How widespread is "strategic attack posting"?

Question

Recently I have become aware of a phenomenon, it doesn't really have a name so I'll call it "strategic attack posting." First, while perusing the environment section on Answers, I found that one person had written a message denouncing global warming a liberal propaganda, a not all that uncommon occurence. However as I spent a great deal of time on answers that particular day, I found that the poster had copy/pasted that same rant on to every question involving Global Warming. Then yesterday I was searching for news on my union's contract negotiations when I found that somebody had done a similar thing with an anti union rant, across all the blogs that so much as mentioned recent union negotiations. In both instances the postings were made to seems as though they were unique contributions from regular readers, however turned out to be someone's attempts to spread his propaganda across communities valued for online contribution. How widespread are such occurences? Is it a new problem?

Answer 1

I've seen a fair amount of it in the politics area , but it's usually done by just a few folks trying to leverage their cause of the moment. It's pretty obvious in most cases.

I think there is also some occurrences of an individual posting something exceptionally inflammatory & pretending it was posted by a conservative when they are liberal , or vice versa......just to get the hate flowing...it's sad , but folks entertain themselves in a variety of manners!!