Slashdot Mirror
BP Hired Company To Troll Users Who Left Critical Comments
An anonymous reader sends this news from Al-Jazeera:
"BP has been accused of hiring internet 'trolls' to purposefully attack, harass, and sometimes threaten people who have been critical of how the oil giant has handled its disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil firm hired the international PR company Ogilvy & Mather to run the BP America Facebook page during the oil disaster, which released at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf in what is to date the single largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The page was meant to encourage interaction with BP, but when people posted comments that were critical of how BP was handling the crisis, they were often attacked, bullied, and sometimes directly threatened. ... BP's 'astroturfing' efforts and use of 'trolls' have been reported as pursuing users' personal information, then tracking and posting IP addresses of users, contacting their employers, threatening to contact family members, and using photos of critics' family members to create false Facebook profiles, and even threatening to affect the potential outcome of individual compensation claims against BP."
Where do i get a gig like this?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They should have hired Dice.com. I hear they have great information on technology and technology jobs. A++++. Would use their site again.
So do they apply for the job? I wonder if they have to list references or if being a frequent poster of reddit's /r/atheism or 4chan is enough.
They should have spent it on coming up with more ways of saying "We're sorry".
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"the single largest environmental disaster in U.S. history."
The oil spill did not happen in the United States. It happened in International Waters under the supervision of a British petroleum company.
If they were only trolling posters on the Facebook page, how would they figure out their IP addresses? Impossible unless they hacked into Facebook.
"Reputation managers" (Aka professional lairs) are everywhere. You'll see a lot of them here on slashdot. Remember all those copy-pasted shill posts apologizing for windows 8? That was a riot. Those key phrases and talking points stick out like a sore thumb.
Or do the oil companies pay extra?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
How dare you even IMPLY such a thing?
And the last check hasn't yet cleared! I'm doomed, doomed I say!
I thought having the NSA on my butt was bad enough, now I'm going to have a zillion Slashdotters hounding me too.
Bloody Hell...
An anonymous source working for Anonymous claims the group is not worried as the emerging trolls are "newfags [who] can't triforce". Some experts, however, are not as confident on the group's ability to adapt to the increasingly competitive trolling market. Anonymous has yet to comment on the matter.
Betteridge's law
I just want to say that, though I often attack, bully, and sometimes insult people on this very forum, I'm not a paid shill.
It's more of a "calling".
(Wait... what? I can also get *paid*?)
Well, sort of. It pays to be paranoid.
You wouldn't be talking about it if you could do it, fucking fake ass bitch.
Wouldn't you be surprised if many companies did not do it? Large companies? Politicians? Governments?
How many comments on Slashdot are astroturf?
"Troll" and "astroturf" don't even begin to describe that. A far more apt label would be "mercenary".
The article doesn't claim that BP did this, as the title in /. states, but rather mentions that BP has been accused of doing so to the Government Accountability Project. If the claim were true it doesn't seem to be a "smart" strategy for BP and somewhat flies in the face of their advertisement campaign and the amount of money they agreed to pay out. They might be stupid enough to cause a gigantic environmental disaster but are they stupid enough to be behind this?
They did the last part themselves, anyways.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"the single largest environmental disaster in U.S. history."
The oil spill did not happen in the United States. It happened in International Waters under the supervision of a British petroleum company.
Really dude? Is this important?
Is there some official administrative "stamp" of accuracy for environmental disasters? Is there some "office of deflecting bad opinion" that is responsible for keeping people accurate?
This sounds *exactly* like something a paid troll would say. "Ya know, Vietnam wasn't really a war" and such-like.
Your statement only serves to defuse public outrage. It helps those responsible avoid and minimize any sense of responsibility to the public. We should be holding their feet to the fire, not looking for ways to find the situation acceptable.
And to be more clearly on point, the drilling was overseen by the Minerals Management Service, a federal agency responsible for the safety protocols of the drilling at the time, and whose failure allowed the accident to happen. It was very much a US disaster.
NSA is dumb like that
Wouldn't it be amusing if this article was from a competing astroturfing company?
Burning karma in hopes that a 6 year old, moderately active account will dispel accusations of "shill":
I'm most certainly no friend of BP's, but the evidence presented in the story really is not that compelling. People on the internet are huge dicks even without being paid to do it, and some people have a lot of time on their hands. Maybe some of them are family of BP workers, or grunt paper shufflers in the company, or just assholes, but none of the evidence seems worthy of this headline.
Intriguing, worth looking into? Sure. But if your headline is "BP did this" instead of "BP accused of this", you need a hell of a lot better documentation.
Alarmism helps no one.
Look at some of the comments on some reviews - like "Mindsight". Some of the comments are hostile, you think the reviewer said something bad about the commenter's mother! "The One Thing" is another.
I just thought it was an unusual number of trolls.
Now I find out they were PAID trolls.
Funny part: I used to own shares in BP/PLC.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
- Using Facebook
- Using your real name on Facebook
- Using your real name anywhere on the Internet
- Posting personal information and pictures of yourself and family on the Internet
You get what you deserve.
Pedantic but this is not the definition of a troll at all. Steven King would be trolling in his grave if he'd heard this.
Summary: BP accused of hiring
Headline: BP hired
Jew Hater ;p
Posting as Anonymous Coward provides the level of security and privacy needed in these delicate matters.
BTW, my posting IP is 127.0.0.1...
