Is DKOS run by Facebook political parties?
A fascinating question posed by Liberaltarianish commenting on Take the kids' pics down, please. Holy smokes, the diary just got removed as I typed this (April 6, 2010 0733 PDT). Removed by Tracker, the author, or by DKOS? I don't know. Diary was by Tracker the comment on existence of DKOS Facebook groups manipulating DKOS content was by Liberaltarianish and is linked and quoted below.
Be interesting to see why the diary was removed. Was Tracker threatened with retaliation by a DKOS Facebook political party?
My own experience that leads me to think that the person was right about the existence of DKOS Facebook political parties (as yet secret political parties) began with a diary by one of the more "popular" diarists.
This diary, (AZ-Sen) Nut farming lobbyist seeks Dem nod in classic case of WTF? suddenly appeared at the top of the Rec list. When I clicked on it, it was a short sarcastic attack on a Democrat in AZ thinking of running against McCain.
Turns out the attacked "nut farmer lobbyist" was an outstanding liberal Democrat, Nan Stockholm Walden, helped write the Clean Water bill with Moynihan, was Bill Bradley's Chief of Staff, the "nut farm" was a pecan farm in her husband's family for 75 years, the "lobbying" to protect the AZ aquifer from mining.
The diarist was touting his "employment" with a PAC, PeanutButterPAC, started by another DKOS member, and how his research for this PAC "uncovered" the "nut farmer lobbyist" who he was "exposing".
I pointed out that the diary was totally wrong, used tea bagger tactics of exaggeration and distortion, and should be taken down. The three partners in the PAC tried to HR me but other RECS prevented it and they were forced to write a mea culpa diary but only after their censorship failed. They posted another diary promoting their PAC, mentioned me by name and put in a link to my DKOS member page.
Shortly after that, I found my comments on various threads quickly being HR'd by two people (enough to get comment immediately hidden) and only two people but not the same two people but by the same group of people so that the comments were almost immediately hidden. The comments were civil, didn't break any posted rules. I had (still have at this point in time) recently gotten TU status so my comments generally on DKOS were OK and even recommended. I had no conversations with these people. They were not commenting in the specific diaries. Who were these people? Clearly they had been organized outside of DKOS.
Then breakingranks noted that Maybe he over-promised his boss/client the ability to get on the Rec List? Maybe he was caught at ballot-stuffing?
Then Liberaltarianish made this comment in the now deleted diary.
I think there's a group of Kossacks who are all facebook friends. One of them writes a diary full of hypocritical hate, and then messages them all to get a good 200 comments in so the reasonable posters' comments get lost when they find it. by Liberaltarianish on Tue Apr 06, 2010 at 06:32:18 AM PDT
These observations by other DKOS contributors raised questions.
Was this the case with the original diarist?
Were diaries being promoted by a group of DKOS members that was organized outside of DKOS on Facebook?
Were the sudden HR's a result of actions by a DKOS Facebook "political party" for exposing a bogus diary and forcing a retraction?
The more interesting question is are there DKOS political parties organized via Facebook or other social networks? Fascinating if true. And what are the implications for political blogs?
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This diary on Rec list talks about it from another angle.
Establishing New Posting Standards On Daily Kos
My reply there, instantly hidden by two Illuminati was that eliminating the HR ability would fix DKOS's problem mentioned in that diary. The ability to HR is like heroin to addicts of bad online behavior. They'll do anything for their "drug" the ONLY purpose of which is to censor people they don't agree with. The real troll comments don't require it, they quickly disappear "downstream".
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Some replies that were instantly hidden. I went into Hidden Comment to pick them up.
MinistryofTruth asked for links to the group's DKOS Facebook pages.
Reply: You might want to ask Liberaltarianish as he was the one who suggested they existed. FCVAGUY below seems to confirm it and ben masel said they are easy to "infiltrate". All three seem to know about them and how to get into them.
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FCVAGUY wrote
You really should delete this
First, I'll be honest and say that I think you're a troll. The name (Kid of Stalin (KOS)), the comment history, the focus of your obsessions, etc. It all adds up to troll.
That being said, I've been here long enough to agree with one small point - offsite KOS groups that organize to manipulate this website in any way (rec list, organized ratings, troll hunting, etc) have never, ever been successful and ultimately the leaders of those groups get ferreted out, exposed, shamed, and banned by either the community or the powers that be.
Thats just my opinion based on having been here for awhile.
by fcvaguy on Tue Apr 06, 2010 at 03:28:16 PM PDT
REPLY: You say there have been cases of outside groups?
"offsite KOS groups that organize to manipulate this website in any way (rec list, organized ratings, troll hunting, etc) have never, ever been successful and ultimately the leaders of those groups get ferreted out"
Do these occur frequently?