Ubiquitous
2024-11-02 02:05:02 UTC
The Kamala Harris campaign is allegedly manipulating numerous Internet
platforms, and possibly breaking rules, to artificially boost her
popularity and evade fact-checks on false content.
An investigation from The Federalist uncovered what appears to be a
vast astroturfing operation run on Discord by paid Harris staffers.
Both Reddit and X, according to the report, have been manipulated to
help Harris allegations that follow reporting about the Harris team
engaging in shady practices on Google to effectively rewrite headlines
of legacy news media articles, again, to boost Harris.
On Reddit, Harris staffers allegedly direct volunteers to post specific
content to specific threads, and up-vote or down-vote certain posts
effectively spamming threads and seemingly breaking platform rules. The
apparent goal is to make Harris appear more popular than she is, and
promote content that helps Harris, even if its not true. For example,
staffers have allegedly directed the boosting of Project 2025 content,
which they tie to former President Donald Trump, even though Trump is
not connected to the plan.
In the matter of 15 days, the staffers were able to get thousands of
posts published, and the content has received more than 5.7 million
upvotes, and over 400,000 comments, the report says. It was also
uncovered that 126 of the top 1,000 posts on the mega-popular
Politics subreddit, in just the past month, were allegedly published
by Harris campaign volunteers.
On X, another hugely influential platform for politics, Harris staffers
are directing similar activity from volunteers. One goal from the camp
is to block community notes that are unfavorable to Harris.
Community notes are basically fact-checks on X, which appear under
misleading or outright false posts. Under Elon Musks leadership,
contributors can add a community note, which is voted on by users to
determine if it will be publicly attached to content or not. When
Harris campaign staffers direct volunteers to mass dislike an
unfavorable community note, it wont appear.
This is likely why pro-Harris accounts have been able to spread
falsehoods without fact-checks attached to them. Even CNN, an outlet
extremely hostile to Trump, has reported on the routine false
information being spewed from KamalaHQ, the official Harris camp X
account. The same goes for other pro-Harris accounts that appear to be
working for the Biden-Harris administration, too.
Google has played a role in the deception, too. Aside from the
companys documented bias against Trump, it also permitted the Harris
campaign to change headlines and subheadings of mainstream articles to
appear more favorable to Harris, left-leaning outlet Axios exposed over
the summer.
For example, if one were to conduct a Google search related to health
care, they might get a link to an NPR story thats sponsored by the
Harris team. The campaign, however, in numerous instances, has edited
that headline and subheadline. In one case, the story would now appear
with the headline, Harris will lower health care costs.
In other words, users would think theyre reading a preview for an NPR
story, while theyre actually reading content from the Harris camp.
The news organizations whose content was being manipulated, such as USA
Today, the Associated Press, NPR, and others, were unaware of the
changes. Also of note, the Trump campaign does not engage in this shady
practice.
On Wednesday, Reddit Lies, the account that broke the story, said it
was banned from the campaign-run Discord server thats organizing the
astroturfing operation, indicating the Harris team is likely aware the
operation has been exposed.
The Harris-Walz volunteer discord server just banned my
account.
We expected this. Thats why we quietly archived the server
over the past week and are now releasing the files to the
broader public.
Deadmans switch.https://t.co/0Sud1WxbqQ
Reddit Lies (@reddit_lies) October 30, 2024
Additionally, Musk has already reacted to the allegations concerning X,
announcing hes opened an investigation into the Harris teams antics.
platforms, and possibly breaking rules, to artificially boost her
popularity and evade fact-checks on false content.
An investigation from The Federalist uncovered what appears to be a
vast astroturfing operation run on Discord by paid Harris staffers.
Both Reddit and X, according to the report, have been manipulated to
help Harris allegations that follow reporting about the Harris team
engaging in shady practices on Google to effectively rewrite headlines
of legacy news media articles, again, to boost Harris.
On Reddit, Harris staffers allegedly direct volunteers to post specific
content to specific threads, and up-vote or down-vote certain posts
effectively spamming threads and seemingly breaking platform rules. The
apparent goal is to make Harris appear more popular than she is, and
promote content that helps Harris, even if its not true. For example,
staffers have allegedly directed the boosting of Project 2025 content,
which they tie to former President Donald Trump, even though Trump is
not connected to the plan.
In the matter of 15 days, the staffers were able to get thousands of
posts published, and the content has received more than 5.7 million
upvotes, and over 400,000 comments, the report says. It was also
uncovered that 126 of the top 1,000 posts on the mega-popular
Politics subreddit, in just the past month, were allegedly published
by Harris campaign volunteers.
On X, another hugely influential platform for politics, Harris staffers
are directing similar activity from volunteers. One goal from the camp
is to block community notes that are unfavorable to Harris.
Community notes are basically fact-checks on X, which appear under
misleading or outright false posts. Under Elon Musks leadership,
contributors can add a community note, which is voted on by users to
determine if it will be publicly attached to content or not. When
Harris campaign staffers direct volunteers to mass dislike an
unfavorable community note, it wont appear.
This is likely why pro-Harris accounts have been able to spread
falsehoods without fact-checks attached to them. Even CNN, an outlet
extremely hostile to Trump, has reported on the routine false
information being spewed from KamalaHQ, the official Harris camp X
account. The same goes for other pro-Harris accounts that appear to be
working for the Biden-Harris administration, too.
Google has played a role in the deception, too. Aside from the
companys documented bias against Trump, it also permitted the Harris
campaign to change headlines and subheadings of mainstream articles to
appear more favorable to Harris, left-leaning outlet Axios exposed over
the summer.
For example, if one were to conduct a Google search related to health
care, they might get a link to an NPR story thats sponsored by the
Harris team. The campaign, however, in numerous instances, has edited
that headline and subheadline. In one case, the story would now appear
with the headline, Harris will lower health care costs.
In other words, users would think theyre reading a preview for an NPR
story, while theyre actually reading content from the Harris camp.
The news organizations whose content was being manipulated, such as USA
Today, the Associated Press, NPR, and others, were unaware of the
changes. Also of note, the Trump campaign does not engage in this shady
practice.
On Wednesday, Reddit Lies, the account that broke the story, said it
was banned from the campaign-run Discord server thats organizing the
astroturfing operation, indicating the Harris team is likely aware the
operation has been exposed.
The Harris-Walz volunteer discord server just banned my
account.
We expected this. Thats why we quietly archived the server
over the past week and are now releasing the files to the
broader public.
Deadmans switch.https://t.co/0Sud1WxbqQ
Reddit Lies (@reddit_lies) October 30, 2024
Additionally, Musk has already reacted to the allegations concerning X,
announcing hes opened an investigation into the Harris teams antics.
--
Democrats and the liberal media hate President Trump more than they
love this country.
Democrats and the liberal media hate President Trump more than they
love this country.