Who was it again? Was it Google who does those types of things so well? Or I know, it was Ogilvy and Co, but they farmed it out to Google, I bet. Google will do ANYTHINKG for money and control. They are worse than MSFT ever was and worse than Apple, IBM, etc.
Ogilvy & Mather is well respect advertising firm with hundreds of offices and part of WPP, an even larger firm. No way are they "internet trolls". Running a webpage for BP, sure. Doing quasi-illegal stuff, they could get caught for and likely aren't being much paid for.... I really really doubt it.
Every windows 8 media article, commenter seem to love windows 8.
Go down to the Gulf coast and say that to the faces of the Gulf fisherman who the spill effected, or the residents whose beaches were contaminated. I'm sure they'd agree with you most politely!
I'm on 3 other forums pretty regularly and it's obvious that people get paid to troll. There was bunch of people trolling the Yahoo Games chats during the elections; including a guy who seemed to be there 24-7, spouting political stuff and even with a trolling political name. There are people who do nothing but get on and dump articles and quotes from partisan websites and radio hosts.
What sealed it for me was during one of the 2012 conventions, ALL of the trolling stopped and JUST for the days of the convention.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The US government should have seized all of their American assets and forced them into bankruptcy.
No company deserves to survive a screw-up of this magnitude.
Where do i get a gig like this?
Why work for BP when you can work for NSA ?
Why don't you give our resident NSA astroturfer, Mr. Cold Fjord, a call ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Just trolling and threatening? It could have been much worse.
Spot fucking on man! Wish I dared show my support logged in but the troll/shill mods would hammer my karma again, and I just got mod points back.
"largest environmental disaster in U.S. history" The Lakeview Gusher spill was larger in terms of tons of oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeview_Gusher
I think the author meant "most expensive environmental disaster".
Al Jazeera is one of the most credible news sources around, and yes you prove Slashdot has plenty of fools.
And buy their gas. And CNN and the like will not rock the boat. It is a world where you can now do any bad thing you want and no one will really care. I just cant believe a society run in this manner will end well.
Fox News got caught doing the same thing.
Time makes more converts than reason
The BBC pay for people to support it on the Internet? Why would they do that? The only people they have to convince that they are doing a good job are government ministers who set the licence fee amount.
Seriously, what the fuck will it take to get a high-level executive of one of these companies to see the inside of a jail cell for an extended period of time?
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I seriously doubt if BP or Ogilvy & Mather (18,000 employees) would do something this stupid. While Al Jazeera is as fair and balanced as Fox News, they could have some conflict of interest with BP.
I have a suggestion...
Why is Snark Required?
Yo, dumbshit! go spam a forum in your own asstarded language, nobody wants to see your crap here!
The Slashdot article tries to claim it's proven, but if you look at the actual article, the headline reads "Is BP 'trolling' its Facebook critics?"
The usual reason for Betteridge's Law applies: the newspaper wants to suggest a sensationalistic possibility, but it knows it doesn't have any proof so it phrases it as a question instead of a statement. If there really was convincing evidence, the newspaper would not need to write the headline as a question.
Worst environmental disaster in US history? Not remotely.
The Dust Bowl takes the prize with no legitimate contenders.
In the Gulf of Mexico, the massive dead zone from fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi river has caused way more devastation than the BP oil spill.
Among offshore oil spills, the Exxon Valdez killed orders of magnitude more animal deaths and environmental damage. In the Gulf of Mexico, the Ixtoc I spill was far more damaging (being much closer to shore).
Among all oil spills, the Lakeview Gusher in 1910 was the largest by far.
Why can't people ever write about a on-going or recent oil spill without claiming that it is the worst ever?
Seriously?? Did no one notice that this piece originated with al-Jazeera, that bastion of truthfulness?
http://webutation.com/
.
This links you to a site which helps businesses deal with blogs such as http://www.ripoffreport.com/
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Yeah, and the same goes for you yoo!
Here in slashdot every time Microsoft is bashed or we talk about Windows Phones, either we are modded down or people say that piece of turd that is Windows mobile is better than iPad. So it is not only BP that hires trolls.
released the oil? hmm, how about going back to school for a little grammar education?
Yeah, when it's a foreighn company, it's evil. Exxon? Not so much.
The war of independence was won by the French. You were losing big time. France saved you and gave you that big statue. Your thanks? "Cheese eating surrender monkeys!" when they don't support your Prez in his attempt to beat up someone who insulted his dad.
"during the oil disaster, which released at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf "
So the disaster itself is a 'thing' that 'releases' oil? How stupid.
It SHOULD read: "during the oil disaster, in which at least 4.9 million barrels of oil were released..." (or "during which")
BP a British Punk
Supplying the world with energy in the form of fossil fuels requires a bit of tenacity. But, when a company goes full tilt, mean spirited, you are bound to get harsh reaction.
These were a tough lot to work for in the days when BP actually owned majority of Alaska oil output at Valdez, Ak and the US government stepped in to grab the company by the balls and take back the majority share to a US corporation, Alyeska.
Ah you've discovered an irrelevant pedant troll. Though common, it's one of my favourites.
Nice reply. It's going into my "quotes" file - thanks!
Don't bring clever to a stupid fight. You'll lose and get your clever all dirty and covered in dumb. The fact that the BBC is not a commercial entity is apparently lost on these folks, who are undoubtedly well-meaning yet woefully misinformed.
that teabaggers will troll for free.
I'm sure Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, and the World Wildlife Fund doesn't have any of its employees posting comments on forums. *sarcasm*
If you know what I mean. ;-)
I told 'im we already got one!