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John McCain Paying Supporters To Spam?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Bad Decisions, Blogging, McCain, Partisan Nonsense

This should piss off anybody who runs a blog, be they left, right or center. Because while “astroturfing” is a pretty common practice in comments sections, giving people incentives to spam is not only dishonest, it smacks of desperation.

From Washington Post:

Spread John McCain’s official talking points around the Web — and you could win valuable prizes!

That, in essence, is the McCain campaign’s pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of “AstroTurf” campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper.

On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (”John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.

So…if I see this type of astro-turfing from either side, I’m going to delete it. Nobody will use this blog to copy talking points, and especially not to earn prizes.

I hope my fellow moderate bloggers will do the same.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Bad Decisions, Blogging, McCain, Partisan Nonsense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “John McCain Paying Supporters To Spam?”

gerryf Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! There was no way Jimmy could believe half the crap he types…..

just kidding
Blech: Earn points for propaganda | BNN Broadcast Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] thoughts here and here and [...]
Dollface Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Funny tactic for the guy who doesn’t use email. Way to go, John.
Bob Aman Says:
August 8th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Personally, I wouldn’t delete those comments. As far as I’m concerned, this is worse than spam. If you want to discourage the behavior, edit the comment instead.

Prefix any of these comments with:

“This comment paid for by John McCain 2008.”

Include a link back to this post.

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