The Paid Commenters

"I know people who do it as part of their jobs. They scan blogs, websites, newspaper comments sections for anti-austerity sentiment and pose as regular commenters. They are liars, spread misinformation and attack various forms of social welfare. It’s an international PR company who work on behalf of various political parties and committees and think tanks. They recruit students, like minded individuals, finance MBAs who work in banking and pay them a retainer for an agreed amount of hours per month to post comments and spread their lies. They all sign confidentiality agreements.

You can spot them on blogs. Most are not regular commenters. They create new user profiles all the time and often only leave one very detailed comment which is usually very misleading.

They are working for people who want to undermine the power of governments (yes even political parties want to do this) and divert attention away from intense lobbying of governments to change legislation to suit big business and to monetize their services so they can be tendered to private enterprise (see HSE)."

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/12/07/in-the-interests-of-ireland/#comments