Mr. Crawford, I wrote this article based on research conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute last year. It is linked in my article. Samantha Bradshaw explained to me that the majority of cyber armies in the U.S. are paid for by U.S. political parties. She is a Ph.D. researcher at one of the world’s leading internet institutes.

David Brock is a former Republican, now Democratic party operative, who provides and manages many of the online troll armies. I wrote this article (also linked in my article) based on original direct research. An attendee at his conference obtained the handbook provided to attendees. Screen shots of the handbook are in the article. A link to the full document on Scribd is online (also linked in the article). There you can see Brock’s assertion that his network had the biggest influence of all on the 2016 US election. Mr. Brock has raised many millions and I’m certain, charges a great deal to provide his services to the political campaigns who pay him.

Two weeks ago, paid operatives of Kamala Harris contacted the administration at the college where I teach and demanded I be fired because I stated she was using a “fake accent.” Their request was not complied with.

I wrote what I wrote because not only does this extremely toxic online discourse promoted by Brock and many others ruin online political discourse and promote disinformation, it is interfering with actual business, culture, and any type of advancement in science, medicine, or the arts.

In addition, the behavior doesn’t help the candidate these people are paid to “advocate” for. It, as I stated in the article, merely reinforces problematic information by its repetition.

You can feel free to say whatever you like. But this is a space where you have personal opinions (maybe you think Elizabeth Warren is “above” this? Sure, why not?). It’s a space I work in daily and something I’ve written about and done original reporting on for several years.

The average response on social media advertising by any company has cratered in recent years. The engagement rate on the average legacy media post is .003%. On business ads, the average is .04%.

You’re either a Warren advocate, a corporatist Democrat or simply a resentful and pedantic sophist. Of these, I neither know, nor care.

You clearly know little about the topics you think you know everything about.

I recommend you to research Rogerian argument. You might learn something.