would it bother you to find out Government employees

[backwoodsbob]

are paid to go to message boards with the intent to direct public opinion about current events?Yes or no

[PDJane]

1. Yes, which doesn't mean that it would surprise me.

[backwoodsbob]

2. it wouldn't surprise me at all

not accusing anyone but it REALLY wouldn't surprise me

[Egalitarian Thug]

18. +1

[reformist2]

3. Would it bother you if they hired entire offices full of people in India and Pakistan to do this?

[uponit7771]

4. What bothers me more is the amount of winger FUDr and outright memes that get pushed into

...conversations as if it's impossible to recognize.

Even gov folk have to approach a position factually, FUDr folk don't even link and quote

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. I assume it's already happening

And it is happening for corps too.

Like I assumed calls were monitored for decades.

That does not mean I approve of it...when you live in a modern form of inserted totalitarianism.

[southernyankeebelle]

6. Where is this happening? Why would government employees do this? There is no reason

since government employees usually are there to help the customer.

[lpbk2713]

7. No surprise.

Military recruiters do it all the time in order to try to boost enlistment numbers.

And this is only one very small segment of the entire big picture.

[pscot]

8. It doesn't take too much imagination

to see it happening on DU right now.

[xiamiam]

9. i dont think its govt employees but I am certain that it happens

we don't even get legitimate news from our msm which is controlled and owned by the same folks who are newsworthy. I try to figure out how they get paid, per word? per post? Who pays them? Think tanks, private contractors, probably partisan groups as well..who cares, its easy to spot after a while.. willful ignorance and encouraging others to stay uninformed and engage in gossip instead of issues.

[Wait Wut]

10. No.

I can still think for myself.

One of these forum cowboys would do no more 'directing' than any one of us. It would just be another voice in the crowd.

[Nimajneb Nilknarf]

11. Yes, because that is not something that the (federal, at least) government is empowered to do.

Besides being a waste of the peoples' money.

[alsame]

12. There are lots of paid posters

everywhere, from political message boards to online product reviews.

[JoePhilly]

13. Sure ... Obama has a whole department of folks in the West Wing

who are paid to do just that.

At least that's what my Tea Party neighbor tells me.

[LWolf]

14. Yes, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I don't really think that they need to; they have plenty of stooges among the general population who gladly take on that role for them. They are easily observable right here, unless they are really being paid by the government.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

15. only if they didnt declare themselves.

[haele]

16. Well, with the Sequester, you should be seeing 10 - 25% less "disccussion direction".

Or certain days that are strangely empty of opinion. If it's all about the talking points, why come on and try to change opinion if you aren't being paid for it?
Actual government employees are pretty 9 to 5 about that sort of activity. It's the contractors that tend to be true believers or might come in and post on their "off time"...and most contractors aren't affected by Sequester. (Another reason to take a second look at profitizing - err, privatizing certain government functions...)

The best way to prove your premise is to watch the tone of discussion over the next three months.

Just a hint.

Haele

[Andy823]

17. What about the right wing paid trolls

Does that bother you? And lets not forget the tea party trolls, and the Rand Paul trolls. Those posters who are trying to suggest that anyone that doesn't agree with one side or the other are paid government employes seems a bit much to me, especially those who have been here since back in the early days.

[Downwinder]

19. I keep hearing about these paid jobs.

They must be tied to these work from home spams. I could sure use a little boost in my income. Not too much, wouldn't want to get in a taxable situation. I just don't know where to apply. Just as well, i might be like Snowden and talk about my work, "I was a troll for NSA."

[SecularMotion]

20. Are private security contractors considered Government employees?

Online astroturfing gets sophisticated

When security consulting firm HBGary was brought to its knees by the crusading group of online activists known as Anonymous, it confirmed many peoples’ worst suspicions about how corporations manage their reputations online. Among the leaked documents were plans to “disrupt” the work of journalists supportive of Wikileaks (theoretically to support of Bank of America, the alleged target of a forthcoming leak), to create false documents for its clients to mislead the press, and to create malware designed to impact the operations of Julian Assange’s whistle-blowing organization.

Buried among these outwardly distasteful revelations was an email discussion of something called “persona management” software. A diarist at the Daily Kos has identified the most alarming passages:

Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona.

To accomplish this, the company says it can create custom thumb drives or virtual machines that provide and keep updated virtual personas. A single human actor could possess numerous in-depth false online identities, each with a complete and deep web of convincing online connections and activities, and use them to disrupt discussions online.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/online-astroturfing-gets-sophisticated/6349

[Puzzledtraveller]

21. I'm sure it happens

perhaps even here.