Astroturfing

[felter]

I want to first say this is a shorter version on something I started first thing today, that sort of kind of got out of hand and what started as a post, ended up being a full scale blog that was way too long, I ended up in pain and couldn't finish, it so I have ditched it, (actually moved it onto a word document) but I still want to or more importantly need to say something.

Ok I had never heard of astroturfing before to me it sounds like someone who changes real grass into astro turf ,but it isn't a definition for it is:

the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public.

Which leads me onto something that our American friends need to know about, if they don't already. I stumbled onto a story about where someone has been using astroturfing on the FCC website for comments on net neutrality, where there has been about 500,000 to 1.6 million fraudulent posts made against net neutrality. They are fraudulent as they are using the real names and addressees of American citizens. Now neither the Trump administration, nor the new FCC are bothered about this, as they are fully against net neutrality, due to the fact there is no money to be made from it.

So I am saying to our American friends reading this, you need to go to this site and enter your name into the search box to see if your one of those names that has been used without your consent or knowledge. Even if you agree with what they are saying, you need to stand up and take back your name as this is just a form of identity theft.

It would also be a good idea to make your own comment about the subject. With what I have read the FCC did not make it easy to do so, but worry not, use this site to do so.

Don't know what net nuetrality is, I found a good analogy for net neutrality created by someone calling themselves Jigsaw:

net neutrality
It’s like …

highways without toll booths. You can choose to make every road open to everyone equally. Or you can introduce toll booths for more direct routes. Unfortunately, you can’t create those fast direct routes without creating slow routes too. And some worry that slower roads will soon have speed bumps built in to make the premium ones more attractive.

Or its definition:

the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites.

I am trying to keep this short, but it is hard, as I found so much stuff about this today, and it is pretty amazing how bad it is and quite shocking how it is being ignored. But the ones ignoring it are more than likely being paid to do so.

Trump came into power saying he was going to drain the swamp, what he has done is he has actually topped the swamp up. The current American government is probably more corrupt right now, than it has ever been, they are in it for the money, and they do not care about their country or their population, which is a shame. But I diverge, so I will leave it at that.

[Jericho]

I've not heard of "Astroturfing" and I don't think it quite fits the definition.

Isn't this just shilling? With shills?

"Wow you've got to try this amazing weightloss pill! I lost 40lbs in weekend! I'm totally not being paid through fiverr.com for my reviews and comments!!!"




Trump is a Putin wannabe. He saw what Putin did (became the richest man in the world, he basically owns every Russian business after the fall of communism, but lets his friends and family 'own' the money... that he has access to) and wants to emulate the man. But Trump's an utter moron who takes any criticism to heart, and must tweet a response to it at 3am like an angry 9 year old

"Yeah? Well I think your hair is stupid too. #FakeNews"

This is the president of the most powerful country in the world, having twitter arguments with B-list celebrities (who are just as bad as he is quite frankly). He has so little self-awareness, that it would be hysterical to watch if it wasn't so utterly awful.

Putin, for all his terrible terrible faults, at least wants Russia to be 'great again'. Even if that does mean killing anyone who isn't white and straight. Trump just uses the same catchphrases and does whatever the people that got him there tell him to do.


I'm not even sure that the current group of Trump politicians even know that they are following all the conspiracy theories and nonsense that comes from the KGB/FSB/Russian-sponsered-fakenews and playing right into Putin's hands.

I for one welcome our new Russian overlords.
Dasvidanya


----> Actually on topic -----> Yeah, the net neutrality is back up again. Hoping it goes the same way as the travel-ban with "Are you serious?"

Remember what the great Ted Stevens said kids... The internet is a series of tubes, not a truck. If your secretary sends you an Internet on Friday, and you don't get that internet until Monday morning, its because all the kids are blocking the tubes with their games and tv and their own internets. The internet must be kept free of other people's internets so that the important people can send their internets.

With this level of understanding, I'm amazed the average user is even allowed access to an internet.

[felter]

I've not heard of "Astroturfing" and I don't think it quite fits the definition.

Isn't this just shilling? With shills?

