Astroturfing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Democratic presidential hopefuls descended on New Hampshire prior to the state’s Feb. 11 primary, John Tackeff was busy.    The 27-year-old attended candidate events across the state to raise concerns about a proposed tax on Wall Street financial transactions that much of the field supported. Bespectacled, unshaven…

“The fact of the matter is this is fucking America.” The man who answers the phone at the number listed for the owner of four “Reopen” websites is initially extremely guarded. He refuses to tell the Daily Dot his name and insists that he is not Brad Butcher, the person…

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.Fueled by a combination of economic anxiety, anti-government sentiment and conspiracy theories, the anti-lockdown movement has ballooned in the U.S., almost as quickly as the coronavirus itself. In the last three weeks alone, more than 90 protests have…

BuzzFeed News; Getty Images BuzzFeed News has reporters across five continents bringing you trustworthy stories about the impact of the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.CDC Director Robert Redfield dropped a bombshell in an interview last week with…

At an anti-lockdown protest in Richmond, the capital of Virginia, last week, demonstrators wielded signs saying "I'm essential" and "Let me work". The wording for those signs was not entirely spontaneous. It was suggested in a "planning guide" provided by FreedomWorks, a conservative group based in Washington advocating for less…

I’ve spent the past few semesters teaching seminars on democracy, populism, and authoritarianism. It is not an exaggeration to say that the coronavirus pandemic represents a fresh challenge to democracy, not just in the United States, but across the world. Events of recent years – Brexit, the election of President…

Skip to comments. Revealed: How the US gun lobby exploits the coronavirus pandemic to further its aims Deutsche Welle ^ | 04.24.2020 | Jordan Wildon Posted on 04/25/2020 10:30:31 AM PDT by Olog-hai A DW investigation has found that protest groups in various US states against recent coronavirus lockdown measures…

Photograph: Seth Herald/ReutersIt started with a Zoom call.Five members of the Michigan Conservative Coalition – a rightwing non-profit with ties to the Trump administration – decided they needed to do something to protest against Michigan’s stay-at-home order, designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.Related: US anti-lockdown rallies could cause…

Disinformation of all different stripes is still a persistent problem when it comes to the COVID-19 crisis. Increased reliance on social media and spiking Internet use have helped fuel these campaigns. Attendees at a Reopen Missouri rally April 21. The novel coronavirus has saddled governments with the added responsibility of…

A report published today by DomainTools, a provider of cyberthreat intelligence tools and services, details how one small group of activists is allegedly employing astroturfing techniques to create the appearance of a nationwide grassroots effort through multiple domain sites calling for the reopening of businesses that have been closed in…