Legality/Ethics of paid bloggers/posters?

Politics & Elections
1

I guess this could go either in GQ or Elections or even Great Debates, but I was wondering about the legal and ethical ramifications of paid bloggers/posters on the internet.

I'm sure we've all seen the new arrivals showing up in the Elections and Great Debates forums and I'm sure that most of them are simply dedicated partisans of greater or lesser intelligence and persuasive abilities.    But lets assume that some political party or PAC is paying for people to frequent message boards,  post responses to articles and so on.    Does this fall foul of any FEC requirements to report influence for content that appears in a broadcast medium?    Or is this an as yet unregulated (and probably unregulatable) gray area?

Would it be a violation of board rules for someone to be paid to post here? Would it be unethical for them not to announce any financial incentives?

2

Just when I think I have my paranoia level finely honed, an idea is presented which suggests I may still not be suspicious enough…

3

No expert in the legalities, but I’m guessing it’s a gray area.

I’ve commented about “walking, talking Paid Political Advertisements” posting here just within the past couple days, but I don’t seriously think that anyone’s collecting money for posting, on this board at least. Maybe elsewhere. Are we talking about people who uniformly post off-topic screeds that seem to have little purpose other than to bash a particular party?

If so, whoever’s paying them is not much getting value for money, because from what I’ve seen, such people are treated with nothing but disdain and derision. I’ve not seen any signs that anyone at all takes, say, a one-line reference to the Democratic National Convention as a “freak show” as any kind of convincing commentary or argument, to use one random example.

Yeah, I suppose, someone might say, “But what about the lurkers?” The problem there is that it seems unlikely one could accurately measure the relative effectiveness of this sort of notional political seeding, so no way of assigning a rational value to it.

Likewise, if someone is cross-posting the same content to different forums across the 'Net, that seems to get found out and spotlighted fairly quickly.

I’d say if any such thing is going on, it’s got to be a hell of a lot more subtle than that to work, and absent any evidence one way or another, I’d be amazed if anyone were getting more than a trivial amount for such a ‘service’.

Hey, maybe I’m totally wrong; I’m open to argument on this.

Also, if someone wants to slip me a little something to put in a good word for something or other, PM is your friend, know what I mean? :wink:

4

If that stuff does happen, I don’t think the people are paid to necessarily present a home-run argument every single time (or ever, for that matter), but rather to create chatter. Make it look like their numbers are legion, and have content get indexed on search engines so when people search for things like “Democratic National Convention,” there’s the possibility that this stuff shows up in the results.

It also works to change the subject. I’ve noticed that in certain politically-oriented threads, certain posters just come in and post off-topic things, which derails the the topic, and which drags the discussion into a completely unrelated debate. Say posters A, B and C are discussing the positives of the DNC speakers. Poster D comes in and posts something inflammatory and off-topic. Posters A, B, and C then feel like they have to answer that post, which moves them away from any positive discussion of the DNC. Mission accomplished for Poster D.

Are there paid posters? I don’t know. Is it ethical? I honestly don’t see how it *isn’t *ethical. Unless these posters are violating the rules of a community, as annoying as they can be, I don’t see how it’s “unethical.” It would just be a campaign tactic, either free or paid. Nothing more, nothing less.

5

I’m new to this board, but I have wondered about some of the posters who seem utterly resistant to facts or data. At first I thought they might be Mechanical-Turk types. But some have join dates that are pretty old, so that makes no sense. Why maintain an account for years just to make an occasional $0.01/post? But the thread de-rails are annoying and make it hard to have an actual discussion that moves forward. Especially annoying is when nearly half of all the threads are gone off into the same ditch.

6

[Quote=Happy Lendervedder]
It also works to change the subject. I’ve noticed that in certain politically-oriented threads, certain posters just come in and post off-topic things, which derails the the topic, and which drags the discussion into a completely unrelated debate.
[/Quote]

Agreed. There certainly are at least a few members whose sole interest in this board seems to be opposing a particular political view by whatever means deemed necessary, almost as a matter of form and principle. I would hope that’s an annoying hobby rather than coordinated sabotage, but I don’t feel like much needs done other than try our best to ignore the attempted hijacks. I do recognize it can be very difficult indeed to avoid taking the bait.

7

Just one quick point–what would be wrong with a paid blogger? Why would that be different than a paid magazine writer?

And, frankly, I don’t think anyone would pay anyone for the horrible job anyone does convincing the opposite side on this messageboard. At least, they shouldn’t.

8

Agree with both of those. Anyone good enough at doing that would make more money publishing openly.

This would also be the wrong board to do it on. The only suspicious Dopers are the ones who claim to have actually changed their mind based on a debate or argument here.

9

My gf works in advertising. Creating a persona to interact online is a big deal (at least at her agency). The gray area legally is in tobacco advertising.

10

Same reason why “transparency” is such a big buzzword in this campaign cycle.