Solaris astroturfing to feature in ABC documentary

September 16, 2011 11:14

The astroturfing of Mumbrella by paper company Solaris during its fight with Greenpeace is to feature in ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing this weekend.

As Mumbrella revealed in August, a member of staff at Solaris used multiple identities to attack Greenperace campaigners as “scum” in a comment thread on Mumbrella.

But the IP address was tracked by Mumbrella to one registered with Solaris.

Solaris is under attack from Greenpeace over the environmental practices of owner APP.

Tomorrow’s episode of Background Briefing – Don’t trust the Web – airs at 9am with a repeat at 7pm on Tuesday.

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He now writes industry newsletter Unmade - subscribe at unmade.media

topics ABC astroturfing Greenpeace Solaris

Comments: 3

Tim Broyles 17 Sep 11

Ho-hum. Not very interesting. So what, everyone at a point leaves anonymous comments on a message board. If one goes after so-called “Astroturfing” we may as well attack the entire universe! What is the big deal? Freedom of speech. And perhaps some of the comments were not far off target?

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Peter McGee 18 Sep 11

Re T Broyles. You must lead a fascinating life if you didn’t find the Radio National expose interesting and Solarispaper’s actions ethically disturbing; unless you are a piece of ‘astroturf’ and you don’t acatually exist or have feelings.

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Scott 21 Sep 11

Perhaps there is a little storm and teacup action going on here. Unmoderated forums such as the comments sections on blog-like sites are always have been and always will be the playground of manipulators. Perhaps the owners/authors of said sites could be considered irresponsible for allowing unmoderated content. Further, you don’t need to research the ip address of a posting to be able to recognise a personal attack for what it is. The nerds have moved on, time for everybody else to catch up.

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