What on earth is a "crowdturfer"?
Did you mistype crowdsurfer? Is it a group of people who install sod?

If you're going to go batshit crazy with the new buzzwords, at least define them as you make them up. (Yes, that's right, TFA is the first and only use of this stupid word according to the google.)

I haven't been this dumbfounded since some genius came up with "nettop".

The problem comes with the numbers. You say the average person is not so dumb, well, half of the people are dumber than that.

It's like with advertising. It works. If it didn't, the big shoesalespeople wouldn't be putting more than half of their turnover into marketing. You and me may not be dumb enough to fall for it, but on the whole, it works and thus the thought that the system consists of rational individuals making the best decisions for themselves is mathematically laughable. Bah! That's a nice tangent I went off on there... Point being: -turfing probably still works, otherwise they wouldn't invest so heavily in it. Problem? I think so. Solution? Off the top of my head I can't come up with others than education and hard work of those who can spread truth. Or the crushing of capitalism, of course.

To most sane people, it isn't worth spending hours reading reviews for a $20 product.

Our species has gotten its hands on toys that we're just not grown-up enough to play with.

All evil acts boil down either to fraud, or some kind of denial of service or possession.

How can you doubt that fraud is an evil act? We are in between good and evil, but acts are one or the other. You do the math and you figure out which they are. Sometimes all the options are evil, of course.

The difference is whether you have a workable, sustainable, working system or a broken, exploitable system.

Yahoo Answers's system is pretty clearly exploitable. Want to get someone banned? 6 dummy accounts will do the trick - their "ban process" automatically bans someone after 6 complaints. Amazon has some funny reviews [amazon.com], some funnier ones [cracked.com], but more importantly, they actually have humans check on complaints if there's an indication that stuff indicated here [pcmag.com] is going on.

The uglier truth is that for many sites - slashdot included - the real exploit is held by people who can do precisely what TFA's authors describe: running hundreds of accounts, commanding click-up or click-down votes through them or (in the case of Slashdot) farming for mod points. Evolving Slashdot policy has actually made this worse, not better, for three reasons I'll crib from an earlier thread:

#1 - The best posters never moderate. They're involved in discussions, and you can never moderate AND post in the same thread.
#2 - It's too easy for the modpoint-harvesters to attack someone's karma; you can go into people's posting history as far as you want, and downmod weeks-old posts for no reason other than to bury karma.
#3 - The hidden gem: Slashdot implemented something akin to Yahoo's completely retarded "auto ban" function. To wit: "Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short time frame, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user... a cooling off period if you will. It lasts for 72 hours, or more for users who have posted a ton." [slashdot.org] The end result here is that the modpoint harvesters have been given a weapon - they control a "ban button" with which to attack not only the karma of their targets, but the posting rights of their targets.

The worst part? You can't ever see who downmodded. Sometimes you can see the reasons, but the modpoint harvesters get wise to the tricks - currently, you'll see the majority of modpoint harvesters downmodding as "Offtopic" and "Overrated" because those didn't go through the metamod system. Although, come to think of it, I don't think I've seen a metamod nag in 3 months... do they even have that system any more?

misleading/unethical. not really evil.

Actually... it's Fraud. Definitely evil, definitely illegal.

By legal definition: "an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual"

It never ceases to amaze me how desensitized and amoral so many geeks (and anyone under 30) are these days. It's definitely evil.

I'm totally surprised that the guy who officially admits being employed by a Microsoft PR firm [slashdot.org]thinks that astroturfing is an awesome idea.

Here's the difference between you and some rabid fanboys: rabid fanboys can in theory be argued with. They at least fit into the format of putting forth an argument that can stand on its own merits, and they in theory could change their mind when presented with counterarguments. In essence, there's the chance of an actual debate taking place. In practice, it's a different story, because fanboys tie their self-worth to how awesome a company is, and will go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to defend their support for a company.

However, a PR droid like you is incapable of engaging in an honest debate. You are paid to advocate a position, regardless of its truth, value to me or to society. The best you can do is hang some valid arguments onto your advertisement. Which is fine and dandy, if there's a way for me to avoid said advertisement. I use adblock because I find most ads to be content and value-less. Your ads that are masquerading as comments are similarly useless to me, because by definition, they are not based on a rational underpinning.

I love your justification for your job. So because there are some trolls that already bring down the quality of the discussion, the right approach is to bring countertrolls in that further degrade the discussion?

For anyone who is wondering what is wrong with letting paid PR droids post without an "ad" tag, this is it: by their own admission, the best they can do is to add countertrolls to a discussion.They will degrade the signal-to-noise ratio of a site.