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Edited on Mon Mar-08-04 04:55 PM by Kellanved
Here is my "quick and dirty" translation. I hope the meaning somehow made it across. :hi: Especially the second half is very sloppy - if someone here could spare the energy to do a better job, it would be great.
--here you go
Polls are a fine thing, the butter on a slice of news. They give the online author a feedback, on how the issue is seen by the readers. For instance 60% of Spiegel Online’s readers believe Bush is a top president. And we even know why.
The widow Vivian Freep from Midland(TX) is "George Bush's biggest supporter". Nice for Bush, is the European take on it, but in an American with a conservative credo the anger rises. It’s an insolence, wanting to say nothing more or less than the following: Bush’s success is founded on the help of humans, who manipulate, disturb, falsify.
Cause “Freeping” is a slang term. It means the nightly over painting of campaign posters, the organisation of loud counter demonstrations and – not least – the massive falsifying of internet polls.
The strange phrase was minted in the late 90s and goes back to the website “Free Republic” of the ultra conservative activist Jim Robinson. “Freep”, as fans were fast to call the page, understands itself as “a conservative news forum”. The centrepiece of the product is the discussion forum, where sometimes hefty action takes place.
The conservative click-guerilla
Free Republic started as a Clinton-hate page, but moved on quickly. The "Freep-Movement “ harvested it’s first laurels, when the page started to call fort the „support“ of conservative candidates, in diverse elections.
In fact very concretely : The objective was to disturb Democratic campaign events, to remove or deface posters, to actively support opponents. When Clinton faced impeachment, freep-groups organized “information” events and placed ads. The phrase "Freeping" developed and meant : „be louder than the others“.
Poll-Manipulation at Spiegel Online
Those things stayed the same. Last week Spiegel Online got the attention of the “Freepers”, to be precise: A vote, a poll in the US election coverage (see below).
“Since three years”, we had asked our readers, “George Bush has been the US’s most powerful man – and the World’s. How do you evaluate his term so far (in school marks)?”
The result of the popular poll, with 38000 votes so far could prove two things
-Germans are not as sceptical of Bush, as frequently claimed;
-the power of the “Freeper”s.
Cause they are calling since March 5th, to “freep” the poll at “Germany's left-left-wing SPIEGEL ONLINE". The special thing about it is that the member, who made the proposal, is not really an American conservative: David Kaspar runs the "Davids Medienkritik" blog, a forum for the “political evaluation of the reporting in the German media”.
With Kaspar this means: with vehement Bush-worship against the alleged bias of the German media. Spiegel Online’s classification as “left-left”, ultra-left is by Kaspar– everything a question of the perspective.
Literally his call, echoed on Free Republic, reads: “Bush Needs Your Help!" And: “at 1PM Berlin Time, march 5th Bush’s results are rather poor. Just 3.3% A+ and 1.47% A”.
Luckily his call at “Free Republic” instantly got friendly attention: In few hours the “freepers” manage to topple the poll. David Kaspar at 10PM, Berlin time: “Bush’s results are excellent. 41.23% for a “1” (=Bush did a great job as President). Thank You! You guys are doing a fantastic Job! Those Bush Haters at Spiegel Online are going to get a stroke tomorrow…continue like this!”
Vote Manipulation: the mass is the secret
But the mass comes from Free Republic. The website openly admits to “freep” with a passion. A search for the keyword “freep” on the page’s search form shows, how many honorary buzz Free Republic can bring to bear: On the morning of march 8th Free Republic published the event schedule of John Kerry and called for Freeprs to appear there with a digital camera, to make “more realistic” pictures of the show.
Actions against other "Democrats" are called for as well, but predominantly for the manipulation of online-polls "Freep this Poll!".
The call’s targets: polls about gay marriage (56% against). Polls about the question, if Bush's 9/11 campaign-ads are tasteless, deliver clear results as well; sometimes it’s 78% who can’t find anything bad about them, sometimes 85% - even at CNN it’s 72.
Normally mass protects online polls from manipulation. The big pages protect their polls with cookies, which at least are intended to make multiple voting tedious: to vote twice the cookie has to be deleted. Otherwise the only factor for the reliable ness of an online poll is the number of readers participating. An imperfect protection, but for polls with several thousand participants, manipulation at least becomes an ordeal.
Freeper: on their way to mainstream?
Anyway, the Freepers show that they can counter the mass of “normal” page visitors always with their own number: From Spiegel Online, via CNN and the NYT, several TV stations to MSN Australia and, of course, countless small newspapers; nobody on the web can get a honest poll, when the freepers are on their way.
The manipulate even the most trivial polls: last week it was important to them, to show their nation’s influence by manipulation a south-African page’s poll on if ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide left Haiti voluntarily, to suddenly show 68% believing he got ousted by the USA.
In a poll on global warming 86.5% voted that it wasn’t existing or a completely natural occurrence. On March 2nd Free Republic called to “freep” a poll at elementary schools in New York, because a majority of the students were showing “democratic” voting tendencies at the time.
Only the big American newspapers are off-limits for Free Republic: As early as 1998 the “LA Times” and the “Washington Post” sued Free Republic for Copyright Infringement. It took “Freep”-operator Jim Robinson until June 2002 to get a settlement, which came down to a quitclaim deed: From then on citing from the suing papers and all associated media was no longer to be allowed on the webpage.
It didn’t hurt the Freep-Movement, which took a popularity break after the failed Clinton impeachment: At the latest since the catastrophic 9/11 and the ensuring radicalization of the political discourse in the US, is “Freep” stronger than ever. The movement is searching for the mainstream: since the gulf war Freeps are working as normal demonstrators for the “good cause” – for Bush and the war. With John Armor, Free Republic reported on September 2nd, 2003, they are trying to get "one of our very own" elected to the US congress. Armor would make his Nick-nomen an omen: So far he only appeared there as "Congressman BillyBob".
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