Ron Paul: The Computers Choice For President
They’re out there you know. They lurk in the deepest, darkest tubes just waiting for someone to post a poll or scouring for email addresses to spread their evil message to. You know who they are. I jokingly call them the Paul Nazis (think more Seinfeld, less Mein Kampf), an oppressive online regime dedicated to squashing any news story that fails to portray their ruthless leader in a favorable light.
Now this drama is taking a new and… uh… dramatic twist, they may not be real. Well at least some of them. It turns out that some overzealous Paul fans (Not the actual Paul campaign) have been using the same techniques as spammers to help drum up support for their cause according to a study done by the University of Alabama-Birmingham’s computer forensics research department. Furthermore some of these tactics may be illegal.
According to an Ars Technica story:
“We’ve seen many previous e-mails reported as spam from other campaigns or parties, but when we’ve investigated them, they all were sent from the legitimate parties,” department director Gary Warner said in a statement. In contrast, the Ron Paul messages clearly came from a number of other parties attempting to spoof where they came from. Paul’s campaign may run afoul of the authorities as a result of these e-mails. Warner believes that the messages may violate the CAN-SPAM Act due to their deceptive sending practices.
Now I’m not saying Ron Paul doesn’t have any real supporters, in fact I could name several just off hand. I have to respect their dedication. I just get annoyed when they (or any other campaign) flood online polls or social news sites. For a while there Digg seemed like it was nothing more than a Ron Paul news outlet.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
DEBUNKED.
It’s not Paul’s campaign or supporters spamming, it’s Giuliani’s, to no surprise.
http://disinter.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/giuliani-behind-alleged-ron-paul-spam/
We’re the backbone of these United States, and we’re going to utterly dominate the primaries and the general. Study Andrew Jackson’s two landslides if you think otherwise.
- NS
November 1st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
I think it’s safe to say that no campaign is funding this spam, it would be just to hard to hide. I’m also not convinced that Giuliani supporters are behind this though.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:47 am
That’s nothing compared to the cabal that’s ruling Reddit. Try to get a single, solitary non-Paul-biased report across there - you can’t! Even your article has been submitted and voted to zero along with dozens (no kidding!) of others.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:14 am
The reason why so many anti-Paul articles have been downvoted on Reddit in the past 24 hours is that Hosiah (who I suspect is SerfUf) is in the middle of spamming Reddit with any anti-Ron Paul news he can find with Google, even unfunny parody stuff that he apparently took seriously. He’s then gone on to verbally abuse people who complain about it and is generally acting like a spoilt brat.
I’ve seen more than one anti-Ron Paul article on the front page. It’s not difficult. But if you aren’t saying anything new (most of his were about the pro-Paul spamming, which has already appeared on Reddit’s front page) and you just attack everybody who disagrees with you, then your submissions will get voted down. No “cabal” needed, it’s the typical response to an asshole spammer, regardless of subject.
Oh look, he’s just started spamming the programming subreddit. I’m sure he’ll say that all the people downvoting him because they want programming articles in the programming section are part of this “cabal” as well.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I’m not getting into this one, I don’t use Reddit. I do know a few Ron Paul supporters that I’d consider normal, but on the other hand I think it’s beyond debate that there’s a group of Paul supporters (the “Paul Nazi’s” I jokingly refer to in this post) that are intent on spamming every inbox, poll, blog, forum, or social news site on the Internet.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Don’t get me wrong, I’m annoyed at the deluge of Ron Paul articles too. But SerfUp posted a complaint about being persecuted for posting anti-Ron Paul articles at the same time Hosiah was complaining about persecution on Reddit, and I wanted to point out that it was less about persecution as it was about shunning somebody who was having a childish tantrum. When somebody starts saying things like “I’m going to stomp you into the fucking dirt out of pure spite.” it’s not a Ron Paul supporter’s club that’s rejecting him from Reddit, it’s everybody with an ounce of decency.
http://reddit.com/info/628vl/comments/c02lr5w
So all I’m saying is that you should read SerfUp’s comment about “a cabal” in that light.