deaths per TW-yr of electricity produced (in UK and USA) from 1970 to 1992 are quoted as 885 for hydropower, 342 for coal, 85 for natural gas, and 8 for nuclear.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint#Discussion">Wikipedia on Ecological Footprint

[vets74]

6. Strangely, 30% of newly banned Members were part of "Black Kos" affinity Group on the site

These Members are known for speaking out against racist rants on the site -- usually posted by anti-Democrat trolls -- and for opposing pro-gun Fourth Amendment fanatics.

There is a "RKBA" affinity Group on the DailyKos site. These members have posted several-times-a-week diaries that echo typical NRA propaganda. With guns killing Black young people like so many leaves blowing off the fall trees, you would expect this "RKBA" Group to tangle with the Black Kos people.

As you might imagine the "RKBA" folks are overwhelmingly white and socially conservative for Democrat-site bloggers.

Well, anyway, "Kos" Moulitas is proudly Hispanic. He was a soldier in the U.S. Army. He takes a pro-"RKBA" stance in this argument -- supporting the Fourth Amendment against all comers.

One effect was that his recent purge fell a reported 30% on the "Black Kos" members.

They had been too hostile against the outright troll-head racists and the "RKBA" gun lovers.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/12/1015945/-3-of-the-posters-but-30-of-the-punished-Yeah,-Im-in?via=search">3% of the posters but 30% of the punished? Yeah, I'm in -- from poster The Halfrican

Racist ??? No-no-no. No. Complaining bitterly about guns killing black kids can fall o'er on the other side of bad manners, don'tcha know.

[yurbud]

9. the end sounds awfully familar