Court: Monsanto Employed 'Troll Army' To Combat Negative Comments Online

Court hears evidence about how Monsanto employed online troll army to combat negative comments about the company

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A San Francisco federal court has heard evidence about how Monsanto routinely hires armies of trolls to combat negative posts about them online.

According to plaintiffs, the GMO giant hired third-parties to respond to negative online comments about the company, in an attempt to bury evidence about the carcinogenic effects of their products.

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Leakofnations.com reports:

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The case challenges Monsanto’s corrupt relationship with members of the Environmental Protection Agency and their attempts to manipulate scientific publications and crack down on online dissent.

Monsanto’s ‘Let Nothing Go’ campaign allegedly hired online ‘shills’ to quickly respond to social media chatter about the carcinogenic properties of their ‘RoundUp’ product.

The plaintiff claims to have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of exposure to glyphosate in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ product, and believes that Monsanto aggressively attempted to remove all warnings of the risks surrounding the pesticide.

Click here to see the accusation recorded in a United States District Court litigation summary.

Monsanto have gained such a bad reputation for online shills that it has become common practice on the news aggregation site Reddit to write ‘Monsant0’ when discussing the company in a bad light so that it is not indexed on a search engine.

The company are also accused of pressuring scientific publications to downplay the risks of their products. In an email chain used as evidence in court (acquired via Mass Tort Nexus), a company executive instructed his staff to ‘ghost write’ articles, planning to have independent scientists “just sign their names” to the study.

“Monsanto tells us that Roundup is safe because scientists say it is safe. But apparently scientists sign their names, while Monsanto signs the checks,” says Kara Cook-Schultz, Toxics Director at U.S. PIRG. “This calls into question multiple studies written, or possibly ghostwritten, by agricultural scientists.”

Also included in the email chain is evidence showing that Monsanto regularly works together with other international chemical companies—such as Syngenta and Dow—to publish scientific papers. Christophe Gustin, Monsanto’s Crop Protection Regulatory Affairs Lead at Monsanto Europe, asked for Syngenta and Dow’s sign-off prior to hiring a scientist to publish the results of internal, unpublished studies on Roundup.

https://twitter.com/Colin_Todhunter/status/847353402929500161