Redditors discover #ReopenAmerica was started as an astroturfing campaign | Hacker News Reader

Redditors discover #ReopenAmerica was started as an astroturfing campaign

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168 pointsmilkytron25 comments

https://twitter.com/alibreland/status/1252037486295031808

To clarify, there was and still is an active astroturf campaign organizing thousands of people to violate recommendations by the federal government about social distancing guidelines. Then there is a guy who registered a bunch of domains and is getting doxxed. Not sure why the later has an article in Mother Jones why the former does not.

On the one hand, we've got a super-long effort post with lots of cites and documentation.

On the other, a guy on twitter met an old hippie that says otherwise.

Seems pretty metaphorical for the whole situation, no?

This is not just a guy on Twitter, he's a well-known reporter for Mother Jones Magazine.

What he's saying does not dispute anything in the well-cited Reddit post. It just offers new information which paints it in an entirely different light. Because rather than basing the entire allegation on WHOIS records, he reached out to talk to the person involved, something that reporters do, but the Reddit hivemind does not.

Did you read the comment that this thread is linked to?

It's not based on WHOIS records for non-existent sites, it's based on CMS, HTML elements and identifies specific PR consultancies.

The information highway sure turned out to be a perfect medium for disinformation, huh?

It's pretty easy to understand this operation exists as part of an ongoing campaign to sow discord in the West. What better way to divide a nation than to encourage and exploit an existing polarization, rather than doing the dirty work yourself. Political subterfuge has evolved to be a lot more subtle - plant the seeds of discontent via Facebook events or meme factories, and watch groups take them up.

Similar to how completely baseless ideas that 5G causes cancer or coronavirus popped up out of nowhere - and you wind up with citizens destroying their country's own infrastructure[0]. An adversary's dream!

[0]: https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/03/uk-debunks-5g-coronavirus...

That whole post is based on a misunderstanding of what OneClickPolitics does: it manages websites, paid ads, and social media campaigns for advocacy groups. These websites look cookie-cutter because the OneClickPolitics platform auto-generates them. It's like saying that all Shopify stores look similar.

Their "OneClick Acquisition" platform delivers "on demand, organic supporters through our proprietary digital ad placement technology." They design and place digital ads to attract supporters to your campaign. If they were just hiring people to pretend to be supporters, they wouldn't need to place ads searching for them.

Please see a follow-up from Mother Jones reporter Ali Breland [1].

While the Reddit thread accurately described that these domain names were all purchased by a single entity, it appears that this entity is not a shadowy conservative astroturf group, but rather a guy who purchased them to prevent them from being registered by conservative groups, or maybe just to squat on them.

He's now being doxxed.

[1] https://twitter.com/alibreland/status/1252037486295031808

> described that these domain names were all purchased by a single entity

That definitely isn't all of them, because a lot of them resolve to actual sites.

I don't really understand the evidence being promulgated. Anyone care to explain? In particular I'm confused at the distinction between 'astroturfing' and 'grassroots'. The chief complaint seems to be that a 'corporation' is behind the campaign as if this stands in opposition to a group of concerned individuals being behind it. Last I checked, any group of people can start a corporation, apply for non-profit status, and register a domain name. Shouldn't the criteria for distinguishing between astroturfing and grassroots involve more than just seeing if a corporation is behind the campaign? Shouldn't we have to look into which corporation is doing it, their history, etc? And if it is just another NGO/non-profit, which shouldn't the be allowed to campaign on behalf of their donors? I'm just confused honestly, and have never understood astroturfing. Help me hacker news.

I think the main idea distinguishing grassroots vs astroturfing is the idea that grassroots campaigns are about individuals deciding to self organize around and idea. It's ok if that idea came from somewhere else, but the organization and push is coming locally.

Astroturfing, on the other hand, is when an outside influence is actively trying to organize spread out groups to make it look like a grassroots campaign.

How can the 'outside influence' be a group of citizens starting an organization to organize a campaign?

What does it mean to 'self-organize'? If someone posts an event on facebook is that a 'coordinated effort'? Or is the only valid protest one in which dozens of people literally decide upon showing up in the same place at the same time without any communication? Why is this the standard to which valid protesting is held?

Why is it wrong for one to be influenced by outside people? Gandhi in India inspired MLK in America. Nelson Mandela gives speeches all around the world encouraging the locals to seek what he sees as a just society. Why is that bad? I don't get it.,

Perhaps your comment was directed at a different post? This post is about spreadsheets.

Perhaps your comment was directed at a different post? This post is about a twitter hashtag.

I'll move it. Edit: done.

A related discussion from /r/bestof/ which tries to be a meta-discussion about the "best" posts and comments on reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/g3sw2l/the_user_udr...

This post was quickly taken off of the front page. Can we get an explanation?

I guess it was flagged because it was kind of political and would probably start a flame war. I don’t know why I couldn’t think of that.

Now do all the protests from 3 years ago

I've seen a lot of "just asking questions" about the difference between astroturfing vs. grassroots in discussion related to this issue. Phrased in an oddly similar way.

Keep your head on a swivel.

These people are calling it Astroturfing but in reality it's just organization.

I am dumbfounded that opening the country now that the curve was flattened is now political.

The purpose of flattening the curve isn't to then celebrate victory and return to normal. Now we need to ride out that flattened curve.

Open everything now will just result in all that we've been through thus far being for nothing as infections spike again.

Here is the definition for astroturf:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Astroturf

Seems to match up to me.

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