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March 28, 2010 06:44 PM UTC

Sock Puppets and 'Google Monkeys' Abound

  • 110 Comments
  • by: redstateblues

(Or, maybe Kenney’s just not very good at it? – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Ah, the information age. As the Denver Post business section reports:

Armed with talking points, volunteers and staff members – even independent contractors paid several hundred dollars for a couple days of work – serve as “Google monkeys” and “sock puppets.” They monitor stories and post under pseudonyms to dispute or support a view, or simply to generate interest in a topic.

Of course, this isn’t news to anyone who has been reading internet message boards for any amount of time. What’s a little more eye catching is when people like GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams and Democratic political consultant David Kenney are quoted as saying it’s common practice:

“They’re all doing it,” said David Kenney, a Democratic political operative whose clients include Gov. Bill Ritter and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. “There’s not a campaign in the state of Colorado that doesn’t have some paid staff posting stuff.” [rsb emphasis]

…

As campaign manager for Republican John Thune’s bid against Democratic incumbent Tom Daschle in the South Dakota Senate race in 2004, Wadhams hired two bloggers who consistently criticized the local paper’s coverage as pro-Daschle. At the time, the bloggers didn’t disclose they were being paid by the Thune campaign to post comments.

…

“The blogosphere has definitely become a real factor in campaigns,” Wadhams said. [rsb emphasis]

Sock puppets are nothing new to those who read blogs like Colorado Pols on a regular basis, but the term Google Monkey was a new term for me. Another political consultant who’s no stranger to online political communities, Tyler Chaffee–who was a little more discreet in his quote to the Post–explains:

…[T]he term “Google monkey” refers to workers who set up news alerts through the Internet search engine. “Every time a campaign is mentioned, they’re paid to . . . see if there are comments they can leave.”

It’s a brave new world in the blogosphere, kids. You have to really pay attention, because that person you thought was a really nice guy who agrees with you a lot could turn out to be… that’s right, you guessed it–triguardian.

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110 thoughts on “Sock Puppets and ‘Google Monkeys’ Abound”

  1. Dave Kenney last year:

    The Kenney Group is handling Ritter’s re-election bid, and Kenney learned Sunday that a blogger had traced four similar anonymous postings praising the Democratic governor to Kenney’s office.

    And last week, readers of Colorado Pols, one of the state’s best-known political blogs, accused Kenney’s staffers of doing the same thing.

    “Between fantasy football, March Madness and political blogs, I apparently have to crack down on the use of my office computers,” Kenney said.

    Asked if he himself had posted anything anonymously, Kenney said, “God, no.”

    Dave Kenney today:

    “They’re all doing it,” said David Kenney, a Democratic political operative whose clients include Gov. Bill Ritter and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. “There’s not a campaign in the state of Colorado that doesn’t have some paid staff posting stuff.”

    Full of shit last June, or today? You decide, because he’s necessarily full of shit in one of these cases.

    1. I think Kenney’s comment was that his team would not do so anonymously. I don’t know if that is true and I don’t know if that is still his stand, but I believe that was his approach back then.

      If so, I think both comments do fit that.

      1. Kenney said he personally has never posted anything anonymously, and that his staff must be using their time inappropriately.

        Of course, that kind of falls apart when he says ever campaign in Colorado has paid staff doing what he denied knowledge of his own staff doing.

    2. there was also this little tidbit I found interesting. Not disclosing your employment is against FCC regulations:

      The Federal Trade Commission revised endorsement rules in October to require bloggers to disclose any “material connections” they have with the seller of a product or service they review.

      But in the article, they quoted an assistant prof at DU who says that doesn’t apply to political communication, so don’t expect to start seeing any full disclosure from the army of sock puppets in the political blogosphere any time soon.

      2. but the FTC has no control over protected political speech. It would merely be embarassing I suppose if paid bloggers were outed working for the campaigns they touted.

        Full disclosure- I joined coloradopols at the request of a particular campaign (you’ll never guess which…), but I am not connected with them in any significant way (they don’t give me any talking points, for example). And I have no financial relationship with the campaign, other than they are very willing to take my meager donations!

        2. I would think it’s even more “fair” for paid political speech to disclose a) that they are paid and b) by whom.

          It’s like the tv and radio ads that end with this message paid for by Citizens for Candidate X and if it’s the campaign it should include the message from the candidate I am Candidate X and I approved this message

          Otherwise, what happens when all media converges on the internet?  By your interpretation of the FTC campaigns and candidates could just avoid the embarrassment of admitting they have any paid media at all.

          1. are not regulated by the FTC, but the FEC. And they have to do with trying to show that these ads are not coordinated in any way with a campaign in violation of federal law.

            But we all know that’s a lark, right?

              1. and life should be more fair.

                At least our laws and regulations should help balance the scales as much as possible in my view which is what makes me a liberal.

                I am sure the conservatives will argue the Darwinian point instead. Go ahead now… don’t disappoint me.

