BP Hired Company To Troll Users Who Left Critical Comments 263
An anonymous reader sends this news from Al-Jazeera:
"BP has been accused of hiring internet 'trolls' to purposefully attack, harass, and sometimes threaten people who have been critical of how the oil giant has handled its disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil firm hired the international PR company Ogilvy & Mather to run the BP America Facebook page during the oil disaster, which released at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf in what is to date the single largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The page was meant to encourage interaction with BP, but when people posted comments that were critical of how BP was handling the crisis, they were often attacked, bullied, and sometimes directly threatened. ... BP's 'astroturfing' efforts and use of 'trolls' have been reported as pursuing users' personal information, then tracking and posting IP addresses of users, contacting their employers, threatening to contact family members, and using photos of critics' family members to create false Facebook profiles, and even threatening to affect the potential outcome of individual compensation claims against BP."
How would they get the IPs from Facebook? (Score:2, Interesting)
If they were only trolling posters on the Facebook page, how would they figure out their IP addresses? Impossible unless they hacked into Facebook.
Re:They don't stay on facebook. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Sony ones are pretty classic too. I haven't noticed them for a while, but with new consoles out we may all be in for another treat.
Re:How would they get the IPs from Facebook? (Score:4, Interesting)
If they were only trolling posters on the Facebook page, how would they figure out their IP addresses? Impossible unless they hacked into Facebook.
The article is crap. It's basically a bunch of unsubstantiated allegations without even a shred of evidence. It's possible BP did the things they claim, but I cannot fathom why they would. Delete comments, sure, but threaten bodily harm? What would be the point?
Re:They don't stay on facebook. (Score:5, Interesting)
I miss this guy:
http://idle.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=3883481&cid=44050963&pid=44050963 [slashdot.org]
Re:Dream job (Score:5, Interesting)
lmfao this was modded as informative, fucking lol
Why again is BP still in business? (Score:3, Interesting)
The US government should have seized all of their American assets and forced them into bankruptcy.
No company deserves to survive a screw-up of this magnitude.
Re:Yet every American will still rush right out (Score:5, Interesting)
We've reached a sort of socioeconomic metastability wherein large corporations receive little penalty owing to the difficulty required to sue/prosecute them. Too big to fail, but also too big to require obedience to any form of morality.
Worst ever? Not by a long shot. (Score:4, Interesting)
Worst environmental disaster in US history? Not remotely.
The Dust Bowl takes the prize with no legitimate contenders.
In the Gulf of Mexico, the massive dead zone from fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi river has caused way more devastation than the BP oil spill.
Among offshore oil spills, the Exxon Valdez killed orders of magnitude more animal deaths and environmental damage. In the Gulf of Mexico, the Ixtoc I spill was far more damaging (being much closer to shore).
Among all oil spills, the Lakeview Gusher in 1910 was the largest by far.
Why can't people ever write about a on-going or recent oil spill without claiming that it is the worst ever?