Astroturfers Need Something Better To Do

Maria Meece
mm162214@ohio.edu

Cartoon

There seems to always something that people need to be aware of when browsing the web. First of all, we need to teach people how to identify fake news. Now, we have to teach people how to not get swept into giving money to a fake organization. Essentially, people need to not be so gullible online. Don't believe everything you see!

Astroturfing

Astroturfing is when "an artificially-manufactured political movement designed to give the appearance of a grassroots activist." Basically, a way for giving people to get faked out - quite horrible if you ask me!

Organizations can be so devious when it comes to getting money. Red Cross, a highly respected organization only gave one-quarter of the money given for earthquake relief to Haiti back in 2010. This isn't exactly astroturfing, but this just shows how these organizations that we think we are giving good money to, don't actually give it to the right people. The people of this world deserve to know where their money goes to and what that process is. Society always seems to be scamming people out of their money.

How To Identify Astroturfing

Thankfully, we do not have to sit by and let these astroturfers scam us. At the Indiana University for Complex Networks and Systems, a system was created to find and weed out the different astroturfs on twitter. With this system, people are able to analyze tweets and see if they are true or false. This system is a great way for people to understand and see how astroturfers work and how they can sneak up on you.

I think that this system needs to be expanded on and provided for the public. If they could make a website to identify astroturfing like people did with fake news, maybe people would start to trust journalist more because they can check if it's fake or not. If more things like fake news or astroturfing enter the web, people will not believe what the web or journalist say to them.

Astroturfing is unethical and bad. Such an evil way to get money, honestly. People that give money to organizations really do care about what they are giving to. There shouldn't be an issue as to where the money goes. With a website that shows if a campaign or charity where one can give money to shows if it is fake or not, more trust will be built between the people and organizations. Being trustful and honest is so important this day-and-age. One must be able to be trustworthy if one is trying to get people to believe or give to a cause.

Truly, I believe a website that shows how things or organizations were made could really help people start to trust the web and journalist again. Indiana University is really onto something with this system trusty. I can only hope to see this grow over the next year so that journalist can recover from the election.