If Hillary wins, it will be thanks to her mighty PR machine ...

...And if she loses, it will also be due to her mighty PR machine, getting too full of itself, and coming off the rails.

Recently, we admins noticed this comment thread on a recommended diary, and the oddities it posed made us look a little deeper than we normally would.

As the comment thread revealed, users pinballwizard, elf, shley24, MTAY all registered in succession to recommend the diary. A further look by us revealed that:

* they had registered within minutes of each other, including another user a bit later, janbaby, who was not among the recommenders,
* the same IP address was used by all of them, and is registered to the Clinton campaign,
* two other recommenders, blues and kmeisje, also registered from the same IP address.

This is a practice called "astroturfing," and if you try it in the Web 2.0 world, you're lower than a slug. You've heard of the sage PR advice, "never get caught with a dead girl or a live boy?" Don't get caught pretending to be somebody else recommending your own content on the Web!

Defending the practice of banning the guilty parties, site proprietor Mike Caulfield writes:

the problem is it's the thin edge of the wedge. And not really just for Clinton. If we become known as a place that can be gamed, we lose credibility. People start wondering if they are talking to a person on the street with an opinion, or a person on the payroll. Bad behavior attracts bad behavior.

It does, indeed. But the Clinton campaign is by no means alone: Congressional staffers have long been manipulating Wikipedia entries on their candidates, for example, by deleting factually correct but embarrassing or damaging information. And a recent program called WikiScanning, which crossreferences the IP addresses of users with registered domain names, called on the part of corporations, PR firms, and even the CIA.

Some have called for the banning of public relations agencies from Wikipedia editing. This is unenforceable and ridiculous, and all it does is hand a competitive advantage to those firms willing to cheat.

What is much better is to adopt an industrial code of ethics with reference to not just Wikipedia, but blog comments and all forms of social media interactivity.

I also believe that PR professionals and corporate communications types and technical communities have a legitimate role in editing to ensure factual accuracy.

PR professionals also have a responsibility not to embarrass the client. In this regard, we would turn to Warren Buffett for guidance:

"Contemplating any business act, an employee should ask himself whether he would be willing to see it immediately described by an informed and critical reporter on the front page of his local paper, there to be read by his spouse, children, and friends. At Salomon, we simply want no part of any activities that pass legal tests but that we, as citizens, would find offensive."

Astroturfing is common among young, eager, hard working and well-meaning Public Relations professionals. It's also an embarrassment to the profession. These people are not. But their actions are, and they undermine the credibility of the profession.

The correct response, though, should be through leadership and education. Not disciplining and firing. The ones who take the time to astroturf are the same ones whose efforts can be redirected, with proper leadership (I detest the term "management") to more productive endeavors.

--Jason Van Steenwyk

Hat tip: Ann Althouse