What is Astroturfing and How Can we Spot it?

 Regan Morello

Alert.reganmorello@gmail.com

What is Astroturfing? 

Astroturfing, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something (such as a political policy) but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization (such as a corporation)." 

In times before the Internet appeared, examples of astroturfing could be found in your local community paper. It was first used on the letters page where fake people would write letters to the newspaper about what politician they support, what local business they may support, what policies they were against, and much more. Once the Internet came around, the world was handed a vast new playground for all of their astroturfing desires. In modern times, the purpose of astroturfing remains the same, to make it seem like there are more people in support of or against something than there really are. 

We see it every day we are on any social platform or surfing the web. Fake accounts on Twitter pledging their vote to certain politicians; reviews on big corporations like McDonald's seem much more desirable than they really are, etc. However, this sort of scam does not only happens on the Internet. For example, according to Business Insider, McDonald's paid 1,000 of their part-time employees to wait outside a McDonald's restaurant in Japan overnight to make it seem like a lot of people were heavily anticipating the release of their new burger. This is only one of the astroturfing publicity stunts big corporations have pulled, so the question I'd like to ask is, how can we spot the others? 

We are all guilty of spending time browsing through the comments on a viral post on social platforms. I am sometimes guilty of spending more time in the comments of social posts than looking at the actual post. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Throughout the various times I have done this I have seen multiple duplicated comments on various posts that have nothing to do with each other - except for the fact that they have gone "viral." If I were astroturfing, I would want my fake comments to be visible to hundreds of thousands of people, wouldn't you? What better place for a bot to hide out and astroturf than in the comments of a viral post thousands of people are scrolling through every minute? 

Bots Spam Comments on a Facebook Post

In order to identify these fake users/comments, we have to first identify what we are looking for. You should be looking for various wording of the same comment on different posts, similar profiles (spam posting the same content or message), as well as wording (does it sound like a robot wrote this?). If these apply to the comment/post you are looking at, then you are most likely a victim to astroturfing. Next time you decide to scroll through TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter, see if you can identify one of these comments/profiles. If you do happen to, always, and I mean always report it. You could save the next person scrolling from fake information. 

Buying Bot Comments on Tiktok