美国总统奥巴马在Reddit上进行了半小时的“问我任何事”会议，赢得了总统在年轻数字本地人中的信任，并肯定了总统“能上网”。米特罗姆尼购买了一个推特热门话题，并于当天宣布，相比之下，这似乎是一场激烈的竞争。但今天早些时候，一个阴谋论出现在Reddit的头版，指责总统在他所谓的未经审查的数字市政厅里植入了一个问题。

有争议的问题——基本上是，为什么意志消沉的年轻选民要再次投票给奥巴马——是由失业的法学院毕业生希拉里·李（Hilary Lee）用新注册的账户hmlee发布的。没花多少时间在谷歌上搜索，就发现李开复曾在司法部实习，并曾写过一篇关于奥巴马的博文(披露：直到今年3月，李还是Verge姊妹网站SB Nation的特约编辑，这是我们在报道过程中发现的巧合。）

“我希望这是真的，因为我仍然需要一份工作。”

“那么，有没有可能是她自己听说的，创建了一个账户，并在不到6分钟的时间内打出了一个雄辩的问题，那就是公关人员的噩梦？是的，有可能。“这只是不太可能，”雷迪托伦敦杜布哈克写道。

Reddit上有很多阴谋论，但这个阴谋论似乎会在Twitter上引起政治反响。这种反弹是否会抹去这一噱头所产生的一些善意？《每日电讯报》甚至发现了这一争议，并将其渗透到一些较小的博客上。

尽管如此，这个故事还是在短时间内从Reddit的头版上掉了下来。奥巴马会不厌其烦地在一系列话题的数千个垒球问题中提出一个问题吗？这是可能的。但这对很多人来说并不是特别可能。

李明博通过电子邮件迅速否认了这一指控。她说，自2008年以来，她就没有与奥巴马的竞选团队有过任何联系，她之所以开设了一个新账户，是因为她使用的是别人的电脑，没有密码。她问了一个垒球问题，因为她想让总统回答。她只用了6秒钟就提交了，因为她在文本编辑器中输入了她的问题，并在创建帐户后将其粘贴到Reddit中。

以下是李的完整解释：

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.

从2010年6月开始，李就已经是一个注册的Redditor了，但是她要求不要公开她的用户名，“这样我就可以在这一切结束后再悄悄地潜伏下去了。”这听起来很合理。但别指望阴谋论就此终结：另一个Redditor已经指控第二个问询者是植物。