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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

> Both the Minnesota and Pennsylvania gun advocacy sites include the same Google Analytics tracker in their source code

I enjoy the irony of an analytics tool designed to track users instead being used to reveal something the site owner was trying to hide. There's just something poetic about it.

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This is also indicated at the bottom of the web page in clear text. I don’t think anything is being hidden.

And it’s probably just some big mega host. I doubt these sites are much more than a wordpress plugin.

> This is also indicated at the bottom of the web page in clear text

What is the "this" in this sentence? Looking at the pages that still resolve I don't see anything that implies they are not independent state-based organizations, but it looks like some of them no longer resolve so maybe you saw something I didn't.

The irony only exists because of the tragic centralization of web tools. Hopefully, as more people open their own websites and domains, that centralization will lessen.

Would that have made all the sites not be opened by one actor?

Don’t get it, can one group of people not represent the same interest in two different states?

How is this scandal?

edit: tons of claims and downvotes, not one hard bit of evidence to show this is not an authentic organization. IDK, maybe it’s not, I don’t actually care, but I thought bullshit baseless claims weren’t supposed to be accepted here?

Have you looked at the sites? They go pretty far out of their way to seem like they are locals speaking independently. Astroturfing is generally scandal-worthy.

Ok, so your claim is that one org representing two states could not poll and get local comments from actual people in those two states?

Edit: can’t reply to claim below but have yet to see any evidence this isn’t an authentic org that represents two states. Why can leadership of this org not be people from these states?

> As a true grassroots movement we are comprised of farmers, doctors, mechanics, teachers, hunters, military personnel, and retirees. These are the people that we report to—not a boss 1,000 miles away who doesn’t understand Minnesota and what Minnesotans want.

That quote is a sample of what the entire page is like: Minnesota, by Minnesota, for Minnesota. It’s very clear that they’re trying to signal they are something other than what they really are. The article goes into detail on who actually owns the site.

The problem isn’t that it is one organization but it is going out of it’s way to hide that. That suggests that it’s motives are not quite what it professes. An honest organization can operate in multiple states but is open about that. What are they trying to hide?

> How is this scandal?

When political organizations with ulterior motives try to disguise their work as a grassroots movement, it's called astroturfing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Also, it should go without saying that an organization actively organizing people to defy critical Coronavirus-related quarantine procedures is a scandal, regardless of the source. The fact that a political organization is trying to obfuscate the source of the dissent is even more scandalous.

Can you source this is not a grassroots organization? Because I see the claim, and the assumption, but again, I don’t know how it’s scandal that one org can’t represent their topic in two states.

edit: apparently not. Everyone wants to believe it’s true, so it is

This is like the Tea Party: there really is an authentic grassroots movement, AND it is being organized and promoted by a range of elite conservative institutions, including Fox News and the White House.

Citation? I believe you of course. I just would like to see the evidence for all of this.

Edit: no, apparently no citation is coming. Wild claims, no sources. Just blame Fox News the one mostly conservative outlet compared to the hundred counterparts like it’s still 2008

Don't be a sealion. http://wondermark.com/1k62/

The article gives examples of the President's tweets supporting the movement, and Fox News routinely airs positive coverage of the rallies.

This WaPo article gives many more examples of ties between Facebook organizing groups and national organizations: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/19/pro-gun...

The protestor opinions is clearly in the minority. That said, protestors aren't being bussed in. People are choosing to show up to these rallies. The movement is authentic, it will get people killed, and that's why it needs to be grappled with. Dismissing it as inauthentic will get even more people killed.

You have made a claim, without substantiating it.

It should not surprise anyone that political organizers would organize multiple events at once.

That's not a conspiracy. It is just standard political organization.

It's astroturf, though. No one disputes that this is a coordinated national organization. That's the point. These aren't local protestors genuinely moved by local conditions and asking for local policy changes. They're following national orders.

This is called political organization, in the same exact way that other protests across the country are political organization.

Were you not aware that this is the case for most protests? Things like the women's march, or whatever, are also organized in a similar manner.

No, those organisations do not try to give the impression that they several unrelated local small grassroots organisations, which are in fact one big organisation creating lots of small entities, but this is what is happening here.

Having a political organization run things in multiple places is normal, is what I am saying.

There is nothing abnormal about an organization running political stuff in more than 1 place at once.

In fact, I would question the competency of any political group or organization that isnt running their political organization in more than 1 place.

It's fairly well-known that the Tea Party was basically funded by the Koch brothers, right? I assume you've read things like [1] which go fairly deep into how they funded and organized pretty much all the "grass roots" activities of the Tea Party

Now, these "reopen" protests are basically the same. The sentiments of the people are real, but the funding and organizing are not "grass roots" by any normal definition of the word. For example, of the Michigan protests[2]:

> The Michigan Freedom Fund, which said it was a co-host of the rally, has received more than $500,000 from the DeVos family, regular donors to rightwing groups.

> The other host, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was founded by Matt Maddock, now a Republican member of the state house of representatives. The MCC also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, and in January held an event featuring several members of the Trump campaign.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brother... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-...

This. I am certain there are well meaning individuals out there, who responded to the message for one reason or another. But it seems more and more like there is concerted effort to move it in a specific direction. I base it on Trump, Fox News and Patriot radio coverage.

> but again, I don’t know how it’s scandal that one org can’t represent their topic in two states.

The ACLU doesn't try to hide their national organization, and their local affiliates make no secret of their connection to the national organization. These "Reopen" sites are obviously not behaving in a similar manner.

