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?
The kochs and mercers arent spending billions on propaganda for nothing
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.
![[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}