Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by harigov on Friday April 22, 2016 @01:58PM (#11551085)

I don't see this as a problem at all, as long as these commenters are representing the opinions of Hillary. I actually believe that people/organizations should be given an opportunity to respond to these comments "officially" using the same channels that commenters make use of.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by maxerickson on Friday April 22, 2016 @02:05PM (#11551145)

What restrictions do you perceive to exist?

On reddit, all they have to do is create an account. They can attest that the account is official wherever they want.

The issue that arises with this article is that the people using reddit perceive paid comments as an abuse of the channel, especially when the for pay nature of the comments is obscured.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by wille92 on Friday April 22, 2016 @02:07PM (#11551173)

What about pro-Hillary comments coming from unofficial social media accounts? The article didn't say exactly where these comments would be coming from. I assumed they would be "astro-turf" type users that purport to be everyday reddit users but are actually affiliated with this Hillary PAC.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by oh_sigh on Friday April 22, 2016 @02:26PM (#11551387)

So what if they are? As long as they don't misrepresent themselves, why not?

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by alistairSH on Friday April 22, 2016 @03:18PM (#11551867)

As long as they don't misrepresent themselves

An astro-turf user is by definition misrepresenting themselves. They gain credibility by presenting themselves as unaffiliated with the candidate.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by jbob2000 on Friday April 22, 2016 @02:48PM (#11551611)

But that's what they do. There is software out there that allows one person to manage hundreds of different "personas". So they use this software to login to facebook as "Jane Smith", make a couple comments, then login as "John Doe" and reinforce the comments "Jane" made.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by pessimizer on Friday April 22, 2016 @02:04PM (#11551138)

If they were marked as being paid representatives, this wouldn't be a story. Plenty of people working for all of the campaigns participate in social media.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by r00fus on Friday April 22, 2016 @04:27PM (#11552344)

Are they above the board? I know at sites like DailyKos there are lots of concern with Sanders supporters that Hillary is buying commenters and even the site itself.

The Hillary supporters claim this is "required given the money being raised on the other side" - $2B is a figure thrown around, and that not doing this is essentially ceding the field.

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Re:Hillary PAC Spends $1M to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit ... by tamana on Friday April 22, 2016 @03:17PM (#11551859)

The campaigns already have an opportunity -- they can create an account, and some services like Reddit give "Verified" tags in the site

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