I know that most of these comments come from individuals with multiple accounts. I know how they're doing it, because it's a tactic I helped pioneer in the Cannabis legalization movement in the 90s when the internet was in it's infancy, and watched it's use expand to other causes over time, the tactics have changed and grown with social networking and the vast proliferation of personal blogs, and while it used to be all volunteers dedicated to whatever their cause was there are now paid employees of corporations, political parties, governments, including Canada's, police forces, everyone who has PR issues.

 Did you notice the sudden major shift in public attitudes towards cannabis in the mid to late 90s? Because every time a cannabis related story got published anywhere in north america that newspaper would get a bunch of pro-cannabis letters that appeared to be from local readers.  We did it through www.mapinc.org which tracked news stories related to Cannabis and sent new stories out to subscribers to respond to. 

That was before comment sections and tracking, etc., and the tactic worked, editors got the false impression that their audience was virulently pro-cannabis and they changed their stance, which changed public opinion rapidly. Support for legalization went from 30 percent or less in the early 90s to over 50 percent in less than a decade despite a billion dollar, taxpayer funded campaign against us, largely through the work of grassroots volunteer activists with little or no money, limited time, and a pot-headed tendency to procrastinate and take their time. It can be done again, but now the tactics we created are being used against us by highly organized, systematic, well paid professionals, so the game has changed.

 We got swamped with it when Occupy was in full swing, because the people who knew about that kind of thing who were part of Occupy were at the camps, living away from their computers, for some of them it was the first time in years that they didn't spend most of their day on a computer, but it meant the comment sections of every news story having to do with Occupy, as well as public Occupy related pages on every social networking site, were flooded with right wing rhetoric and hardly anyone responding to it, which proved disastrous.

 When using the major talking points and responding to troll spammers, I can see the patterns in my opponents, who have similar 'scripts' for their different avatars, I can sometimes tell when I'm arguing with '2' people and they're the same person, but there's other times when I can tell that there's an army of PAID troll spammers dominating certain news sites, and one or 2 people doing it for a little while in a day isn't doing much against them, and there needs to be a systematic response in kind. 

 PAID, seriously, I mean these people make their living by sitting for 8-10 hours a day repeatedly searching certain search terms so that when a new story pops up on that subject they'll be the first to comment, and the second, and the third... plus they systematically 'report' the people who argue with them, and since you're being 'reported' by multiple accounts, the 'reports' add up and get people banned who are following the rules. They do it on the social networking sites too.

The general public, just trying to get a feel for the issues, sees a swamp of negativity from lots of 'regular people' every time the names INM or Occupy or whatever cause come up, and this makes them less likely to join in if they were thinking about it, and less likely to want to be seen publicly supporting them in any way, even if they agree with them, involvement in an unpopular cause has personal consequences, and the right wing are working to give the impression of progressive protest movements like Occupy, Sovereignty Summer and Idle No More becoming unpopular.

There has to be an organized response, using the same techniques they use. It needs a group of volunteers with scheduled times, a list of search terms, a long list of carefully crafted talking points, with different ways of phrasing each of them, and responses to the most common opponent arguments, and a lot of spare time during the peak hours when news stories hit the internet, between 8 am and 6 pm. Using mail.com or some other free e-mail with no background information to start creating identities, then using those e-mail addresses to create facebook identities, then friending each others identies and building their pages, adding random stuff and making the facebook pages seem like real people at a glance, then register with news sites, lots and lots of them, with all the different identities, subscribe to their updates so you can catch stories of interest.

 Once you have your profiles ready, if you have limited resources, focus around specific upcoming events or statements, when you know in advance that there's going to be a lot of media coverage for your cause or your opponents cause, you need a group of people who can settle in for about 2 days trying to be the first to comment every time a related story comes up, responding to attacks, etc. Teenagers well versed in social media are great at this, the best ones will be the ones who appear distant or non-social. 

 I'm not talking about changing the minds of the troll spammers, that's not possible, they know they're lying because they're paid to, that's the point. They're paid to, and they're paid a lot, because of the false impression it leaves on the general public that most people are against progressive movements which makes them scared to be seen participating or vocalizing support even if they support it.

When it's done with an 'on the job' mentality, where you can coldly evaluate what they're saying for the core argument and use a standardized, factually correct response and move on to the next one, it's easy to put the emotions aside and just see the mechanics of their logic for what they are.

The best propaganda doesn't actually attempt to persuade people to believe a certain thing, it persuades people that most other people already believe it so you have to pretend you believe it to in order to 'fit in'. That's what multiple identity trollspammers do.

 Don't respond as an emotionally driven individual to an individual saying hateful things, respond with the mindset of a programmer attempting to correct faulty code in the software of the public consciousness.