Tory shills. I am absolutely not a conspiracy theorist....

[CurlewKate]

... but I am coming to the conclusion that some posters on Mumsnet are Tory shills. It seems the only explanation. Obviously that means there must be Labour Party shills as well, but they are less obvious. Am I paranoid, or does everyone else think this too...

Are you kidding me? There are some very obvious Labour Shills trying to tell women we should lower our boundaries on women's rights.

What are shills?

There are definitely Tory schills on here. Hopefully Labour has finally got round to employing some too.

You have to assume nobody is who they say they are online don't you. There are loads of brand ambassadors in here as well I'm pretty sure (though I assumed this and then found myself recommending the same clothes website a lot so I'd probably think I was one of it were someone else).

I’d have assumed labour shills from some of the hysteria and aggression.

I don't think there's any evidence that they are shills. They are just women who feel strongly about a topic and a way of dealing with it. I don't understand why people think the Tories would be better for women than than Labour but other women are if of a different opinion and they are entitled to post it.

Tory's/Labour/Chinese/Russians - you really can't trust anything you read on a public forum unfortunately.

The UK is a democratic country which means that some people will have different political views from yours. Millions of people support the Conservative Party because they hold mainstream centre-right views. They are allowed to express those views & disagree with you on a public forum.

So grow up & deal with it, OP.

You can generally recognise a shill if you search their username (usually LoveBeingAMummy8 or something) and they've been on here about a week and built up a posting history on various assorted threads about nothing much and then suddenly start posting very prolifically and expertly on matters of politics. They will often be v authoritative in tone and link to stories online that when you investigate the source turn out to be bullshit or the purest propaganda.

However I suspect people have got a lot better at disappearing into the forum than they were during, say, the Brexit ref when there were very very effective shills all over who were easy to spot if you looked but people weren't really looking. So if someone makes an argument that really hits the spot with you emotionally it's best to do a bit of digging about the poster and the subject and make up your own mind.

Not a conspiracy. This sort of thing happens to dilute, sway and manipulate the overall public opinion on some subjects.

Look up bot farms.

There will be shills from both Tory and Labour on here, probably in equal amounts, also lots of bots.

Left wing will think Tory bots are posting, right wing will think the site has been invaded by Labour bots. See also the BBC.

Both sides do it and it'll be ramped up before the election.

I absolutely agree with this, I've noticed it too. The threads are usually started early in the morning, before most people (mums, especially), are up and posting on Mumsnet, allowing them to get plenty of sock puppet posts in agreeing with them before real people take over the thread.

There's shills on all sides and definitely Russian/Chinese bots. They're generally easy to spot like other posters up thread have pointed out. It's the Internet though, it's best practice not to take anything on a forum at face value.

Oh there really is evidence that people are posting from the same crib sheet. Whether they're paid or just volunteer activists I couldn't tell you.

But there was a beautiful, beautiful example at a previous election where the Tories had made up some potty accusation that "Labour will do X obscure thing" - about planning permission, I think. It was false, and it also wasn't a conclusion you'd have come to naturally, eg by some genuine misunderstanding.

Anyway, there was a thread on which genuine posters were worrying about this supposed threat. There came a sudden flood of posters arriving on the thread to dump very similarly worded posts and disappear again, uncritically repeating the false claim and not in any way interacting with the rest of the thread. It was very, very obvious that they were plopping and running.

So no, they weren't women with a strong opinion who disagreed with other posters and were discussing it.

They were using MN as a billboard.

I'd call them astroturfers, there have been obvious ones on Mumsnet for years - all the big companies have social media teams and within those they have people doing this, product placement, recommendations etc.

It would be foolish to assume political parties weren't doing it too, but equally as someone said upthread, people do have different opinions and will freely express them!

I reckon those who post that the Tories are going to scrap the NHS are Labour shills.

I've been hearing that claim for 50 years. Time they changed the record 🙄

Well quite. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a re-enactment of Andrea Dworkin and female peers trying to turn back the darker tide of the hip-to-the-beat Allen Ginsberg 'subculture'.

Yes about the bot farms, too, run by many different actors and interests.

We know they exist. We know they post in mass number on social media all over the world. MN is known as a hugely influential site which politicians feel they have to come and give interviews to.

It's harder to make a case that bot-farmers don't choose to place their bots on MN, than to accept that they do.

Russian bots will push specific narratives immediately helpful to Russia, but they also have a general strategy of "sticking the knife into any cracks and wiggling" - to exacerbate division in other countries. They love turning up the gas on existing points of contention.

Party bots love to go for voter suppression. Ideally immediately before the election, they'll drop a load of guff designed to keep the opponent's voters away from the polling stations. Often it's found later to be complete hooey or otherwise unimportant, but by then it's done its job.

Actually the Russians do this too. See the attack on the French presidential elections in 2017:

Short but not the full story, as investigation was still in progress:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-39845105

More detailed account, including countermeasures:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/successfully-countering-russian-electoral-interference

I hate Labour and Conservatives, they are two cheeks of the same arse that is shitting on us all.

In my younger years I was a member of the young conservatives and I always voted Conservative until a few years ago but now hate them almost as much as I hate Labour. The Conservatives are only slightly the lesser of the two evils.

I don't know how you reach the conclusion they are the lesser evil. I really 10000% disagree with you. But you are right that both sides and other interested parties too will be trying to fill our silly little hysterical heads with all sorts of stuff to make us vote a particular way. It's impossible for everyone, even the most hardened cynic, not to allow a little bit of it to seed in your mind. Even with a tin hat on.

Why do you hate Labour, exactly? 🤔

Perhaps because they are a bunch of deadbeat no-hopers who put their personal political beliefs before party loyalty thereby handing election after election to the Tories? (looking at you Corbyn & Co.).