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January 21, 2009 at 14:49:24

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Promoted to Headline (H3) on 1/21/09:

Downvote Bots Fight Propaganda War

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By George Washington (about the author)     Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: George Washington - Writer

Government propagandists, their hired private contractors and useful idiots are creating "downvote bots" or scripts to bury stories which question the government.

Anyone who has posted news items questioning the government's version of 9/11, the government's unquestioning support for Israel, or a host of other topics has probably noticed that all of their recent stories get downvoted virtually simultaneously, which defies the laws of probability.

One free, simple scripting program to create automatic downvotes of certain topics or news posters is called "Greasemonkey", which is commonly used on large social news sites such as Reddit.

For example, there are some 2,480 hits for the google search site:reddit.com greasemonkey downvote. This is some 2,480 times that Reddit users are publicly admitting to using greasemonkey (see also this).

Propaganda agents obviously aren't going to publicly brag about what they are doing, and you can bet that their use of downvote bots is much greater. Moreover, they probably have more sophisticated software than Greasemonkey.

As one example of a publicly-available downvote bot, this script automatically downvotes any stories on 9/11, Gaza, torture, Guantanamo and a host of other topics, downvotes certain posters, and engages in other forms of cyber warfare.

I call on programmers to figure out a way to fight this cyberwarfare propaganda.

Note: Greasemonkey has valid uses as well, such as blocking pop-up ads.

 

www.WashingtonsBlog.com

George Washington

George Washington is a pen name. I am using the pen name, with the approval of the publisher.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

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These techniques by richard on Wednesday, Jan 21, 2009 at 7:29:38 PM
I sure agree, except ... by meremark on Wednesday, Jan 21, 2009 at 8:39:37 PM
dead link by Jim Eldon on Thursday, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:46:57 AM
JUST ANOTHER TACTIC OF by William Whitten on Thursday, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:37:07 AM

 
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