[kfriede]

To be fair, I think a good portion of those 'shills' were organic (no pun intended). To this day, a lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob and have a large community of people who dislike them.

[wu-ikkyu]

>lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob

It's worth noting that having such groups is a commonly used counter intelligence tactic: create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions.

An effective astroturf campaign calls for both pro-x and anti-x shills.

[imcoconut]

Wow, i never considered this but it makes sense and i imagine is very effective.

Do you know of any well documented cases of this (though by its nature, any case of this is probably not well documented)?

[wu-ikkyu]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

[nerpderp83]

If anyone was in a place to make a Strawman, it would be Monsanto.

[Laforet]

Sometime it feels like Monsanto is the strawman for the entire biotech industry.

[eip]

> create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions.

See flat earth as an obvious example of this.