Astroturfing

Update: We noticed that while working on this piece Brian Krebs posted an excellent article on the same. What can we say, but great minds think alike? Since we dug into different pieces we have decided to post as well. Late on Sunday night we came across a fantastic reddit…

A video has gone viral of a white woman getting arrested for refusing to leave a closed park, sparking a conversation on white privilege.  The Daily Dot is committed to filtering the noise every day as COVID-19 seizes the internet’s attention worldwide. We bring you stories on everything related to…

@ 2020/04/23Is there an astro-turfing conspiracy to kill them all off? It is starting to look like someone is manipulating the most stupid people in the United States to break the Coronavirus lockdowns so that they can be killed off. To be fair, the right-wing, generously-proportioned, gun-totting, anti-vaxor, conspiracy-nuts don’t…

We talk to Ben Brock Johnson (@TheBrockJohnson), who covers tech for Here & Now, about the anti-quarantine protests and the conservative groups mobilizing them behind the scenes.This segment aired on April 22, 2020.Read More

If you’ve watched Fox News recently, you might think there’s a small revolution afoot in Red America. A series of anti-social-distancing rallies have popped up across the country — in Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, and elsewhere. As my colleague Jane Coaston noted, it harks back to the Tea Party craze in…

There was quite a bit of passion in the 9 o'clock hour on MSNBC this morning, as Stephanie Ruhle hosted Las Vegas billionaire Steve Cloobeck and Nevada journalist Jon Ralston on her show. The "Reopen" protests have, unsurprisingly, hit Nevada, and there's a great deal of pressure to open up…

What we are living through right now is a complete government/authoritarian takeover of people and the elimination of basic human rights. Facebook has chosen sides and they have sided with the government and tyranny. The social media giant is blocking posts and destroying the basic civil liberties of those speaking…

President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., accused Facebook of "colluding with state governments to quash peoples free speech," calling its actions "chilling & disturbing." Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked rhetorically of the company's decision: "Because free speech is now illegal America?" "Given Big Tech’s history of bias and…

The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names. The largest number of them were created just hours after President Trump sent a series of all-caps tweets urging citizens to “liberate” themselves from…

Over the last week, people in states throughout the U.S. protested coronavirus quarantining measures, like shelter-in-place orders and business closures. A viral Reddit thread posted over the weekend suggested that someone purchased domain names for “reopen” coronavirus websites in an effort to make it seem like there was more support…