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FYI: The owners of Progressive Eruptions and The Oracular Opinion have been following some cruel and unethical behavior on the part of right-wing extremists. One of them is "fearthedragon," which may be following you. He uses a generic photo and fans out to people on your blogroll. But there are others.
As you will see, these goons aren't just paid whores for the GOP or some right-wing nut-group, they can be dangerous and cause innocent people serious harm. One of the cruelest is stealing a photo of a policeman killed in the line of duty and using it for a fake blog.
HERE is the latest on Progressive Eruptions.
And HERE on The Oracular Opinion.
I want to caution about emails with viruses as well. I have been getting one from a "dinahj65" or something like that. They went to my email spam folder and my virus protecter caught them as well. Do be suspicious and use extra caution with your emails.
Also, I posted an article and video of Tea Partier Victoria Jackson's appearance on Hannity back in March. But this strange thing kept happening. On April 1, everytime I went to my blog the damn thing would start playing and I'd have to listen to that stupid voice of hers - it was like having a ghost. So, I just took it down. I read a couple of days later that this was apparently Fox's idea of an April Fool's joke.
Commendably, there are several conservative bloggers denouncing this kind of fraud, unethical and cruel behavior.
I have noticed at Sue's when she posts something from Faux Noise it always starts playing.. it is annoying and I usually try to pause it... sometimes you can't do that even.
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the reasons I won't use their videos but get it from You Tube or Media Matters.
Interesting. I hadn't noticed that but I simply do not watch Fox anything.
ReplyDeletethat's true Annette, I deleted it (i think, I'll go back and check)
ReplyDeleteI heard of this but it's as sick as it gets. The poor man's family. Boy that is so low.
ReplyDeleteWhat should I look for.. I get the people calling me names and stuff. Seems the hate mail is up.
I have a good program that let's me know they are jerks or spammers.
Tim: I use the Blogger Comment tab on my dashboard. If I don't like them I put them in Spam and they're blocked from then on out. I save them in the Spam folder because they might come in useful in the future.
ReplyDeleteI read about some of this stuff on Infidel too, this is really a trip Leslie ... just doing all this stuff must be a job in itself. Call me dumb on this one ... but some folk's I frankly dont understand. I reckon I'm just kind of simple when it come's to blog stuff ... and not out looking to screw folk's, or try to get folk's to follow me or whatever, or out to make a buck off it.
ReplyDeleteThanx ... take care Leslie
Another thing Leslie, and to anyone reading this for that matter ... these folk's that pull these stunt's and go out to try to mislead folk's for whatever reason, are basically the same type of folk's we have so many of in politic's, who just constantly make up stuff, that really have no integrity. Following these folk's or even communicating with them or argueing with them is pointless, and you could probably make more value of your time, just ignoring them, because they really have nothing to say of value, that could enlighten you, or benefit you in any way.
ReplyDeleteRC: Thanks. I can ignore most things except dishonesty and deceit.
ReplyDeleteLeslie, that is indeed despicable. On any given day, there are 15-20 attempts to hack PP. Most come from Asia and are looking for ways to post SPAM. But in recent months, there has been a marked increase in attempts origination from SC, GA an AL.
ReplyDeleteThat vid in the previous post was the highest collection of stupidity that I have seen in a while. Great post, but it's 13 minutes of my life I won't get back. :)
ReplyDeleteTC: LOL - I had one from Japan selling ye olde sex and I thought I'd never get rid of them. Changed the name of the post and still they came. Finally ended up taking the site down. Now that Blogger has instituted a Comments feature so that you can mark things as Spam, which automatically takes them off your blog but puts them in a spam folder and continues to do that after your first time, life is easier. Lisa the Loon can't annoy me anymore. I likethis much better than using moderation.
ReplyDeleteLisa G: Aw, you'll get it back.
Hey, thanks for this information. I didn't realize there is a way to flag comments as spam, and block the authors. This is great news.
ReplyDeletejadedj: It's a pretty new feature and seems to be very popular for obvious reasons. Go to your dashboard, click on the new Comments tab and the rest is easy.
ReplyDeleteRemember Lamont Cranston? You’d have to be a certain age.
ReplyDeleteWell, BJ - actually I don't and I think I'm a year older than you. Maybe i'm just a doddering old lady - or fool. ; )
ReplyDeleteLOL. Oh, Leslie, you’re nobody’s fool. The very first thought I had when I read this post was the words of Lamont Cranston aka “The Shadoow,” “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” I am of an age that I remember how thrilling those old radio shows were with my family gatherd ‘round the radio!
ReplyDeleteThanks for keeping us informed!
Interesting reading, Leslie - thanks for posting on it. The whole thing went totally under my radar...which is easy enough to do these days, lol. Glad I'm small-fry. I'd hate to have to deal with this kind of crap.
