I keep seeing all these burner style accounts with the same name format posting on controversial posts and posts about politics/protests: several letters usually the beginning of a name or word, usually incomplete, followed by 8 random numbers.
Usually the posts are contrarian, making an appeal to ethos or pathos, and don’t really seem to argue. It’s like they’re engineered to shit-stir, or trick people into wasting their time replying to a bot.
Is this the work of some thinktank[s] or something?
Yeah those are AstroTurf.
Same as many of the people posting earnestly on /r/politics, as well as almost all the ‘actual Venezuelans’ you would have heard from last year ish.
Alternatively, they’re so close to turf, they might as well be.
The kochs and mercers arent spending billions on propaganda for nothing
![[Tinfoil Hat]At this point, I'm convinced that like half of "conservative discourse" and radlib posts on social media are actually astroturf.(i.imgur.com)](https://i.imgur.com/lE5Uxpp.png){kind=link}