Astroturfing during COVID-19 Reading List
This was a reading list that I put together for my Digital Citizenship course during the COVID-19 pandemic. Updated 21 April 2020.
Today’s topic is Atroturfing.
noun. US: The disguising of an orchestrated campaign as a “grass-roots” event – i.e., a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion.
Why is that today’s topic? We’re seeing a huge astroturf campaign happening right now in anti-quarantine protests across the U.S.
First, an introduction, from none other than John Oliver himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmh4RdIwswE
Now let’s see what’s going on now, from …buzzfeed news? ok…
The Guardian stands a little taller with their conclusions:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions
This is slightly off the topic, but here’s a list of other issues concerning the Internet and COVID-19: https://www.eff.org/issues/covid-19
Transmission of the Virus, a Review
I shouldn’t have to say that these protests, however they are motivated, are ill-informed. The data is showing that coronavirus cases are still rising exponentially in most states. Here’s a chart you can modify based on latest data:
covid19chart.org (preconfigured for right-now)
The rate of exponential increase is decreasing. It’s no longer doubling every day, but it’s still growing every day. It has not peaked, we don’t know when it will, but we ARE slowing it down. To quote the author of that site, “All our painful social distancing has put the catastrophe into slow motion. But it has not solved the problem yet.”
If you need a refresher, we know that the virus spreads from droplets people emit: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html
And we know that people who show no symptoms can be a carrier (just like any flu-like virus, something we’ve all accepted since we here 5 years old but suddenly it isn’t true now that we’re being told to stay inside for the good of humanity*)
*Mark’s opinion, interjected into sentence of objective fact
This article is from a week ago, but is still largely the state-of-the-science:
My Investigation
The websites and facebook groups behind these groups appeared seemingly overnight. That’s suspicious. That’s not the pattern of how “normal people” get together to make grassroots movements. The domain names for “reopen[State]” were all registered on the same day.
I did some investigation on my own. I ran a little test where I looked for the domain registration for each reopen[STATE].com using all 50 state abbreviations. The registration of every domain is public record and easily found, You can do similar inquiries by going to www.godaddy.com/whois.
The registrant information is obfuscated in almost all of them, but what’s shocking is that all 50 states exist, and with the exception of a two outliers, all of then were created between April 4 and April 17, with a suspicious 32 of them all created on April 17. This appears to support the hypothesis of there being organized, national influence behind these individual movements. (This post was written on April 20.) My raw data is below.
A Professional Investigation
(added April 21, 2020) Krebs on Security, a professional security blog, published an even more thorough investigation a day later: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-domain-surge/
What I want you to write about
So what’s going on? Is astroturfing happening, to what degree? The people who show up at these things must still have motivation to do so- what do you hypothesize that motivation could be? Have you seen people act in harmful ways (to themselves or to others)? How much do you trust the sources that I linked? Did you look a level deeper at where they got their information from?
I want you to go find one other source to bring in for this discussion. Ideally one from a different outlet that has a different perspective or different angle on the situation. You can even refer to historical astroturfing campaigns, or specific things that have happened in your area. Just work it in to create a consistent narrative in your takeaway.
Data
Here are the creation dates of reopenST.com where ST is replaced with the state abbreviation:
AL Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
AK Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:30Z
AZ Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
AR Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
CA Creation Date: 2020-04-12T22:32:26Z
CO Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
CT Creation Date: 2016-12-08T21:21:35Z
DE Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
FL Creation Date: 2020-04-14T10:47:47Z
GA Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:12Z
HI Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
ID Creation Date: 2014-01-10T02:43:16Z
IL Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
IN Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
IA Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:22Z
KS Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:30Z
KY Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:12Z
LA Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:16Z
ME Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:30Z
MD Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:16Z
MA Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:09:39Z
MI Creation Date: 2020-04-14T16:01:01Z
MN Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:39:17Z
MS Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
MO Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:36Z
MT Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
NE Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
NV Creation Date: 2020-04-16T04:02:15Z
NH Creation Date: 2020-04-14T00:49:12Z
NJ Creation Date: 2020-04-06T14:04:22Z
NM Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:24Z
NY Creation Date: 2020-04-14T10:28:53Z
NC Creation Date: 2020-04-14T10:25:06Z
ND Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
OH Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
OK Creation Date: 2020-04-14T01:41:16Z
OR Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
PA Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:37:29Z
RI Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:42Z
SC Creation Date: 2020-04-15T02:02:49Z
SD Creation Date: 2020-04-17T12:30:02Z
TN Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
TX Creation Date: 2020-04-15T18:15:59Z
UT Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
VT Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:46Z
VA Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:46Z
WA Creation Date: 2020-04-16T18:00:52Z
WV Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:24Z
WI Creation Date: 2020-04-15T08:39:26Z
WY Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Here are all the creation dates, sorted ascending. The two outliers are CT and ID, which are down and unconfigured. They likely were created for unrelated reasons in the past. They don’t fit the pattern of the others.
Creation Date: 2014-01-10T02:43:16Z
Creation Date: 2016-12-08T21:21:35Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-06T14:04:22Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:37:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:39:17Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-12T22:32:26Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-14T00:49:12Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-14T01:41:16Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-14T10:25:06Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-14T10:28:53Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-14T10:47:47Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-14T16:01:01Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-15T02:02:49Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-15T08:39:26Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-15T18:15:59Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-16T04:02:15Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-16T18:00:52Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:09:39Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:12Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:12Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:16Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:16Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:36Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:42Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:46Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:46Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T12:30:02Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:22Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:23Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:24Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:24Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:25Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:30Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:30Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T13:53:30Z
For full transparency, here’s the script I used to generate this data. It’s in bash, so it will work on almost any computer.
for STATE in AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
do
OUT=`whois reopen$STATE.com | grep "Creation Date" | sed -n 1p`
echo $OUT
done