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.
"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.
Wrong. It was within the US exclusive economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
How much did you get paid to make this post?!?
It isn't even technically true. Macondo Prospect is not international waters.
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*?)
They should have spent it on coming up with more ways of saying "We're sorry".
While that makes the greater sense, where's the fun in doing the right thing, when you can do amazingly wrong things and then get caught, try to cover your ass and then hire yet-another company to harass your detractors?
The Internet - Not just for constructive collaboration anymore.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
single largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
But the summary didn't say "U.S. waters" or "U.S. territory". It said "U.S. history". Regardless where it took place, with 11 Americans dead, millions more affected, and criminal convictions in US courts, it was a huge part of US history.
If they were only trolling posters on the Facebook page, how would they figure out their IP addresses? Impossible unless they hacked into Facebook.
The article is crap. It's basically a bunch of unsubstantiated allegations without even a shred of evidence. It's possible BP did the things they claim, but I cannot fathom why they would. Delete comments, sure, but threaten bodily harm? What would be the point?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
BP used the "xzvf" switches.
Bark less. Wag more.
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.
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.
A British company?
[source]
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
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.
They should have spent it on coming up with more ways of saying "We're sorry".
Being a multi-billion dollar megacorp means never having to say you're sorry.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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.
We've reached a sort of socioeconomic metastability wherein large corporations receive little penalty owing to the difficulty required to sue/prosecute them. Too big to fail, but also too big to require obedience to any form of morality.
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?