Over the last 48 hours or so since the end of the convention, the online atmosphere has changed significantly. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are all being inundated with flagrant Hillary supporters. Now, some of these guys are probably just former Bernie people who decided to suck it up and vote for Hillary. And some of them were probably Hillary supporters all along. But I think there's much more going on than that. I suspect these sites are being invaded by paid shills.
There is a pro Hillary superpac out there known as Correct the Record. A few months ago, they openly put forward $1 million to debate "Bernie Bros" and others who attack Hillary Clinton on social media sites and Reddit, and have possibly ramped up their spending post convention.
These guys have been on Reddit and the like for a while. I've come across a few of them before, and they generally posted all this anti Bernie, pro Clinton propaganda and tenaciously argue with anyone who disagrees with them. Well, in the last 2 days, the number of them appears to have increased exponentially. r/politics and a few left wing subs have been obviously inundated, and it's unclear how far they've spread. I can't comment on exact numbers, I'm only going by the larger general presence of these guys I've perceived in debates and the like. The worst part is, you can point out that they are, in fact shills, and these subs will ban you for doing so. Some of them have legitimate rules that make sense in context, but others just seem to be taking sides.
If you're wondering how to figure out if someone is a shill, I would say, look at their posting history. Look at what subs they frequent, and what they post. It might also help to see how new their account is, although people with old and inactive accounts may sell them to shilling organizations. Often times, these shills will spend 90% or more of their time pushing pro Hillary and anti everyone else articles on various subs. The one I came across was posting pro Hillary, anti Jill Stein, and all these posts about Russia and Trump to many different subreddits at once. They would submit upwards of 50-100 links a day, maybe 10-20 unique links, and they would obviously be trying to promote a certain candidate. They also argue tenaciously, defending Clinton against any attacks real or perceived. In doing so, they may tend to distract you from their main points and make you defend a ton of baseless accusations and propaganda. They also tend to promote the same old narratives, and it seems quite clear that they're copying and pasting off a script. They will argue you are being selfish or entitled or privileged. They will say that a vote not for Clinton is a vote for Trump. They will use the same old lingo you always get like "but there's so much at stake" or "the most progressive platform ever" or tend to argue that their opinions are just "reality." The buzz words are the dead giveaway because it makes me get the impression they're reading off of a script. They will scare you with supreme court justices and how the republicans will control the government from anywhere between 20-50 years. Again the age of an account is also a good indication since many of these guys make new accounts and just get to spamming pro Clinton stuff, but again, considering account selling, older accounts can be repurposed as shilling accounts too. If you have a long inactive account that randomly starts exhibiting the behavior above, it may be a paid shill account.
It should be noted these methods aren't fool proof. Some people are just very passionate about politics, so not everyone who fits this criteria may be a shill. But given the change in atmosphere the last few days, a lot of them probably are.
What these guys are trying to do is snuff the rest of the Bernie movement out. The holdouts, the dissenters. Just like they ignored the protests going on outside of the DNC to show unity, they're flooding the internet in Sanders' supporters largest strongholds to deunify us, to shut us down, to snuff us out, and hope that through a massive, aggressive, propaganda campaign, they can make us shut up, fall in behind Hillary, and submit them.
I suggest we double down in our resolve. If the Clinton camp so desperately wants our votes they'll try to astroturf a whole website, then we need to double down in our refusal to bow to Clinton. I likely would have supported Clinton, if not for the shady primary tactics, blatant astroturfing, and the whole DNC leaks thing, for the record. I'm more against her than anything because I feel like the entire campaign has been focused on bullying people who disagree with her into submission and rigging the system by any means necessary. It's sickening. I refuse to support a party who treats people like me in that way, and I would recommend like minded people to not give into them either. To vote for them in November, after all this crap that has happened, is to give them exactly what they want. Don't give it to them. You're just going to reward these tactics.
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