              1. If, if five years, this steaming turd of a bill is even deficit-neutral, we can meet up and you can kick me in the nuts as hard as you can.  If it’s not, I get to fire away.  I’ll even spot you the $300 billion ‘Doc fix’ that’s part of the health care bill but the Dems separated off to make it look like it was under $1 trillion.

                If you really believe that this bunch of idiots is going to somehow find $500 billion in ‘waste’ in Medicare, then you might be gullible enough to take me up on my offer.

                1. and fertilize the soil in doing so.

                  Really, LB, every piece of legislation passed in the last century has been a steaming turd. What happens is that the bacteria and worms of our administrative state break it down and release its nutrients, and beautiful gardens grow where feces had fumed.

                  Buck up, amigo. It’s all just a part of the grand scheme of the inscrutible universe….

                  1. THis is the worst thing to happen to this country since the Great Society or the New Deal.

                    We wouldn’t be talking about it if not for a 600 million dollar bribe on Christmas Eve.  It’s a disgrace.

                    1. if you don’t like those other “steaming turds” either, despite the garden that has grown from their soil, then there’s not much to say about it, now is there?

                      On the other hand, if you prefer the 65 years of phenomenal, historically unprecedented economic growth, advance of civil and economic rights, and improvements in the overall quality of life that Americans have enjoyed due to the “salutory non-neglect” of those other “steaming turds,” to a blind ideology that only promises to provide a paradise of deprivations, you recognize that this bill is just another step in the march of human progress, a march which serves our interests far more than it undermines them.

                    2. Except all of those programs plus this new bill are combining nicely to bankrupt our country.

                    3. the sky has always been falling, and it’s going to be falling for a long time to come. We aren’t the verge of bankruptcy, and economists generally recognize that the national debt is not yet a high enough proportion of GDP to threaten impending national fiscal instability.

                      When we went off the Gold Standard, there was the same certainty of impending economic collapse, but, lo and behold, our economy not only survived, but actually depended on being freed from that physical anchor.

                      There are challenges we face that are far more urgent than your imagined fiscal crisis, such as global climate change and the real costs it will impose on future generations, an impending actual crisis that you seem to think is less important than your non-impending and far more manageable one.

                    4. Any AGW proponents aren’t allowed to use the words “chicken” and “little” in the same sentence.

                    6. won’t contribute to that bankruptcy at all, right?

                      I always wonder why conservatives cry about the cost of entitlement programs but never question a military budget that’s probably 10 times what it needs to be. And by that, I mean that we could slash – really slash – the military budget and have absolutely zero change to our strength.

                    9. At least you’re not being a liberal caricature by casting opposition to your goofy policies as being caused by unintelligence.

                      That’s the crux of this garbage bill – even though a majority of Americans oppose it, we’ll bribe and cheat it into law because the poor rubes just don’t know what’s good for them.

                    12. Like the truth that we can slash the military budget and lose no military strength as a result?

                    13. I love this response … most (and I do mean MOST) of the military budget does absolutely nothing to make the military stronger. In fact, it consists of … wait for it … giving people money for nothing.

                      Google “waste,” “fraud,” and “defense budget” sometime and get back to me.

                    14. past, present, and future.  The range is due to who’s counting and exact content.  Salaries, equipment, pensions, the VA, interest on bonds and the deficit, etc.

                      We spend as much as the rest of the world combined.

                      We have bases in something 135 countries.  

                      This is the 8,000 pound gorilla that no is wanting to wake up during all the deficit hand wringing going on.

                      I’m not anti-military and certainly not anti-personnel.  I’m just pro-right-sized-military.

  3. I can’t speak to campaigns, but for regular marketing on the web there’s a ton of other tricks you can do and I would be surprised if campaigns aren’t doing some of them.

    ps – On the Google monkey note, we have news alerts for all of our competitors and when we see a post by someone upset at how difficult one of our competitors is, we offer them a free copy of our software.

  4. Just for the hell of it, I answered a Craig’s List job for paid blogging for a Senatorial candidate. I replied mostly because I wanted to find out who the candidate was and what their transparency was when it came to blogging, attached my resume and heard back 24 hours later. The salary offer was good, really good actually. But no amount of $$$ could ever even out the Crist ick factor.

    So yeah, it’s happening and it’s not even really under the radar anymore.

      2. and this was the week of March 13th. In the event that they haven’t hired the writers yet, drop me an email (my address is in my profile here) and I’ll forward you the info, including the email I got from Crist’s guy.  

        1. I’m assuming the job listing wasn’t in Florida Craigs Lists — so that means some of these Bennet and Romanoff shills on here could be transmitting from a continent away? And sucking Colorado campaign dollars into other states’ economies? That’s — well, basically every single aspect to that is outrageous. I mean, duh, but sheesh!

          1. And trying to watch the dollars, I’d hire people in PRC. They tend to have great colloquial English (in India they tend to speak British English) and will work their ass off. You just want to make sure that the person who made the decision can be dropped if their location becomes public and you need to blame someone.

