As you all know, the Judge has a weekly column over at LawCrossing in which she talks about…well, basically the same stuff she talks about here, minus the goofy time-wasting links.  (That is, the links which are meant to be goofy wastes of time.)  In response to the last (https://www.lawcrossing.com/article/index.php?id=1899), she received this response from one of the bloggers mentioned:

You're no doubt right that it would be naive to expect ad campaigns to be completely honest (although there are truth-in-advertising laws you doubtless know more about than I do). I think the issue with the kind of astroturfing I may have (and others definitely have) experienced is that *you don't know it's an ad campaign.* The fellow involved didn't state who he worked for, or whether he or his company had "money on" the political fight involved, so to speak. That's potentially deceptive and destructive; a photo of a crowd at a rally looks very different depending on whether you know the crowd was paid to be there or not. I agree with you about legal regulation in general; exposure/ ridicule/ sunshine is best, although it may be important to require *reporting* of some kinds of overtly political astroturfing to the FEC or other agencies. But as you note, it can be harder for big time blogs than for little ones like mine to monitor the torrent of visits they get.

After blinking for a moment or two, thinking, “You mean people actually read those articles?  Good lord,” the Judge wrote back, explaining that she does, in fact, disapprove strongly of astroturfing and would, in fact, be one of those starry-eyed idealists who thinks the blogosphere shouldn’t be allowed to be manipulated in the same way as commercial media.  Trouble is, it’s pretty hard to stop, and I’m just enough of a cynic to doubt that’s possible sometimes, and the big, influential blogs are likely to take in the information given by the smaller like mercury in swordfish.  (Not that I mean to say large bloggers actually devour their smaller, guppy-like brethren.  You know what I mean.)  But hopefully the same process works both ways, and when the smaller sources rant and rave – or point and laugh – the larger ones will pick it up and do the same.