AstroTurfing by IBM in thelayoff.com is Highly Risky (and Likely Outsourced)
Microsoft did this in Reddit (and got caught), so why won't IBM too?
Two months ago we wrote about racism in online forums and said: "Is this a sign of common decency eroding or perhaps trolling/AstroTurfing meant to discredit the forums? As in, or as if to say, is there more to it than meets the eye? Tarnishing a platform's reputation (to discourage posting or readership) by abuse?"
Right now people are openly complaining that trolls with LLM slop are drowning out the forums at thelayoff.com regarding IBM. The complaints about this (and the LLM slop) are visible both in comments and in new threads. I weighed in to say: The post about this forum being flooded by LLM slop was ranked +2, then within an hour -27. Then several more LLM pieces were pushed, right after a video was posted of Arvind with the bone sawer (MbS). There's very clearly astroturfing going on, as the LLM slop was boosted to +27 at same time the article about such LLM slop fell from +2 to -27. IBM does not want people to talk about what's really happening at IBM.
They are gaming the voting mechanisms (vote-bombing).
IBM staff should be concerned about such astroturfing because it's a massive risk for the company; trying to suppress discussions by astroturfing can cause huge backlash and we wrote about it yesterday. It has since then been updated (the update has a screenshot). It is possible that staff/moderators at thelayoff.com will remove the astroturfing (offending material), so we've taken screenshots. This sort of stuff needs to be documented, just like the extensive censorship in that platform (we covered this in articles and in videos several years ago).
"IBM is mad that their new-found, anti-FOSS ideology is losing them money," an associate opines. "Again, it helps to remind the world that IBM used to know how to make money and in their peak that was due to Linux investments. I presume Microsoft moles inside IBM are causing to hemorrhage money even in spite of having ownership of a gold egg laying goose like Red Hat. Microsoft is only cheap if bankruptcy is the goal."
This associate, having seen the astroturfing, calls them "IBM's operatives" and says "probably via at least one level of misdirection through outsourcing. Each layer increases the plausible deniability."
Perhaps some insiders can help reveal who's instructing who to attack those forums, which journalists watch (for sure The Register does). █
A bit older:
