Re: Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being capture
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:33 am
Cancún climate talks in danger of collapse over Kyoto continuation
by John Vidal, environment editor
December 3, 2010
Comments
SteB1
5 Dec 2010 3:16
A ten-hour working day, being paid by the word, would seem to be a possible explanation for the tidal wave of standard lies, misunderstanding and complete ignorance that he has just produced over the past few hours.
Yes I tend to discount conspiracies or the worst options without a lot of evidence. However, my experience with some of these contrarians causes me to question whether these are really joe public off the street types doing it because they care strongly about the issue. Firstly, I don't know of many enthusiastic people that would spend 10 hours or more a day posting lie, after lie - lies that get repeatedly exposed. The other week, one of them pursued me for over 12 hours, from the afternoon to 4:30am in the morning. They tried one intellectual trick after another to catch me out and try and get something on me. Initially it seemed it was a typical uninformed bloke off the street making uninformed comments. However, as it progressed I realised I was arguing with a professional who had a background in the arts, philosophy, economics etc.
I also see very strong evidence that these troll attacks are coordinated. When one of these environmental articles is posted the so called contrarians descend on it en masse, no matter what time of the day the article is posted. There are ridiculous amounts of recommendations given to any contrarian comment, no matter how short, if it is complete drivel, and even if the claim is shown to be completely untrue. The deliberate attempt is to hoodwink the public into believing that contrarians are a mass joe public movement, when in reality they appear to be a very noisy minority. At the very least there is a forum or social networking site that these trolls are using to coordinate their attacks.
There appears to be little doubt in my mind that this is a coordinated and orchestrated viral propaganda campaign. The clear attempt is to repeat the same lie over and over, and to drown out all the informed commenters by sheer force of numbers. The attempt is clear, and that is to litter all environmental reporting with a mass of lies and distortions in the hope that it will mislead a few more of the public. I have been arguing that the natural world matters since I was very young and before any of these issues became popular. I have nearly 40 years experience of the type of argument people put up. What is new is that these people carry on after you repeatedly expose them for not knowing what they are talking about, and having made false statements. They don't care, you are arguing with people that have no intellectual integrity at all. This is very unusual. Normally when someone is personally motivated to argue something, they naturally care about the subject. But these people do not give a damn about being right or not. So what motivates someone to post one inaccurate claim after another, and to not care about repeatedly being exposed for using intellectual dishonesty?
As for myself, I am temporarily housebound, I have cared passionately about the natural world since I was a young child, and certainly no one is paying me to do it.
by John Vidal, environment editor
December 3, 2010
Comments
SteB1
5 Dec 2010 3:16
@ScepticMike
I was very suspicious of the idea that people are being paid to write" denialist "nonsense on these pages but "OceaninMotion" has raised doubts in my mind.
A ten-hour working day, being paid by the word, would seem to be a possible explanation for the tidal wave of standard lies, misunderstanding and complete ignorance that he has just produced over the past few hours.
Yes I tend to discount conspiracies or the worst options without a lot of evidence. However, my experience with some of these contrarians causes me to question whether these are really joe public off the street types doing it because they care strongly about the issue. Firstly, I don't know of many enthusiastic people that would spend 10 hours or more a day posting lie, after lie - lies that get repeatedly exposed. The other week, one of them pursued me for over 12 hours, from the afternoon to 4:30am in the morning. They tried one intellectual trick after another to catch me out and try and get something on me. Initially it seemed it was a typical uninformed bloke off the street making uninformed comments. However, as it progressed I realised I was arguing with a professional who had a background in the arts, philosophy, economics etc.
I also see very strong evidence that these troll attacks are coordinated. When one of these environmental articles is posted the so called contrarians descend on it en masse, no matter what time of the day the article is posted. There are ridiculous amounts of recommendations given to any contrarian comment, no matter how short, if it is complete drivel, and even if the claim is shown to be completely untrue. The deliberate attempt is to hoodwink the public into believing that contrarians are a mass joe public movement, when in reality they appear to be a very noisy minority. At the very least there is a forum or social networking site that these trolls are using to coordinate their attacks.
There appears to be little doubt in my mind that this is a coordinated and orchestrated viral propaganda campaign. The clear attempt is to repeat the same lie over and over, and to drown out all the informed commenters by sheer force of numbers. The attempt is clear, and that is to litter all environmental reporting with a mass of lies and distortions in the hope that it will mislead a few more of the public. I have been arguing that the natural world matters since I was very young and before any of these issues became popular. I have nearly 40 years experience of the type of argument people put up. What is new is that these people carry on after you repeatedly expose them for not knowing what they are talking about, and having made false statements. They don't care, you are arguing with people that have no intellectual integrity at all. This is very unusual. Normally when someone is personally motivated to argue something, they naturally care about the subject. But these people do not give a damn about being right or not. So what motivates someone to post one inaccurate claim after another, and to not care about repeatedly being exposed for using intellectual dishonesty?
As for myself, I am temporarily housebound, I have cared passionately about the natural world since I was a young child, and certainly no one is paying me to do it.