Does the Daily Mail tamper with the ratings on the readers comments?
Scarlett O Hara
Posts: 195 Forum Member
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I ask, because look at the comments at the bottom of this Katie Holmes fluff piece. Look at the number of red arrows on each one and the lack of green arrows. Those can't all be real people leaving real ratings.
Does a celeb's PR team troll their articles and try and do damage control by giving any comment which could be read as a criticisim angry red arrows to make it look like the celeb has more fans than they do? Is it the Mail themselves tampering because they want to keep writing about certain celebs even when their readers express a big lack of interest?
See here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2276377/Katie-Holmes-recoils-New-York-weather-unfazed-Suri-flaunts-fur-coat.html#axzz2KaiAWNkd
Very suspicious indeed.
Does a celeb's PR team troll their articles and try and do damage control by giving any comment which could be read as a criticisim angry red arrows to make it look like the celeb has more fans than they do? Is it the Mail themselves tampering because they want to keep writing about certain celebs even when their readers express a big lack of interest?
See here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2276377/Katie-Holmes-recoils-New-York-weather-unfazed-Suri-flaunts-fur-coat.html#axzz2KaiAWNkd
Very suspicious indeed.
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Comments
On the subject of the Daily Mail comments, why are most of Tamara Ecclestone stories are posted and we can't comment for Legal reasons...I never understood that.
A mix of the two, I'd say. You definitely see evidence of the fans/anti-fans and the PR arrows but I think the Mail itself also does a bit of tailoring when it wants to keep a celeb happy - and it also does it for its own 'writers' - eg. Liz Jones' column which mysteriously seems to have fans who say bizarre things like 'What a great piece, Liz, you really do speak sense' followed by 508 green arrows while, back in the rational world, comments critical of Liz's crap get drowned in a fury of disgusted red arrows.
They do, however, seem to have lists of users who are not allowed to post anything.
It is just the readership I think. They go on and on about free speech - they want porn on the internet and the freedom to be abusive to gay people, Muslims, immigrants and women - while failing to realise it is HATE speech that they want.
The Mail panders to these people...for example every single day it features gender specific articles, knowing that creepy, entitled little men who do not see women as human will come on the site and spew out their hate. They run articles about Muslims, and in fact anyone who is not a white, middle class Protestant male,for the same reason.
Their online version certainly panders to their American readership above all other readers. Ridiculous, really, but the DM as a whole is mad so I shouldn't be shocked.
The Daily Mail doing that campaign is absurd though.
If you go off the meaning of pornography as being anything with no artistic merit that causes sexual thought, then half their bloody website counts. (And that's not even going into the scary "All Grown Up" stuff.)
That's absolutely true. I know someone who works there, and it's the biggest global online newspaper in the world, hence all the American celebrity stories. I get extremely irritated by the American words and spellings used in the stories.
The truly strange thing is they use a system that is well known to be crap and easy to exploit, its kinda old and any place that has a ounce of brains knows how to step around it. You would think with the size of the DM they would not use it. Hell, I know it and how to fix it and I am sure the people running the site will know it.
Then again...(please put on your tinfoil hats)...take for an example, this willfull security flaw method. Lets say you leave your router open, no password or anything. Or even just a WEP key (its an old system and takes about 1 sec to crack, and its VERY easy and lots of programs exist to do it for you). Now you may ask "why would anyone ever want to leave there router open so other people could use it?!". Well picture me this, you could do it so that if you ever got caught doing something on your internet you shouldnt (illegal downloading or worse), you could always claim "hey bro, my router isnt set up right, it wasnt me, it could have been anyone really". Bam, now you can disprove stuff.
So you transfer that over, DM can influence how comments are rated, giving the impression that they are in chime with "the working man" or whatever demographics they wish to appeal towards.
(You can take your tinfoil hats off now)
However a comment saying F#$k the Russians stayed for about another 4 hours. I suspected Russian readers who didn't understand lingo for a while.
I have also had comments not printed, probably because (though I am always polite) doesn't fit with their instant believer 'these two are so CUTE' culture.
If I think someones bearding, or a closet case, I'll say so, in a nice way. Rarely gets printed on a moderated thread. That publication literally keeps the bearding industry ticking over by skewing articles and only allowing 'safe' comments through.
You can tell the variety of opinion is much wider and diverse on unmoderated threads though.
I've heard this before.
It's beyond depressing.