I don't see the scandal, not in this day and age of doxxing, shaming, and death threats.

So what-about-ism and apathy?

Scandals are such because social shaming, possibly accompanied by prosecution, are useful tools for society to push back against bad actors. Or are you endorsing fraud as a legitimate political strategy?

> Or are you endorsing fraud as a legitimate political strategy?

It isn't already? Pretty sure that's what campaign "promises" are.

Yes, one group of people can represent the same interest in two different states. The objection is to "sites that seemed to be engaged in astroturfing, which involves masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants"

Yeah, I see that, but I’m not sure there is an assumption that the demonstrations are “grassroots” and also ... define grassroots?

I'm not sure many people believe they are grassroots, but they certainly present themselves as grassroots. Each site claims to be an independent association of local businesses rather than a centralized organization from one bankroller.

Is it "grassroots?" Surely we can less authentic than if it was organized by genuine residents of that state's population, no?

I don't think the point being made is that they can't share the same interest or the same organization but accusing the creators of astroturfing (Dorr brothers, Freedom Works, In Pursuit of LLc), being opportunists, and even foreign bad actors / agitators (Russian "Valentine Sons").

> Don’t get it, can one group of people not represent the same interest in two different states?

No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots.

If I have lunch with a bunch of coworkers and convince them that Ruby would be way better than Python and we should switch, and then three different teams in three different offices start advocating for it, and I wrote the team's wiki page on why they should switch, there may well be genuine interest in switching - but there is not grassroots interest. They can absolutely say "We were convinced by 'geofft and we agree with this page 'geofft wrote." They cannot legitimately say "We came to this conclusion on our own."

I have to disagree with this for several reasons. First, defining grass roots as independent events is not the typically used definition. It simply means trying to get support at the local level to most people. For instance the Bernie Sanders campaign was considered "grass roots," but those people were usually all convinced by a national voice, Bernie Sanders, potentially use advertisement dollars collected by different states. Secondly, there are many situations where any organizer tries to make changes in different states and thus creates multiple websites. Thirdly, in literally 10 minutes I could buy the domains and create both of those websites with about $50 and in less time if I knew an activist who had a template for it. Perhaps a friend who just created a website for another state? This doesn't take a massive organization or entity to push an agenda. Lastly, it seems extremely likely to me that this agenda, affecting the entire country, is very likely to be sought by any of the over 20 million people who recently claimed unemployment benefits, or the many millions more who also lost their job and simply have not filed for unemployment yet, or the business owners who are getting their livelihoods destroyed. I'm not seeing the great leap here where astroturfing would even be necessary given the current situation and feeling of the populace for a couple of cheap websites.

Right. Astroturfing is characterized by the deception and obfuscation, not by whether it’s coordinated or not. This is clearly astroturfing because the organizers are trying to hide the fact that it is coordinated and presumably led by a small number of interests.

The small interests being the families who no longer have a source of income because the government deemed their job non-essential. I know software engineers are still able to work but a lot of people are out of work and may be permanently as lockdowns increase

Come on. I know it's not allowed here to suggest that someone didn't read the article, but Krebs (and the Reddit "researcher") presents pretty compelling evidence that this is not, in fact, a bunch of rando people spontaneously deciding to protest all at once. If Facebook provided the same kind of transparency you can dig up from the DNS registration system, you'd likely find a similar pattern around who's behind all the "organization" that suddenly popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

It would make sense for a nation-wide phenomenon to be coordinated among people with the same problem. Also makes sense for it to pop up around the same it became apparent the virus was not nearly as deadly as initially reported.

> No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots.

If the funding, support, and organization comes from the people directly effected - yes - that’s still grassroots.

Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here?

Are you debating honestly? Because the article describes how these websites are linked to very few or a single entity. You can not be multiple local entities if you were created by a single central entity, that's a contradiction. Sure there could be the case that there a multiple local groups who the band together and form a federation or other central organisation. But we are talking about a timescale of a few days, bringing many independent groups together within that time is completely unrealistic.

> Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here?

Yes. It's in the article.

A lot of reasons and context have been given. I’ll add one.

The common infrastructure indicates that someone centralized is directing this and paying for it. One naturally wonders, Who?

Part of the power of grassroots protest is that it indicates that citizens are moved to act on their own. But if it’s paid for, that’s very different.

Yeah, I know.

But seriously, we are talking about 50 domain names and cheap websites.

Like, I'm not involved, but if I decided that I thought it was important, I could personally create a protest website for each of the 50 states. $8/year per .com domain name, and $10/month for enough shared hosting for all 50 sites for now (or be fancy and spend $50/month for virtual private hosting and know you'll have room to grow). A few hundred bucks will buy you the stock images and other assets you need to have each site be real.

This doesn't require some big nefarious "elite evils" to fund. I mean, maybe some big right-wing group is sponsoring it, but at least so far we haven't seen more than literally a grand or so could buy you.

Plenty of folks could afford to donate that to make a cause they believe in be real.

Murphy says it cost him 4K, and he wants to recoup his costs.

"“I realized all these fringe guys are gonna get a hold of these websites, So I went out and bought ‘em up that night,” he told me. The financial burden of thwarting fringe-right groups? “It cost me about four grand,” Murphy said. “I don’t have the money quite frankly. I was just trying to do something good. I’m in massive credit debt to do this.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/reopen-liberate...

That is an interesting development. I assume, despite his claims, that he saw an opportunity and took it with hopes of minor payoff down the line.

Incidentally, don't most registrars offer basic privacy protection? I know my phone doesn't show up in basic search.

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