filled with commenters writing in broken English that there was no bubble for X, Y, Z reasons.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions. What we think of as "shills" do not and would not speak in broken English. It would run completely contrary to their ultimate goal of "swaying public opinion". Being unable to communicate efficiently would not be effective propaganda. It would be so obvious and that's precisely what they're trying to avoid.
Hell, A country could (and some probably do) outsource the work to 'reputation management' companies who employ people that are native speakers of a particular language. Subcontracting the work out would also provide a layer of separation if they get caught. The government has plausible deniability, "We didn't know that's what they were doing! We thought they were doing this other thing!".
Digg.com had to send a cease and desist letter to one Chinese propaganda wing to get them to stop mucking up their website. Those individuals were not speaking in broken English. They may not have even been Chinese according to a couple people I knew that worked at digg at the time. One of my friends believed them to be an Australian company (shilling for China for a paycheck). Source on the Digg issue here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Water_Army#Legal_probl...
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This is one of the biggest misconceptions. What we think of as "shills" do not and would not speak in broken English. It would run completely contrary to their ultimate goal of "swaying public opinion". Being unable to communicate efficiently would not be effective propaganda. It would be so obvious and that's precisely what they're trying to avoid.
Hell, A country could (and some probably do) outsource the work to 'reputation management' companies who employ people that are native speakers of a particular language. Subcontracting the work out would also provide a layer of separation if they get caught. The government has plausible deniability, "We didn't know that's what they were doing! We thought they were doing this other thing!".
Digg.com had to send a cease and desist letter to one Chinese propaganda wing to get them to stop mucking up their website. Those individuals were not speaking in broken English. They may not have even been Chinese according to a couple people I knew that worked at digg at the time. One of my friends believed them to be an Australian company (shilling for China for a paycheck). Source on the Digg issue here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Water_Army#Legal_probl...
As the saying goes, nobody's perfect. It could easily be that they hired someone to do this and they did an imperfect job of it before being replaced.