Does ANYONE here SERIOUSLY believe that DU is full of paid trolls?

[Jim Lane]

82. Paying posters would generally be more cost-effective on other sites.

If I were a corporation or politician or interest group or someone else with an interest in influencing public opinion, and a willingness to pay for posts, I would consider the myriad of options available and make decisions about where to put my money. On that analysis, DU would rank pretty low. The people who read this site are already pretty much in one camp -- yes, we have internal differences, but they pale compared to the differences in the US overall. Furthermore, people who come to a political message board are, on the average, more informed about political topics than is the general public. A single post spewing misinformation will have less impact on such readers.

Instead, I as a hirer of posters would go after general-interest sites that don't already have an ideological screen and that attract readers who don't read a lot of other material on the same topics. To take one example I know about, Wikipedia has addressed the issue of corporations and others paying people to edit the articles that concern them.

There might be an exception during Democratic primary season. A campaign might find it useful to assign one or more paid staffers to monitor DU, Kos, and other such sites to make sure that the campaign's message was fully represented. Of course, it's likely that such messaging would occur without paying anyone. If there's a 2016 battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, I'm 100% confident that each side will have numerous unpaid but zealous advocates here.