ReplyDeleteLeslie: Thanks for posting this. The more Bloggers that are aware, the better.
ReplyDeleteThis is a joint effort on behalf of Shaw and me--and in my opinion, a worthy cause.
It's not a Right or Left issue, but a right or wrong one. I've always said that I'll stand for what's RIGHT; therefore, I feel I need to back up my words with action, regardless of who is behind this egregious behavior, which appears to be the Right (and I’m a Conservative).
For your readers: There were approximately 70 "fake" blogs and so far we've shut down 27. I think that is pretty darn good and it shouts volumes, don't you think? If they were legit, why shut down?
Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep my eye out.
ReplyDeleteBee: Well, I certainly don't consider myself as anything but a small-fry. I'm nowhere near the level you and so many others are.
ReplyDeletePam: From 70 to 27. Amazing. You and Shaw deserve loud applause for untold hours of work. You guys should become sleuths. Have you had any contact with Blogger about this?
Nance: Well, thanks to our two cybernet detectives here, they should all be shut down soon.
This isn't surprising. Radical right types don't take losing elections and being out of power graciously. They're overbearing bullies when in power, vindictive and vicious when trying to get power back.
ReplyDeleteNote, too, though, the possibility some of these creeps have a moneymaking interest in putting up a whole bunch of blogs with stolen materia and photos, icons or avatars that link to commercial sites. They're looking for clicks that bring them money, so if they can dupe people into clicking what they think leads to another blog or story, but go to a commercial site instead, they get credit for the click through.
Spawning lots of different sites could be deviously useful for several things. One is generating buzz. When bots report back to wherever that there's a lot of buzz about this topic, that person or what have you, bloggers and reporters start looking into it. If it then winds up as blog posts and news stories, the system has been successfully manipulated. You get a megaphone effect going, IOW.
Another reason for setting up a string of blogs is to facilitate spam operations, including comment spam, and/or denial of service attacks, where a blog or Web site gets flooded with so much crap that legitimate visitors can't get to it. For the spam operation or for combating trolls, many blogs and e-mail programs require a visitor to give an e-mail address and/or Web site URL. Anti-spam utilities such as Spam Karma and Akismet check to see if the given site exists. If it does, an e-mail is more likely to go to your inbox or a blog comment is more likely to be approved as legitimate, and so on.
Years back I would sometimes visit a site called Blogs for Bush that was completely Astroturf. It existed to launch ugly diatribes against Bush administration critics and to tout the White House and GOP party line. This paid-for blog always had a bunch of sock-puppet commenters. From the writing style and British or Canadian spelling of some words, one staffer was obviously masquerading as at least three different regular commenters. The camouflage was so transparent as to be laughable. Every post would have 12-30 comments, and after awhile you could discern patterns to them.
Back when Technorati had pages of scrolling just-published posts for blogs of various kinds, including politics, it was obvious that a large number of right-wing bloggers had figured out a way to game the system. I could publish a post, ping Technorati and wait hours for it to appear on Technorati's new-posts page, if it ever appeared at all. Breitbart would publish a post and it would appear on Technorati quickly, and then show up again and again, even when it was no longer a new post. Same for posts by Michelle "Beware, She Bites" Malkin, Pamela Gellar and a long list of others.
As Bee said at the linked blog, the Net is today's version of the wild west.
tnlib, re: contacting Blogger about the fake blogs. I read somewhere that there are approx. 8 million blogs in cyberspace. I don't think Blogger would care about these 2 dozen or more frauds. In fact, most of the blogs Pam and I have discovered are active in our little corner of the blogsphere so I think by exposing the cheats that they are, they have folded out of guilt and embarrassment.
ReplyDeleteWe believe what's been going on is astroturfing of rightwing blogs.
Shaw: 8 million? Wow. No, you're absolutely right.
ReplyDeleteGiven the ugliness and bullying tactics we've seen from every other element of the radical right, does it come as any surprise some of them would do these things online?
ReplyDeleteYou can bet at least some of them are paid by some subsidiary of the Koch Bros. political/dirty tricks operations or some equivalent. (I would love to see a thorough investigation of the Swiftboat liars' finances since 2004, with emphasis on big bank deposits or big purchases not in keeping with earnings.)
SW: I don't think any of us are surprised at anything the right-wing does or how low they will sink in the politics of dirty tricks. For people always yakking about restoring honor and morality, they have a funny way of going about it.
ReplyDeleteSW: For some reason your first comment was blocked and went into my Blogger spam folder and I just now saw it. I'm so sorry especially since this is such a damn good comment. In fact, it is so good, that it deserves to be posted. Do you mind if I post it - or you can. I just think it needs to be read by more people.
ReplyDeletetnlib, you're welcome to post my comment if you wish. I'm flattered.
ReplyDelete