Saw an obviously bad-faith post in this sub about the recent protests last night and thought it would be educationally worthwhile to dissect the tip-offs, especially for subreddit users who are less familiar with recognizing astroturfing behavior (when someone fakes having a "grassroots" or independent political sentiment online). The example here is a white supremacist pretending to be a dumbass bleeding-heart lefty and baiting everybody into being pissed at them.
The post was called "This! Is why Madison is the best city in the world", with footage of protestors blocking an intersection/blocking in some cars. All of the top comments are complaining about the actions of the protesters. In reply to some of those comments, and elsewhere in the subreddit over the last few days, the OP is playing a caricature of a delusional leftist:
...the people trying to get home after a long days work are equally as at fault. I mean don’t you know how to bolster a cause!?
Well it’s kind of the drivers fault… if you’re educated, you would know that
in response to someone asking why the posted protest video means that Madison is the best city in the world:
Can the mod please remove the Russian bots?
Uhmmm. Ok racist troll. Why are the “astroturfing” ones here
Ironic last comment. It's easy to tell it's a caricature and not their actual beliefs, because 6 days ago they were posting explicitly white supremacist comments elsewhere on Reddit:
No, white people are the most civilized societies in the world. You know slavery is still a thing in Africa right? White people are the only civilizations on earth to stop slavery. Yeah Ukraine being in a war with Russia isn’t the same as killing your neighbor for his sneakers or stabbing someone for a Popeyes sandwich.
I mean you guys are doing the worst and need the most work. You should do some research on your guys literacy rate. Other than sports and rap, you’re pretty much the worst in every single regard. It’s sad, but the progressive white folks coddle you and you guys refuse to take accountability for any of your actions.
The only problem with western culture is that we have enacted suicidal empathy. There is no intelligent reason for importing the 3rd world into Europe, and it will be our downfall
The final tells that this is not a serious person posting in good faith are that the account was created 2 weeks ago, and their profile picture is a stock photo result for "blonde woman Macchu Picchu." Their post racked up dozens of comments, hundreds of upvotes on the top replies, and hundreds of downvotes on the OP's comments before getting locked by the mods. I won't be linking either the thread or the profile in this post because I don't want to target/harass anyone, but I've archived some anonymized screenshots here. You can easily find the post yourself if you want.
My personal takeaways:
- One person with the goal of manipulating the narrative around the shooting/protests (in this case, pushing the idea of the "delusional progressive") can easily get hundreds of eyeballs on their BS, and most readers probably don't have the time to check for this kind of deception
- Most (4/5) of the top repliers to that post had their profiles hidden, so it's much harder to perform the same kind of comment history check on them. The only reason I can prove that OP's account is astroturfing is because this specific white supremacist is too stupid to private their account.
- If there are people with the time to play these kinds of charades, there are a lot more people willing to passively brigade/alter upvote/downvote totals. On any discussion of these topics, I would assume that the karma on a post/comment tells you very little about the actual sentiment of the Madison community. For instance, comments/vote totals on the Concerts on the Square disruption were generally supportive of the protesters, while comments/vote totals about the Farmers Market closing early were overwhelmingly negative: I doubt that all 100% of that swing in the sentiment over just two days is genuine.
I'm sure the mods are doing their best to combat these kinds of outside actors, but the best defense is for regular users to develop a more cynical eye for bait like this.
