Anonymous campaign bloggers targeted

August 28, 2013

A plan to simplify identification of bloggers and social media whose posts are paid for by campaigns will be considered by a state watchdog agency next month. (Sacramento Bee)

The proposed regulation by the Fair Political Practices Commission was set for deliberation last week but the decision was postponed. It appears likely the regulation will be approved when it does come before the FPPC, according to political observers.

If adopted, the regulation would require the locations of posts and the names of people paid to post online.

FPPC chair Ann Ravel said the public must be made aware when a post “is masquerading as someone’s real opinion, as opposed to paid opinion.”

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Maxfusion

08/29/2013 6:22 am

Of course we must legislate “fairness” (the first abstraction of the prepubescent mind) and while we’re at it let’s make a law to oversee feeeeelings. A new California Dept. of Fairness and Feeeeelings should be formed to adjudicate these “issues” and take the insensitive to task. It’s only fair. One only needs to examine the savagery of the criticism directed at our Dear Leader in Washington to understand how important this piece of legislation is. More later on Dear Leader Media, and of course, viewing is mandatory. Don’t disappoint The Dear Leader or you might find a mortar round in your future. Ooops, got to run, the unicorns are breaking out of the pen.

TruthFairy

08/29/2013 12:29 am

Paid bloggers, wow, who woulda thunk?

tomsquawk

Reply to TruthFairy

08/29/2013 7:56 am

look! i made $10,000 a month working from home

Rambunctious

08/28/2013 5:25 pm

Of course my initial libertarian response is well… the silencing of America marches on but because this involves campaigns and the wild wild west AKA the internet it seems like a logical thing to do. This Nation needs to clean up it’s elections and put a stop to the shenanigans on both sides of the political spectrum.

r0y

08/28/2013 12:34 pm

More stupidity from government. Not only will this be impossible to enforce, but tramples all over the first amendment.

Would it be nice if people didn’t mislead, lie, obfuscate, etc.? Sure. Will it ever happen? NO.

Therefore, we are only left with our own critical thinking ability to get around these political lumps on the internet superhighway (how’s that for an old term?).

I have no issue with people being paid to say things. Even “big, evil, corporate lobbyists” – what I do have a problem with, is when someone is elected saying they stand for one thing (like shutting down gitmo, making health insurance more affordable, balancing the budget, transparency in government, cracking down on government spying on its citizens, etc) then do the exact opposite.

People still cheer and get excited as they’re being robbed of their futures, so a paid blogger is pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. I’m more concerned about politics being in the classrooms (K-12 & College/University level) nefariously (hello, common core).

bobfromsanluis

Reply to r0y

08/28/2013 2:07 pm

r0y: Nice little rant there, but nothing you said addressed the fact the only quoted politicians in the linked article are Republicans; does that seem “odd” to you?

bobfromsanluis

Reply to bobfromsanluis

08/28/2013 2:08 pm

Whoops, meant to say ” … only quoted politicians supporting the proposal in the linked article are Republicans;”

r0y

Reply to bobfromsanluis

08/30/2013 7:12 am

That’s because I was discussing the entire point of the piece, not your limited, little jaded world of ideology. Try expanding your horizons. Literally. Please.

leatherpink

08/28/2013 12:32 pm

Humm, what about businesses paying people to write false reviews on their business listings? Ever go on Yelp, Google and other directories and you see too many positive reviews that look to phony lookin then you scroll down the reviews and see nothing but negative reviews. Well what about that problem. Sure there’s politics making false stories online lying to people but what about businesses lying about their businesses online by writing millions and millions of false business reviews that never happened.

Here’s a link to the story, whether this is relevant to the story above but thought I mention it.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jan/26/fake-reviews-plague-consumer-websites

tomsquawk

Reply to leatherpink

08/28/2013 2:40 pm

“is masquerading as someone’s real opinion, as opposed to paid opinion.” i haven’t figured out what the difference is yet. nice comment, though

tomsquawk

08/28/2013 11:40 am

let’s see; anything you read in the newspaper is an ad. so paid bloggers? can’t you tell? and others; not paid but listen to Fox News? Or MSNBC or whatever? it’s apparent who everyone is.

i think it is up to the Freeman to pick out issues in all arguments and comment, maybe provide a steady hand on the helm

bobfromsanluis

08/28/2013 11:04 am

It is interesting to read the linked article and to realize that of all the politicians who were quoted as either being in favor of it or not, the only ones who were quoted as being in favor of this new type of requirement are the so-called “small government” Republicans. What?

r0y

Reply to bobfromsanluis

08/28/2013 4:49 pm

Either they are part of that vast, right-wing conspiracy out to get Bill and Hillary… OR they are pretty naive and think that this will curb typical democrat politicking in this wonderful state.

bobfromsanluis

Reply to r0y

08/28/2013 7:41 pm

or they (the Republicans in California) feel that they can’t get a break, so let’s fix that with a new law …

Meanwhile, every Democratic politician who was interviewed for the linked article thought the new law would be a bad idea; so, who’s got the right idea?