Burnt Orange Report

Kinky Spam

By Damon McCullar

If nothing else, it's cool to have Kinky running for governor for all the play on words that can be created. Seriously though, earlier today on Perry Vs World there was a spam attack that kept posting comments from seemingly different folks and they all had the same content: "www.kinkyfriedman.com". While I'm inclined to think this was the work of some overzealous supporter with some net knowledge, Kuff makes a good point about the future of the blog and bloggers:

I'm sure it's just a fluke, but the thought has occurred to me that this sort of thing could be a tempting dirty trick for some upcoming Karl Rove wannabe. Spam a bunch of blogs with an opponent's campaign URL so that the blog owners ban the URL and bitch about it to their audiences, thus not only generating a lot of badwill for your enemy among some opinion leaders, but maybe even getting some regular press coverage out of it just for the sheer novelty factor. It shouldn't be too hard to cover your tracks - I'm pretty sure the originating IP address for comments can be spoofed.

We've also had that kind of problem here at BOR with "Kinky" folks commenting with different "names" but all of the comments coming from the same IP address, although our comments like that have been more "human".

When I started blogging, I looked forward to having the power to spur debate amongst a common audience, but more and more the audience is becoming polluted with people that distort the debate for their own purposes instead of people that are content to bring their unique prospective to the debate. Blogs grew because the "Crossfire-ization" of cable news left a vacuum for honest debate. If we're not careful and can't find ways to police ourselves against these kinds of manipulation, the voice of honest debate will once again be lost and, barring the advent of another communications medium, could be lost altogether.