Take this post for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/1ll6ocg/see_it_say_it_censored_kneecap_is_not_the_story/
Speaking from experience, people in Ireland are overwhelmingly pro-palestine.
There is this user in the comments: https://www.reddit.com/user/EntireCourage308/
Its a nearly year-old account, it started posting about a month ago, it made some innoculous posts, then pivoted to posting far-right misinformation in the r/northernireland subreddit.
There’s loads of other accounts just like it.
How do you tell the difference between astroturfing and regular comments? I mean, besides “it’s obvious”.
When it’s posts you agree with, it’s honest users. When it’s posts you disagree with, it’s astroturfing.
I joke, but unfortunately that seems to be the most common metric for a lot of people. If it’s a position “no one would really support” (in their view), then support for it must be astroturfed.
Bingpot! So many people live in meme bunkers, where every issue is a binary battle between moral perfection and diabolical evil.
The problem is, unlike most people realize, astroturfing is rarely sourced from shill accounts like it used to be. Nor are high-karma accounts being purchased.
The issue is bots and shill accounts manipulate vote counts of posts/comments with certain positions. So, you don’t tell the difference, unless you find a way to track who is voting on Reddit content.
Many comments all pushing the exact same sentiment.
If you know the engagement metrics for how much engagement a post needs to break into the algorithm and be recommended, you can spot them because all the astroturfed posts have x# of upvotes before real conversations start when it breaks into the mainstream
Wait. But posts on social media with a large number of comments with the same sentiment is SUPER common.
People comment without reading other comments ALL THE TIME. Just look at comments on youtube and instagram and similar sites that are not forums.
It’s actually really depressing to see, it makes you realize just how much people are not unique in their thoughts. Just how many people comment stating the obvious, almost like they are typing in metadata for the post. Or just how uncreative people are with jokes.
I remember their being a lot of users saying it’s “stealing” to block ads, especially on YouTube and you should definitely just sign up for premium.
No one would suspect anti-AI comments of being astroturf by authors and publishers - which means they could do so invisibly if they wanted to. I’m not saying they are, just that astroturfing seems like it would be easy to get away with if you pick the right forums.
Regular accounts will not have all their posts/comments nuked from a certain point in time, and they’ll have comments in non-political subs mixed in.
This is a fantastic question.
If you ask it in a UFO subreddit, you’ll be attacked. The dynamics there are totally fucked up. (Because the bots and astroturfing there is only about hiding the truth, you see.)