Twitter shuts down 33 fake accounts created by state Republicans in an attempt to lambast Dems

[Are_grits_groceries]

Barack Obama's victory last year left many Republicans bemoaning their party's ineptitude when it came to political exploitation of the Web. Democrats, they admitted, were far ahead in the art of using the Internet to seduce voters.

So Connecticut Republicans decided it was time to boldly forge into the 21st century, only to stumble when one of their decidedly deceptive experiments ran into trouble last week.

Twitter, Inc., shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic state representatives. The Republican scheme was to send out posts under the Democrats' names mocking the liberal tax-and-spend bastards.

"That's unfortunate," was state Republican Chairman Chris Healy's response when told of Twitter, Inc.'s decision. "I'm not quite sure what the issue is, other than that the Democrats were successful in stopping free speech."
<snip>
"That's silly," Healy said of the decision. "That's not impersonation; that's satire."
<snip>
Their Twitter ploy may have misfired, but Connecticut Republicans aren't giving up on those 33 Web sites created in the names of the Democratic lawmakers. (The fake Twitter posts were linked back to those Web sites.)

All the sites use the same format. In the case of state House Speaker Chris Donovan, D-Meriden, the Republican-funded Web address is meetchrisdonovan.com. All the information on the site was produced by Republicans and is critical of Donovan. The only indication that it was paid for by the state GOP is in small print at the very bottom of the page.

http://hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=15188

Slime! What would be a good way to gig those fake websites??

[tanyev]

1. Right, that's exactly how the Obama team did it....

They set up fake sites and pretended to be Republicans. :eyes:

Pubbies miss the point yet again.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Astroturf. Paid demonstrators. Fake websites.

Having no substance or legitimate appeal to anyone, the Republicans just naturally have to rely on deception, duplicity and demagoguery to give the appearance of being relevant to somebody other than their Daddy Warbux owners.

[louis-t]

9. Lie, cheat, steal....

Simpler way to put it. It's the only way they can succeed. They think it's 'cute'.

[Voice for Peace]

18. yep nt

[Gold Metal Flake]

2. No one would pay for conservatives to spread propaganda on the internet.

Oh, wait.

[K8-EEE]

3. There is a reason why GOP can't ever be straight-up

Nobody in their right mind would buy what they're sellin' without massive misinformation, fraud, phony scare tactics etc.

[RKP5637]

5. Exactly!!! Hopefully, all of America will eventually wakeup to their deceitfulness. n/t

[applegrove]

20. Yup. They have to lie and go with propaganda. They have everything to hide.

[Cleita]

6. The Democrats who had their identities hijacked should sue the Republicans

responsible. This is nothing more than troll behavior. I am sure there are laws against impersonating someone and stealing their identities.

[FraDon]

7. It's straight out of the Fascist playbook …

Can you say Donald Segretti, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove?

I knew that you could.

[Arkana]

22. The Segretti folks had a word for it: "ratfucking".

[eShirl]

8. That's not satire; it's a form of identity theft.

[ddeclue]

14. Identity theft is a Federal crime when it comes to computers.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

17. Yes it is. I'm sure it also violates the Terms of Service of Twitter.

If I were one of the Dems I would not hesitate to sue them for identity theft.

[lpbk2713]

10. Rethuglicans pulling dirty sneaky tricks. Whooda guessed?

Those lowlife scumbags will never change.

[ddeclue]

11. I busted a fake "Democrat" here in Florida who was actually a Republican trying to bash Grayson

the other day.

BWA HA HA.. I've got the voter file so don't lie to me and tell me you're a Republican or I'll find out the truth and bust your ass.

:rofl:

Good for Twitter!

[eShirl]

19. +1

:)

[Fuzz]

12. Who has smashed these folk's moral compasses?

[Jackpine Radical]

15. They were never issued moral compasses.

Except for Bill Bennett. His moral compass points to the gaming tables in Vegas.

[hvn_nbr_2]

13. I'm not familiar with the verb "to gig"

What does your last sentence--What would be a good way to gig those fake websites?--mean?

Is that the latest new lingo that this old fart doesn't know?

BTW, thanks for the info. One more demonstration that "Republican" means "no conscience."

PSBTW, did you know that Republican is an anagram of "burp can lie"?

[ddeclue]

16. As in to "gig" a frog...you know ...with a sharp pointy stick...

[Hepburn]

21. To quote the cat...

:hi:

[ShadowLiberal]

23. Seems like the GOP's way to 'adapt' to the Internet age is to play dirty cyber tricks

Really, this isn't the first time the GOP has adapted to the Internet age by using dirty tricks. During the 2008 elections there was one website (I forget the name, I never go to it) that links to a bunch of stories from plenty of sites, including blogs with a heavy liberal or conservative bias. Users at that site could rate the stories linked, and make the lowest rated sink off the front page fast.

At one point in the 2008 campaign McCain's campaign was offering free stuff to people who knocked proObama stories off the front pages of those sites, and from what I read about it at political irony (a liberal humor/politics site) it did work at killing his page views, though he just blogged for fun not a career so he wasn't really hurt.

If the GOP really wanted to adapt then they'd make some influential blogs similar to Daily Kos (which pays for it's own polling), or a grassroots group like MoveOn.org (a group funded and run ENTIRELY by grassroots, not by former congressmen who work for the insurance industry while drumming up fear of the public option like they've been doing now). So far though, unless there's a big corporate sponsor funding the group it seems that the GOP hasn't used the Internet effectively.

Instead GOP blogs continue to remain fewer and far less influential. You would think with the GOP's slight libertarian turn, and how organized Libertarians are on the Internet that they'd have learned from them, but not so.