Astroturfing Methods: How Astroturfing Has Evolved Beyond Lobbying

By: Adam Subotin

as921212@ohio.edu

What is Astroturfing?

Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants, A now commonplace dilemma that is hard to spot unless you're looking for it. 

There have been plenty of examples in which major corporations have been outed for astroturfing, but astroturfing goes far beyond the corporate world. Within the past few years, astroturfing has gone so far as to affect the general consumer's source of entertainment as well.

Issac Provatia & The Fidelity Communications Outting

While some sources of entertainment have been affected by astroturfing, some sources of entertainment have also notified the public of astroturfing campaigns. While many campaigns are found and discussed via networks like Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, filmmaker/designer Issac Provatia, uncovered an astroturfing campaign being conducted by corporate cable and internet provider Fidelity Communications in 2018. 

In the video, Provatia uncovers a campaign "Stop City-Funded Internet" was promoted and sponsored by Fidelity, who was being challenged by the city of West Plains, Missouri who wanted to implement a project to provide internet as a city utility. 

Fidelity Communications essentially controlled the city's entire Internet supply, and when the project initially came about, the radical "Stop City-Funded Internet" campaign appeared out of almost nowhere. The marketing company hired by Fidelity made a crucial error in developing the campaign, which was spotted by the YouTuber. 

Initially projected as a grassroots project, the tell-tale that linked back to Fidelity were two images among the campaign's website and their file names. The file names included "Fidelity" within the image source, revealing Fidelity as the sponsor and main client behind the initiative. 

Fidelity under scrutiny from the city eventually came out and admitted their attachment to the campaign but did little to admit wrongdoing. Instead, they adjusted their tone continuing to come off as simply a concerned member of the community rather than a business whose worry, in reality, was losing out on revenue to the city.

Even Your Favorite Artists Are Involved In Astroturfing?

As mentioned earlier, the entertainment industry is also guilty when it comes to different forms of astroturfing. 

In this case, your favorite artists may be among those that have participated in astroturfing whether they knew it or not. Justin Beiber is a prime example. 

Upon the release of Beiber's 'Yummy' back in January, the song was heavily criticized online as one of Beiber's worst released songs, however, the song has still ended up as one of Beiber's most-streamed recent releases, and popular songs on Spotify. How you may ask? 

Beiber openly promoted and publicized how to fake streams so the song would push on to number one on the charts. 

Beiber made a slide of photos which he posted to Instagram (since deleted) asking fans to buy the song multiple times on iTunes, and also instructed his fans to create a Spotify playlist consisting of only his song “Yummy” repeatedly, specifically requesting the playlist be played on a low volume, not on mute consistently. Even more intriguing, Beiber instructed fans to use a US-based VPN (virtual private network–that is, by downloading a VPN app and setting it to the United States) because if the listener was listening non-domestically, the charts only consider steaming within the United States.

Since this fiasco, other artists including Selena Gomez have also been accused of faking streams or employing streaming farms to artificially inflate their streaming numbers on outlets like Spotify and Apple Music and insure significant payouts. 

Several Android devices connected to a server that farms streams.

What's even more alarming according to a Rolling Stone article written by Elias Leight, is the amount of money fraudulently paid out by streaming platforms. Artists currently receive between $0.0045 and $0.0084 per stream, but according to Leight, Louis Posen, founder of California based punk-pop and rock label Hopeless Records, “think[s] that three to four percent of global streams are illegitimate streams," and "...around $300 million in potential lost revenue [has] moved from legitimate streams to illegitimate, illegal streams." 

So, astroturfing is proving to be a real issue, which comes in many shapes and sizes.