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by zug_zug 2958 days ago
> Sensible. Cuts, however, against my mental caricature of an astroturfing shill.

Interesting. The confirmed astroturfer Monsanto[1] is a fairly active one, and though I can't prove some of the people I saw were Monsanto shills, I've never met a person in real life advocate on behalf of that company.

Anyways, their tactics were incredibly distraction-centric and ad-hominem. As soon as anybody brought up the scientific research on pesticides, they'd start comparing this position to anti-vaccine, even completely out-of-context.

It's not hard to debase a conversation so much it falls apart entirely online, which is why the technique seemed effective.

[1] https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGo...