Monday, June 28, 2010

RailGate Damage Control...Are Bloggers Now Being Monitored?

AllTheManipulationThatFits
NewMediaVille



Is something going on around here?

I mean, I've mentioned how my visits from the fine "gov.bc.ca" domain have skyrocketed since the real RailGate trial began.

But what I've really noticed are the comments.

Not so much here, although I have had a few doozies recently - including one attempted drive-by 'outing' of an Anon-O-Mouse.

But at other places like Mary's and, especially, Bill Tieleman's, it appears that newly vindictive commenters have taken to slagging folks for having informed opinions.

And only rarely do the vindictive ones, whose comments give off a certain slightly stale-dated aura of malodorousness, take on the opinions of others based on their merits or demerits.

Instead, more often than not the slightly-stinky slaggers attempt to shout down other commentors for being whiners and/or malcontents and/or total time wasters who aren't contributing anything to anybody because they don't know what they are talking about and/or because they are not 'breaking' any new news.

Heckfire.

It's almost as if some person, or persons, (or member of a 'stakeholder group'?) has decided that the time has come to take newly concerned citizens out to the woodshed and 'rip them a new one' for their own good and/or to prevent them from joining a 'cult' of informed public opinion and discourse.

Or some such thing.


______
And don't think that the possibility of a total info-dom-driven "blogger stamp-out" strater(g)y in the grand tradition of the Luntzification of everything hasn't crossed my mind, especially given that fine bit of codswallop that was published on the VSun's editorial page on Friday.


.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing this corrupt government and it's paid and/or unpaid followers/business interests surprises me. We must keep up our blogging and get the word out on the state of this province brought on by these gangsters. Send our blog sites all over the world, someone will be paying attention.

Gary E said...

You know its the PAB when in my case at How Bad Is The Record? when you get visits from, oh, say, Fraser Health, the leg itself, or, my oh my lookie here, THE PREMIERS OFFICE. And you traffic increases 10 fold. But at my place a long time ago I put a few trolls on notice of deletion. They've been told that a healthy discussion is okay but if they want to eek out sources they can piss of. Or more politely DELETE.
I,ve seen their comments here, At Maty's, Koots and Grants. But they haven't returned to my place.
Nice to se we are getting more recognition than the Sun or Province.

Anonymous said...

The hits from the gov.bc.ca are probably most of your followers, a lot of people are watching this trial like the next best reality TV.

Some will be the PAB, most are in the leg, with the others

RossK said...

Anon-At-The-Top--

Good point....Scratch the surface of the lobbyist registry and it's like lancing a massive, oozing boil.

_____
Gary--

It's the tenor of the comments that I find off-puting.

I've also noticed it Paul Willcocks'place. The following is an example, from the thread of his very clear-eyed look at the rapidly closing escape hatch of Mr. Campbell's HST lead-lined bunker:

Anonymous said... "All of the whining and complaining will not change that as of July 1st the HST is here, and it is here to stay. It’s time to suck it up and accept it like adults and move on. Even you NDPaul.....

______

Anon-Above--

Point taken....

But there are a couple of qualifiers

1) I can pretty much tell who's doing the monitoring based on history, location and where they come from (the low-level Bots, at least, are very predictable)...they constitute about a third of all the arrivals from gov.bc.ca

2) We also get quite a few hits from leg.bc.ca as well, which for the most part appear to be legit. interest.

.