Tag Archives: trolls

Elections 2022: PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE trolling to confuse and control public conversations

Here is an example of PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE and insidious trolling against political opponents. This is the context article of what I perceive to have electioneering trolling in its Comments Section. I’m willing to be corrected if I’m wrong. But I’ve seen many trolls coming out of the woodwork against Vicky Cayetano and Kai Kahele during the Primary Gubernatorial Race.

This article above was written on August 12, 2022. Primary Elections was August 13, 2022. Enter this commenter about Kai Kahele in this article continuing the “proxy” smear:

I was curious and checked. It turned out that watchfuleye was born on August 12, 2022, the same day of this article:

I took the time to respond to watchfuleye for clarifications and posted the following comments on the Civil Beat article. But my comments below were apparently censored and did not appear in the comments section:

” From Jan 2021 to Aug 2022, Kahele missed 6 of 869 roll call votes, which is 0.7%. This is better than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving.”

Congressman Kahele has a good record. It was lobbyists who complained about Kahele being inaccessible to them in DC!

Watchfuleye just joined this forum on August 12 to post his pilau comments. This passive-aggressive political stagecraft insults the public intelligence.

No politician has to be a cookie-cutter, especially during these past COVID years. Kai Kahele has been our District Congressman. We have been impressed with his “boots in the ground” style. Kahele has been to city council and community meetings working on issues these past two years.

I vigourously encourage you to look out for possible trolling. Ask them if they’re trolling politely. Let’s question them. If we’re wrong, we’ll apologize.

Democracy is best served through honest and intelligent dialogue in the open public square. Trolling and hiding behind fake names to attack opponents with falsehoods or smearing is despicable and unethical.

Elections 2022 – Invasion of fake trolls to confuse and distract voters in public conversations

I’m interested in observing the techniques of campaigns and its operators. Some campaigns appear to readily exploit the social media loopholes and play dirty. Social media platform like Facebook hosts anonymity and fake accounts. Thus the birth of bad actors and trolls to confuse, distract and smear opponents. I’ve noticed lots of these public comments against Vicky Cayetano and Kai Kahele.

On a quite side note, it’s no surprise that Elon Musk’s failed $44 Billion acquisition of Twitter is partly related to the “proportion of fake and spam accounts on the platform.” Twitter acknowledges that it has “false or spam accounts on its platform.”

Here is a troll example that we can examine:

Context: Lt. Governor Josh Green has been at the State Capitol for 18 years as a legislator as well as a doctor. The office of the Lt. Governor is a full-time position but Green continues his medical profession. Green is constantly seen in his medical scrub all over Hawaii. Green has cleverly branded himself as a “trusted caring” doctor in his political campaign.

The public began to question his medical training and credentials when “Dr. Green” positioned himself as the expert during the pandemic management for the State of Hawaii. He held countless confusing and contradicting press conferences. Green is not an epidemiologist but says he’s an emergency care doctor. Independent residents say it’s all about Green getting free airtime for his gubernatorial aspirations.

inevitably, the issue of being “board certified” became a thorn in his side. The record appears to show that Dr. Joshua Green is not “board certified”.

Recently, Dr. Green, in his grubs, stated that he was “board certified”. Whether Green is certified or not is a non-issue. However, it’s his discrepancies that alarm voters. There is continuous social buzz about this discrepancy.

Enter the disinformation or damage control for Dr. Green:

EXAMPLE: This is candidate Kai Kahele’s FACEBOOK page:

Below is the out-of-nowhere comments written about “Josh Green” on Kai Kahele’s post above. Note the introduction of confusing jabber and gibberish in the comments. The troll further went to drag in anti-semitism for whatever motive there may be. I QUESTIONED the troll simply because I was curious and wanted clarity.

For the sake of clarity, I posted a question ( See comment above) to ask if this person were a troll. Almost immediately, the FB account became unavailable as below. Does this action point to a troll account?

Below was a screenshot of what the troll account looked like. The entire troll comment in Kai Kahele’s post is now deleted.

I have seen tons and tons of these similar posts. For the sake of honest and intelligent dialogue in our democracy, I encourage all to public question comments like the above. Do it politely.

We must protect robust and intelligent dialogue in our democratic society. Get rid of bad actors and dirty games.