There was THIS article that said the Clinton campaign paid people to post information about HRC on various boards like Facebook. I’m sure other candidates do it also.
I’d like to ask, has any such troll ever been spotted on this board and just how would we recognize such a person fro say a regular supporter of that candidate?
One thing about this message board – it has a history. A long history.
Someone shows up tomorrow defending Hillary Clinton, we have no way of knowing for sure, but we can certainly be skeptical.
I post about Hillary Clinton, and you can look at my entire history of posting about her (which I just happen to have researched for another reason this weekend) and see comments stretching back all the way to the 2008 election.
The other thing is that on this board we’re less concerned about counting heads and building consensus than we are about finding the facts. It isn’t, “Wow, look at all of these people on the Dope who support Clinton,” it’s “Here is what the opposition is saying about her, and here are the facts that support or contradict their arguments.”
So a troll whose goal is just to make it look like Hillary has a lot of support here doesn’t serve much purpose, and a troll who is posting factual cites is fighting ignorance and we aren’t that concerned about who is doing the posting.
Another point against being a shill is making substantive posts on topics other than their paid hobby horse. It isn’t proof one way or another, since political-only people do join sometimes, many of which may or may not be trolls but can’t all be shills, but I don’t think shills’ masters think it a good use of money to have them post a lot of off-topic posts to establish credibility. If I were a shill payer, I’d ask them to aim for 5%-20% off-topic posts, anything lower wouldn’t be credible whereas anything more would be a waste of money.
The article writer lost me as soon as I cheked the first link, it looks like the writer does not know what a troll is, and the effort they point at was not secret at all.
http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-of-correct-the-record/
On the other side there had been reports were real trolling and the desinformation origins have been hidden from view and it may come from Trump’s old pal Putin:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
Back then it seemed that they only seeded FUD in an attempt at setting discord and demoralizing Americans. But then they found they could do a lot of that with Trump.
We are stronger together! We can’t let a misogynist lead our country! Go to HRC.com/rallies to find out how you can help us win!
(oops, blew my cover) 
We seem to get a steady stream of new, very right-wing posters that don’t stick around all that long. In contrast to paid shills (from either party), my bet is that it’s one or two people who make serial accounts to troll. Or it’s a small group thing, getting luls in the snarkpit.
I sometimes wonder whether the serial right-wing poster is the same person(s) who routinely post Jerry Springer-level sob stories in MPSIMS.
(Note: I don’t think the serial sock puppet is reflective of conservative ideology. I can’t even tell if it’s Poe’s Law in effect. It’s just that it’s that persons schtick.)
I assume none of the pro-Trump supporters are paid shills, because he doesn’t pay.
You mean I could get paid for sitting here and posting all day? Where do I sign up?
Here is the front page of the “news” cite you have linked to. Got anything less rabidly pro-Trump as a source?
Shhhhh. They’re not supposed to know that yet.
I gotta say, Urbanredneck, you really got an interesting track record with threads like these.
It’s almost like one person, or a few people, can’t influence consensus enough to turn a forum to a new direction.
It’s almost like individuals can counter attempts at spam and propaganda regardless of whether they come from paid shills.
In fact, it typically goes too far the other direction: The forum ends up with a vector-sum consensus, the end result of all participants participating in threads and exchanging ideas, and newcomers get short shrift until they’ve been around a while. That’s where accusations of “hivemind” come from, and they’re not entirely false; OTOH, healthy fora don’t go completely closed, either.
Shill not troll.
Over the past year or so, it’s become incredibly common for Hillary supporters to be called “shills”- so much so, in fact, that calling people shills (or even hinting at it) on the Politics subreddit is grounds for immediate temp bans. I’ve been called a shill tons of times over there- which is frankly ridiculous, 'cause there’s no evidence at all that Correct The Record has ever paid anyone to *secretly *push the Hillary agenda. It’s just a way for Bernie supporters- and now Trump supporters- to shut down anyone who dares to argue with them.
But even if there was, so what? What is it that makes an argument invalid if it comes from someone paid to present that argument? Let’s say I go online and say “Vote Hillary!” one week, and then the next week I get paid to go online and say “Vote Hillary!”. Why is my statement suddenly invalid?
Plus, there’s the sheer logistics of it. CTR apparently only got six million bucks or so. How much of an online army is that supposed to pay for? It just doesn’t make any sense.
Of course, I’m sure someone’s reading what I’ve posted right here and is thinking, “Yep, he’s a shill.”
Moved from Elections.
[ /Moderating ]
It’s funny, because whatever nonsense source that urbanredneck got that information from failed to mention that Facebook billionaire Palmer Luckey has been openly bankrolling online Trumpetteers for the last year.
Rewinding back to the OP:
I’d say that the SDMB is a pretty small pond. Not one with great public influence or a large audience. As such we’d be way down the target list of places for an organized effort to shill/troll. There’s no point in shill/trolling someplace where the readership is small and mostly fixed.
The goal of social media is to shout from the rooftops. For small players to speak with the same volume as the NYTimes. Speaking here, whether in ways that meet our community standards or not, is definitely mumbling in the bathroom with the water running, not shouting from the rooftops.
Somebody getting 30,000 likes or retweets is effective. Somebody here getting 500 pageviews not so much.
Bottom line:
IMO we can be pretty confident paid shill/trolls aren’t a problem we have. Yes, we do get the occasional drive-by newbie with an axe to grind. And in the political season we get more carrying political axes. But IMO we’re not subject to paid attacks.
So I’ve been shilling for nothing, huh. I smell communism or consumerism, you know, that thing I mean.
FTR- Yeah, I could have used that money too. But I’m not paid or hired or affiliated.
What that means is… there are no strings on my hands or feet and if something deserves both barrels, it Gets both barrels.
Also, I would never stoop so low as to provide any ammo to those that might try to make any candidate that I personally like ever have to apologize for a thing I say or do.
If I worked for or volunteered for someone, then they might have to… and I wouldn’t like that.
Madam Secretary, you don’t have to disavow a Damn thing. I’ve got this…
I’m sure if you asked the Trump campaign, they’d assure you that your paycheck’s in the mail.
A paid shill would tend to only have posts on one topic. And would be a newly registered member.
Same as a spammer.