美國總統奧巴馬在Reddit上進行了半小時的“問我任何事”會議，贏得了總統在年輕數字本地人中的信任，並肯定了總統“能上網”。米特羅姆尼購買了一個推特熱門話題，並於當天宣佈，相比之下，這似乎是一場激烈的競爭。但今天早些時候，一個陰謀論出現在Reddit的頭版，指責總統在他所謂的未經審查的數字市政廳裡植入了一個問題。

有爭議的問題——基本上是，為什麼意志消沉的年輕選民要再次投票給奧巴馬——是由失業的法學院畢業生希拉里·李（Hilary Lee）用新註冊的賬戶hmlee釋出的。沒花多少時間在谷歌上搜索，就發現李開復曾在司法部實習，並曾寫過一篇關於奧巴馬的博文(披露：直到今年3月，李還是Verge姊妹網站SB Nation的特約編輯，這是我們在報道過程中發現的巧合。）

“我希望這是真的，因為我仍然需要一份工作。”

“那麼，有沒有可能是她自己聽說的，建立了一個賬戶，併在不到6分鐘的時間內打出了一個雄辯的問題，那就是公關人員的噩夢？是的，有可能。“這隻是不太可能，”雷迪託倫敦杜布哈克寫道。

Reddit上有很多陰謀論，但這個陰謀論似乎會在Twitter上引起政治反響。這種反彈是否會抹去這一噱頭所產生的一些善意？《每日電訊報》甚至發現了這一爭議，並將其滲透到一些較小的部落格上。

儘管如此，這個故事還是在短時間內從Reddit的頭版上掉了下來。奧巴馬會不厭其煩地在一系列話題的數千個壘球問題中提出一個問題嗎？這是可能的。但這對很多人來說並不是特別可能。

李明博透過電子郵件迅速否認了這一指控。她說，自2008年以來，她就沒有與奧巴馬的競選團隊有過任何聯絡，她之所以開設了一個新賬戶，是因為她使用的是別人的電腦，沒有密碼。她問了一個壘球問題，因為她想讓總統回答。她只用了6秒鐘就提交了，因為她在文字編輯器中輸入了她的問題，併在建立帳戶後將其貼上到Reddit中。

以下是李的完整解釋：

I am not an Obama plant. I have no affiliation with the campaign. I worked for them in 2008, but I haven't done anything for them in 2012 -- mainly because I was busy finishing law school, looking for a job, and studying for the bar exam (priorities, you know). As to the connection to the Department of Justice -- yes, I interned there during law school for six months. My last day of work was in December 2011, so I haven't had any connection to the federal government for quite some time. And the idea that asking a question of Obama (even if some c***idered it a softball question) would somehow curry favor with the DOJ is... well, ludicrous. Though I wish it were true because I could still use a job.

And the mystery about the account is relatively simple as well. I've used reddit for years -- though mainly as a lurker. On my own laptop, my reddit account is typically logged in with the information saved in my browser. When the Obama AMA occurred, I wasn't on my own computer. I couldn't get my normal login to work and knew that if I didn't get my question submitted in a hurry it'd get lost in the shuffle. So I just created a new account.

As to hearing about the AMA in the first place, I got a gchat from a friend about two minutes prior to it starting who told me that it was happening and to keep an eye on reddit's front page for it to post. I guess you could c***ider the question a little bit of a softball, but that was intentional, in as much as I wanted to get it answered. I knew that the President, being a politician, wouldn't answer an argumentative or controversial question. Similarly, my question was more likely to get answered if it was at least reasonably grammatically correct. So I typed it up in notepad, proofread it once, and submitted it. Pretty simple.

從2010年6月開始，李就已經是一個註冊的Redditor了，但是她要求不要公開她的使用者名稱，“這樣我就可以在這一切結束後再悄悄地潛伏下去了。”這聽起來很合理。但別指望陰謀論就此終結：另一個Redditor已經指控第二個問詢者是植物。