Paid Posting / Astroturfing / Stealth PR - have you encountered this on the web?

A google search on "paid posting" suggests that this is quite a widespread activity.

I started becoming aware of this due to a suspicious number of pro Jade G00dy postings on the Digital Spy forum (in a moment of weakness - but it soon became fascinating). Also noticed that there was a lot of extreme right wing race baiting when discussing Muslim contestants on Big Brother, which always struck me as accounts created with this as their ulterior motive, almost to stealth market racism.

It also has me wondering about the online comments sections in newspapers, "Have your say" etc. Since you can't tell who anyone is on the internet, what percentage of these posts do you think are genuine, and which are by people posting professionally with an ulterior motive?

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There is that, but there are real people doing it too, who aren't bots and to all intents and purposes could be taken for a regular poster.

I noticed the Digital Spy Big Brother racists, who were smart enough not so say anything that would get them banned but were oddly over-critical of any non-white contestants and apologists for any bad behaviour by a white contestant, but I just figured they were cunts.

They were cunts but I'm pretty sure some of them were $t0rmfr0nt cunts.

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