            1. was so ahead of the curve when he enlisted Indonesian bloggers to stuff an online poll on his behalf. If only triguardian had been that ingenious …

  5. I am not surprised by this.

    the RW posters at the post for instance swarm on ANY article that has “Obama” in the headline. that article then gets upwards of 50 posts spewing Hate, RW Talking points or blasting the Post as a “Leftist rag” simply for printing an article that does not disparage president Obama.

    should one prove those posters as nothing but propagandists… they then accuse you of being paid to post.

    (interesting as to how that works)

    I for one do like to argue with propagandist Lies. I monitor conservative sites like FReerepublic and conservative hideout. simply to hear what the echo chamber is saying.

    thus I have seen my own screen name become a target for banning.

    the “Freepers” as they are called organize against individual “Leftist” posters, spam and skew online polls routinely.

    part of the attacks include deluging the editors with complaints. and proclaiming how many “more” republicans than Democrats are posting on a particular subject. (yes many more paid multiple screen name RW posters are posting) Election results prove this.

    So it is not paranoia to now know why I was banned from posting at the Denver post. because of “reviving more complaints than anyone else”.

    “personal attacks”  

    oh and that I am a “provocateur” too.

    1. That’s all those porn sites you visited 🙂

      On a serious note, what’s wrong with any of this. Our founding fathers had sock puppets who posted articles in the broadsheets tearing in to each other. The technology is different but the activity is as old as democracy.

      1. These are campaigns trying to create 100% manufactured public sentiment for their causes or against their enemies.

        It might be legal under the first amendment, but that doesn’t make it, at the very least, unseemly.

            1. that some of the things some of our founding fathers did, even a couple of the things we celebrate now, were really not so admirable if looked at through a clear rather than “patriotic” lens.

              The fact that we have a national mythos, and have turned historical human beings into national demigods, does not mean that reference to their having done something is, in and of itself, justification for doing something similar today.

            3. But that we had this exact same issue then and even so, they were able to create this country. As such, you might argue that while manufactured public sentiment feels wrong, it might be a positive influence (although I have no idea how/why).

        2. … about a supporter who has already been writing publicly in a number of forums being asked to post to this site? Seems rather natural to me.

          And after coming here and reading the blogs which support the opposing candidate, I can see why the campaign would want to do that.

          And the animosity expressed when opposing POVs are written is almost shocking, but then I forgot I’m dealing with bloggers.

        1. is PolSpeak for the cosmic consciousness of which we each are but one face, and to which we all belong.

          There is a more prosaic history to the use of the name, involving the use of sock puppets to try to rig a front-page editor election, but I’m sticking with my version.

          2. cosmic consciousness – works for me.

            But ….for the more recently arrived:

            – one day last Fall Colorado Pols asked for nominations for new front page editors.

            – a few days after nominations- CoPols asked us to vote

            – a recent arrival named triguardian was reported to have …

            … insert mystery about how much CoPols actually knows about us….



            – and triguardian was banned from CoPols

            – “I am triguardian” has become an inside joke,  funnier to some than others.

            SH, TFO’s explanation is better.

            ANd if you use the comment or diary search you and scroll back to November (?) last fall, you’ll find the dairy that explained it all.  (Don’t search  ‘triguardian’ –  try spartacus or  front page editor election

              1. It’s an experimental political bot let loose by the Gene Nichol campaign, which was, you’ll have to admit, ahead of its time. When the bot wranglers went on to greener pastures, someone forgot to shut it off, and it’s been propagating itself ever since. It continues to thwart anti-virus software and currently resides on an Estonian server.

        1. I’ll give you the credit of admitting the truth–I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen a shill admit they’re a shill (unless they’re shilling for themselves of course!)

          But seriously, my comment wasn’t meant as a slight so much as it was answering your question. The triguardian story is the epitome of the, as you said, embarrassment that could be created from these kinds of internet campaign strategies.

          1. I was going for tongue in cheek. It wasn’t meant to be taken quite so seriously.

            But more seriously I wonder how many shills are hiding in the bushes? Seems like a lot from what I read. I wonder how many are being paid? Seems like too many if any… (overpaid if they are in any case…).

            1. I don’t know anyone getting paid to post here.

              I would not be hugely surprised, but I bet the best posts come from people who just care about having a place to post.

              2. You shouldn’t be using a State computer to access this site.

                You probably signed a “terms of use” about your use of my (i.e., the taxpayers’) computer.

                If you’re using my computer at work, then you should not only be banned, but fired.

                2. and really presumptive. She never said she was using a state computer. Ever heard of PDAs. smartphones, lap-tops with WiFi? So many ways to connect, but you jump on the only way to justify your anti-government diatribe?

                  Oh, but I forgot- if she’s being paid enough to afford any of those luxuries, then of course we’re wasting our tax-payer dollars over-paying her.

                3. A mac. The state doesn’t pay out for a mac…facists!! And I don’t work full time. Maybe I should have said I do this on my half days off? But I do use their bandwidth so you’re right I guess.. unless I can actuarially (sp?) apply all the taxes I pay as well onto what the use of that stream would cost.

                  Or I can go back to read only.  

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