• For years, many have speculated that Democrat political candidates may be filling social media with fake posts to deceive the public and make their campaigns and causes seem more popular than they are. These claims have often been dismissed, citing that Democrat voters are already more likely to be on the internet compared to their not-as-tech-savvy Republican counterparts. This would suggest that the constant flood of left-leaning content on websites such as Reddit was merely a reflection of the userbase. However, many people simply couldn’t shake the feeling that something was just off, especially in the run up to major elections. Despite my fervent belief that something was amiss, I never had any direct proof that Democrats were actively manipulating social media.
  • That all changed two weeks ago, when X user @jessiprincey replied to one of my posts with a screenshot from a Discord server, seemingly related to the Harris-Walz campaign:
  • I immediately messaged Jess, and soon received a link to the Discord server where this operation was taking place. What I’d find there went far beyond algorithmic manipulation. I discovered massive “astroturfing” campaigns operating across multiple platforms. “Astroturfing” is a political and marketing term that describes creating swarms of coordinated and/or paid messages and posts to deceptively create the illusion of support from ordinary people. Essentially, “astroturfing” is the opposite of grassroots support.
  • In this case, there is a team of volunteers who spam social media with posts that specifically promote Kamala. They then have other users pretend to be random individuals who just happened across the post and decided to comment. It’s no different than a shady company paying a team to write a bunch of fake Amazon reviews about their product to make it appear to be a better and more popular product than it is.
  • Every weekday morning, Harris for President staffers like Gabrielle Lynn post the “Daily Messaging Guidance” to the server’s Reddit channel. It usually consists of articles and data that the Harris-Walz campaign wants to boost, as well as “key messaging” that their Reddit volunteers should stick to.

    • On Gabrielle Lynn’s profile, you’ll find a Staff icon (the blue D), which indicates that she is a paid Democrat staffer. In this case, Gabrielle is a Harris for President staffer.

    The links compiled by official Harris-Walz staffers, along with other articles submitted by volunteers, are added to a Google Spreadsheet called “Reddit Organizing.”

     

  • Harris-Walz campaign volunteers have created a database of more than 100 subreddits — each containing detailed information on what kind of content they permit, what topics perform the best, and any specific notes about each community, such as how much “karma” or cumulative upvotes one needs to post in each subreddit.

    • After their links have been collected and categorized, volunteer “Posters” will take a handful of the links provided and post them to their assigned subreddits. Kamala’s posters, however, don’t simply spam links haphazardly. They use a calculated, sequential post timing metric to avoid Reddit’s built-in spam filters. Harris-Walz campaign volunteers often discuss their ban-avoidance tactics in their Discord server, while continuing to spam Reddit with their collected links.

    Source: thefederalist.com