"Wow you've got to try this amazing weightloss pill! I lost 40lbs in weekend! I'm totally not being paid through fiverr.com for my reviews and comments!!!"

No what you are saying is someone making a paid for advertisement while claiming they were not being paid for the advertisment.

Whereas in this case, someone is using the means of astroturfing where they have used the actual name and address of real people to mask their political allegiance to try and make a claim that the person wants something to happen, while the real person doesn't even know the claim has been made on their behalf. This is why if you are American you need to check and see if your name has been used for this claim. As it has been pointed out it is actually a massive case of fraud using the identity theft of hundreds of thousand of people, which the FCC and American government are ignoring due to the fact they agree with the statements being made. They need the owners of these identities to step forward and announce that their names are being used without their consent, so legal proceedings can begin making the FCC and American government take responsibility of the postings and remove them.

Right now the FCC are using them to show that the American population wants and thinks net neutrality should be scrapped.

How do they know they are fake. One senator was getting all these message from constituents and she checked up by getting in touch with them as they had never done anything like this before, and none of them knew what she was talking about. The posts themselves, a lot of them were made at the exact same time, it sounds like it happened in batches and a lot of the times they were even made in alphabetical order. Also the company monitoring the posts being made, discovered that the posts were being made from different states than where the posters said they came from. The last one in itself is saying there is something fraudulent going on, but the FCC wont listen to them and they are the ones the FCC are paying to monitor for these types of irregularities.

Tony Romm a senior technology reporter for Politico wrote:

The flood of traffic seemed to raise some lawmakers' eyebrows, including Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California, whose office soon determined some of the messages had come from constituents who didn’t recall sending them. Her aides pointed to a memo sent to members' staff last week by Lockheed Martin, which manages the technology behind some lawmakers' "contact me" Web pages. Lockheed initially said it had "some concerns regarding the messages," including the fact that "a vast majority of the emails do not appear to have a valid in-district address." In some cases, Lockheed also questioned the "legitimacy of the email address contact associated with the incoming message[s]."

... Speier's office noted the similar emails and then calculated that about 98 percent of the messages had come from constituents that her office had never heard from before. The congresswoman’s team set about trying to reply to some senders, and a few of the constituents replied that they had never signed up to send emails criticizing net neutrality.

Comcast have tried to shut the website looking into these irregularities claiming the site was committing a fraud by using the name they are using. The site told them to get stuffed as they are not breaking any laws with the name as they are not accusing comcast of anything and are not trying to look like comcast or infringe on any comcast IP. You can see the email they sent here.

[eladan]

Ok I had never heard of astroturfing before

Lucky you. It's quite common in the US, and has been for some time. I don't think it's anywhere near as common in the rest of the world though. I've been reading about these cynical campaigns for years - apparently because I like being outraged by underhanded crap like that.

I've not heard of "Astroturfing" and I don't think it quite fits the definition.

Isn't this just shilling? With shills?

Shills are less targeted, and it doesn't have the definite goal that astroturfing has. Astroturfing is an organised campaign with a definite goal - usually something like influencing the opinion and politics around a certain issue to get a law written the way they want.

[Warenwolf]

Ok I had never heard of astroturfing before

Lucky you. It's quite common in the US, and has been for some time. I don't think it's anywhere near as common in the rest of the world though. I've been reading about these cynical campaigns for years - apparently because I like being outraged by underhanded crap like that.

Unfortunately they are pretty common in the rest of the world too where astroturfing campaigns are financed and organized by national states (either they are domestic to the audience or foreign based), financial interests and politically motivated power groups. Just like in US

[Jericho]

they have used the actual name and address of real people to mask their political allegiance to try and make a claim that the person wants something to happen, while the real person doesn't even know the claim has been made on their behalf.

Ah! I see. I misunderstood, or misread, your original meaning. I'll blame my phone.

Yeah, that's bad. I've heard of it in relation to dead people voting with voter fraud. And there will always be the soundbites from politicians "I have a lady in my constituency who wrote to me about the [1970's racial slur removed] running up and down her street, staring through her letter box, etc etc etc, bull bull bull."

I'll try to dig out the clip.