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BP Hired Company To Troll Users Who Left Critical Comments

Posted by Soulskill on from the can-you-see-why-people-love-oil-companies dept.

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."

10 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Did not happen in the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    "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.

    1. Re:Did not happen in the US by Desler · · Score: 5, Informative

      Wrong. It was within the US exclusive economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

    2. Re:Did not happen in the US by Desler · · Score: 5, Informative

      It isn't even technically true. Macondo Prospect is not international waters.

    3. Re:Did not happen in the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Economic Exclusion Zones are non-territorial, and in particular this area is not "effectively US waters." Not by any stretch of the legal imagination. They are not under the sovereign control of the United States, and are not in her possession.

      The OP is correct even if s/he is not using the correct terminology.

    4. Re:Did not happen in the US by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wrong. It was within the US exclusive economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

      Also, while the epicenter was out at sea, the soiled beaches were much closer to the coastline.

      I am not sure this is the worst environmental disaster. I would consider the extinction of the North American megafauna during the pleistocene to be worse.

    5. Re:Did not happen in the US by Blue+Stone · · Score: 5, Informative

      The oil spill did not happen in the United States. It happened in International Waters under the supervision of a British petroleum company.

      A British company?

      [J]ust how British is BP? Obviously it’s listed in London. And it’s got a British CEO. But BP employs 23,000 people in the US, compared to 10,000 UK workers. Around 40 per cent of BP’s shares are held in the UK. But around the same proportion is held in the US. And a glance at BP’s 2009 report (p29)shows that 26 per cent of BP’s crude oil production comes from the US (665,000 barrels a day out of 2,535,000 globally). A similar proportion of BP’s natural gas comes from the US. And 18 per cent of its oil is sold in the US too. And BP’s entire US operation is largely an inheritance from the 1998 merger with Amoco under Lord Browne.

      So we have a company with a large number of American workers, a large number of American owners, which sells American oil and gas to American customers, which is being attacked by an American president for polluting the American coastline.

      [source]

      --
      Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
    6. Re:Did not happen in the US by Truth_Quark · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would consider the extinction of the North American megafauna during the pleistocene to be worse.

      While true, this is changing the subject, because it doesn't contradict the claim that "the single largest environmental disaster in U.S. history." The Pleistocene was prehistoric.

  2. Re:Dream job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Where do i get a gig like this?

    Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

  3. Re:Dream job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Where do i get a gig like this?

    Burson Marsteller and Waggener Edstrom both have rapid response Social Media Management (SMM) teams working on Slashdot for clients like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook etc.

    Start showing some talent in product placement/evangelism or slandering (scroogling) their competition and they may approach you with a chance at the big time.

  4. Re:Dream job by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seriously why would you want it? Only trolls hire trolls and those trolls will treat their trolls even worse than the way regular people treat trolls. Obviously if you are looking for a gig, simply open up the yellow pages, look under public relation agencies, take your pick and be ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement that threatens everything up to and including crucifixion if you attempt to tell anyone the truth. If you want to how to be the worst of the worst, simply join and become an active member of either of the two dominant political parties in your country (doesn't make any difference about the brand or the country). Of course if you just want to look silly and be mocked become a fanbois of what ever stripe be it Apple products generally, Xboxes, Playstations or your choice of motor vehicles.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen