Buried alive

Is astroturfing burying companies and interest groups on the internet? Is using astroturfing ourselves the only way to fight the astroturfers? 

Earlier this year, the technology startup Pixate had an idea: create software that would allow developers to mess around and customise user interfaces on their smartphones. In our techno-world, anyone with a webcam and bright idea can put their pitches out there.

So, Pixate decided to hit up Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform that allows creators to raise money for their projects by appealing to the masses on the web. The project managed to hit its goal of US$25,000 - throw in a few dollars, all for a good cause, right? Users didn't know that the fundraising had already been given a massive boost from an affiliated corporate sponsor. 

This is astroturfing at its most subtle. It doesn't need a flood of positive comments to look good. It is faceless and speechless. Seeing that there has already been thousands of dollars worth of support gives you a bit of confidence in the project. Like how buskers leave some loose cash in their guitar case so you don't feel odd dropping the first coin in.

Astroturfing has become the ultimate evil: lying to make yourself look good when in reality you're probably pretty awful. But astroturfing has become a reality. A technique rather than a taboo. Our investigation aims to give people a guide to catching astroturfers out. Technology like persona management software and bots make the onslaught of astroturfers endless. Perhaps the only way to fight back is with our own bots?

George Monbiot, blogger for The Guardian Online stresses that we have to fight astroturfing. It's an enemy infecting the chat forums, Facebook pages, and comment threads of all legitimate companies. According to him, astroturfing has become a matter of bipolar ethics: good versus evil.

Is it a necessary evil? Or, will the moral panic die down? In the near years, we might see astroturfing as just another obvious PR tactic. Like the balloon-headed photos of politicians on posters, or the Labor Party onslaught on the front page spreads of the Telegraph or Australian.

Let's look back to the roots of PR and advertising. During World War I, US President Woodrow Wilson sent out a team of what he called 'Four Minute Men'. The group of suited men would get up between the four-minute reel changes at the cinemas and give a spiel hailing the PotUS and the country's war efforts.

The 'Four Minute Men' give a speech to the American public

Was this PR effort a good or an evil? Or was it simply something the President's PR team had to do to get their message out? We've got the internet now, so maybe we're a bit more skeptical - a shady group of men sitting in front of hundreds of flickering computer screens, slapping away at keyboards overnight, churning out fake Facebook profiles and floods of tweets. If the astroturfers got up in front of us with suits and moustaches, maybe we might just believe what they were saying. 

This Project Matters. And I'll Astroturf This Post To Prove It.

As our feature begins to form, I often find that remembering the purpose behind the project often gives it direction.  Why does this project matter? Why is it important that we target internet users?

To explain, allow me to provide some facts about the Internet’s more popular websites. In doing so, I’ll highlight the ease at which astroturfing can occur on user generated websites.

Firstly, Amazon. The world’s largest online retailer. Amazon is website where users can review or recommend products for purchase, and is ultimately very susceptible to the practices of astroturfing. Amazon’s own review guidelines state that users do not need to have purchased a product to review it. If I were an author trying to flog my book, what’s stopping me from engaging in a little astroturfing?

According to Amazon’s own review guidelines; nothing. Provided I don’t swear, of course.

Secondly, TripAdvisor. Having reportedly been used by over 100 million people, it is the world’s largest social travel network.  A website that enables travelers to both learn and recommend what’s hot and what’s not. But how objective are these recommendations? As The Guardian journalist Sean Dodson explains, anyone is completely free to say anything about practically any hotel in the world. If I were an innkeeper trying to flog my hotel, what’s stopping me from engaging in a little astroturfing?

According to TripAdvisor; nothing. Provided I go about it in a subtle manner, my multiple fake profiles do not need to prove they have in fact visited the place they are reviewing. 

TripAdvisor has over 50 million reviews. Over 10 million of those are reportedly fake.  



Thirdly, social media like Facebook and Twitter. Combined, the two websites have more than one billion users. With such a massive audience; companies, products and causes have sought to use social media to leverage their brand.  What better way to leverage your brand then to literally purchase Twitter followers and Facebook fans? Websites like Real Fans Buy offer companies affordable ways to generate online support through deceitful means. If I were a political candidate trying to flog my campaign, what’s stopping me from engaging in a little astroturfing?

According to the policies of Facebook and Twitter, nothing. Purchasing and falsifying support is a growing and legal business.

And lastly, Blogger.  As I’ve written in a previous post, the ability for people to comment on internet news articles should be an exercise in democracy and free speech. But when an agenda and astroturfing comes into the equation, it’s unfortunately a different story. If I were a University of Sydney student trying to prove the worth of my argument on Blogger, what’s stopping me from engaging in a little astroturfing?

See for yourself below.

For a fiverr, I'll persona manage you!

 “Thank you very much for this informative post,” the spambot says. “It has been very beneficial to my study of glow worms.” Fantastic, you say, but my piece was on a recent media scandal, not fluorescent grubs.

Obviously, this kind of post is easy to spot. Even in heated conversations in comment sections it’s easy to spot a troll. Astroturfing, however, is sneakier. It’s as pervasive and needy as spam, and as infuriating as a troll.

On the spectrum of spam to troll, the astroturfer sits closer to the spam bot, and a lot of that is owing to the fact that astroturfing has more to do with pretending to be a real poster than pretending to have a real agenda.  

Astroturfing is more intelligent, more strategic, and more authentic looking than any other kind of spam and therefore much more likely to convince regular contributors, or as HappyRockefeller from the Daily Kos says, ‘give the illusion of consensus’, which is a dangerous thing in the democratic online society we’re pleased as punch to inhabit. 

So how do we know who’s authentic, and who’s the vehicle of a PR strategy? There are plenty of tips available on the internet for spotting astroturfers which mainly look at the credible infrastructure associated with online identities, such as IP address, a website history, and other postings.

The practice of maintaining these inauthentic screennames is called Persona Management. It’s is interesting because it brings the robot and the real together. Software algorithms are responsible for maintaining an authentic looking online personality. A company that has erupted out of nowhere, or a blogger commenting on a post with no prior activity is bound to be suspicious, but a person with a history of engagement with a topic appears a little more credible. By creating all of the ‘online furniture’, as dmdyslin says, it results in no one suspecting ‘that they came onto the scene for the first time a moment ago for the sole purpose of attacking an article’.

Up to 10 “pre-aged” accounts are created at once, and are then supported by a series of flexible and static IP addresses which stop websites recognising the fake users, but then add legitimacy to their account over time so that it recognises the same user posting after the initial flood of activity.

So how are you supposed to figure out what’s fake when all signals point to authenticity?

It is possible to figure out whether multiple entries are from the same user. Thisis a useful site that blogger Sandi Keane suggests an alternate way to spotting astroturfing. She examines the semantics of the language used by the posters, noting several keywords like ‘incorporated’ and different phrases that hail nationalists, that ‘follow a pattern in the way they manipulate triggers in the mind to evoke a psychological response.’

Hailing the individual is much more of an active marketing approach, and sometimes the effort to promote a product or agenda is much more noticeable. Persona Management is one of the smoother astroturfing tactics. There are some interestingstories of people being caught out by using their personal accounts, which were tracked back to their company – the competitor of the company they were astroturfing.

I did find, in my hunt for information on how to spot astroturfing, a <a href=" http://astroturfingevidence.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow">suspicious looking blog</a>. On this suspicious looking blog was one blog post, no user information, no other posts and no activity log. This blog had been created for the purpose of ‘outing’ a website <a href="www.fiverr.com">Fiverr</a>. Fiverr is a website run to connect businesses with individuals who will ‘support’ them, all for $5 US. The author of the blog was definitely on to something:

<blockquote> I could tell from the guys eyes and his body language that what he was saying was a complete lie. Then something clicked – I remembered a site I was surfing on a few weeks back, where people would do almost anything for five dollars and I had seen a few advertisments about people making testimonial videos – I  went to the site www.fiverr.com and searched for ‘video testimonial’ – I found the guy who made the video in an instant !

http://fiverr.com/russellwilliams/provide-a-video-testimonial-for-your-product-or-service

You can see the original video as above – or heres my copy below just incase the original gets removed because we are onto him.</blockquote>

But the blog itself is incredibly suspicious, almost as if it was created simply for promoting Fiverr.com. Hmm. On the spam – troll spectrum, this Wordpress and Fiverr sit way over on the canned-ham end.

When it comes to astroturfing yourself, you might want to consider what methods you use, as we will when the website is created. You could choose to stick with Social Media Management or Search Engine Optimisation, but be aware there are other options out there.

Similarly, when it comes to dealing with the comments posted on your site, be aware that some of them still may not be real individuals. You should always keep in mind that users on the internet may not be who they say they are, but when it comes to this stuff – well, they might not even be human. 

Persona management - are you for real?

It sounds like something out of 1999’s Watchowski brothers’ film The Matrix. This being the utilisation of software programs to create credible personas to walk among us and have outspoken opinions that might persuade us into believing that this is widespread in our online, ‘plugged in’ reality.

Computer programs called 'agents' from The Matrix

In 2012, George Monbiot says that the use of persona management software is a common tool used by companies, lobby groups and politicians involved in online astroturfing.  You can read more about how this software actually works here. 

Whilst the concept of a rent-a-crowd in PR and marketing is not a new one, our online performances of everyday activities such as simple information gathering to household purchases makes this practice more intrusive. Persona management software programs have been developed to leave a digital footprint of an online life and they help in further blurring the distinction between the real and the unreal online. No wonder media panics regarding authenticity and the web continue with plenty of fuel. (This includes headlines such as this!) 

Our group is in the early stages of investigation of this topic and it presents a myriad of salient issues regarding the difficulty in ascertaining authenticity online, which I believe is the key anxiety underlying the practice of astroturfing.

One of the proposed activities I am particularly excited about is our own ‘astroturf yourself’ campaign, in which we might conduct our own tongue-in-cheek demonstration of how easy it is to fake a grass roots support of any idea or product in order to draw attention to its prevalence online. Our social media strategy, which will be the second part of my blog next week, will also seek to engage our readers in spotting astroturfing online and hopefully might result in an anti-astroturfing community.

The astroturfed lawns of Parliament House

Last week I discussed astroturfing in my micro environment - how online user reviews of products and places risk skewing my opinions, and thus where I spend my hard earned cash. I think this line of inquiry is highly relevant to our target audience of high-frequency web users, who rely on these websites for information. Neilsen reveals that 70% of Australians trust online reviews - more so than advertising or even editorial newspaper content. 

However I am also interested in broadening the scope of our project to think about astroturfing in a political context. This is especially relevant considering the 2013 Australian Federal election, and most significantly the 2012 US Presidential election.

Truthy is an investigative website run by the Indiana University Center for Complex Networks & Systems Research. The team at truthy use social media data mining to identify malpractice in social media. 

One example is that they found the Twitter account @PeaceKaren_25 had generated more than 10,000 tweets in a few months. They found that another account, @HopeMarie_25, was created 10 minutes later. This account simply retweeted all tweets from @PeaceKaren_25 while producing no original tweets of its own. 

Almost all of the 20,000-odd tweets from the two accounts support Republican candidates, especially US House GOP leader John Boehner. 

This kind of systematic political astroturfing would be difficult to seek out without the complex software that Truthy have at their disposal. However it is an important decision for this project, as it removes it entirely from the commercial sphere into a more murky politcal one.

Lawyer Matthew Hall told ABC Radio national that astroturfing for commercial gain is illegal. However, outside of this, there is no legislation against political astroturfing, however much it may be frowned upon. Astroturfing is one of the murky grey areas inside social media and the law. 

Taki Oldham took on political astroturfing in his 2010 documentary Astroturf Wars. Though Oldham focuses on real-life astroturfing, a lot of the same principles apply to online propaganda. 

Finally, Mumbrella, an Australian media and marketing news and comment website, has a long history of associations with finding and commenting on astroturfing. Tim Burrowes, their Editor-in-Chief, would make an excellent interview for our piece. It is interesting that people attempt to astroturf in their comments, and the other commenters and administrators are always quick to pick it up. Have a read through these comments on a Liberal Party 'Staycation' promotional video. Tim Burrowes quickly picks up the same IP addresses from multiple commenters defending the video. 

Tim's response is greeted gleefully by commenters. I think that being caught astroturfing is worse PR than not doing it in the first place. Political astroturfing is going to muddy the waters a little bit - because people are often much more passionate about political issues and ideas than they are about products. Who's to know if someone who is commenting positively on a controversial issue is astroturfing or simply passionate about the issue? 

I think that as our project develops, we'll come across more examples. I think a gallery of screenshots of suspected astroturfing could be an interesting - and sometimes humerous - web resource.

Accusations On The Astroturf

Commenting on news websites is increasingly allowing the public to shape information discourses. It provides opportunities for live debate and discernment on the day’s news. Comments collectivley form the reader’s voices; they are effectively online vox pops where readers are able to diversify an audience’s understanding of a particular issue.

But in an age where PR and Corporate Spin is too becoming digitalized, how much faith can we, the audience, put into the neutrality of comments? When audiences scroll SMH, The Daily Telegraph or Yahoo7, they expect comments to be authored by individuals and not for the purposes of business, PR or spin.

But how realistic are those expectations?

Welcome to the world of astroturfing.

Political blogger Adam Bienkov defines astroturfing in broad terms, perpetuating it as an act designed to deceitfully create the illusion of widespread support. The key word here is illusion.

Astroturfers create fake profiles with the click of a button. They then mass comment on a particular website or article to create the illusion that their view is popular, common and shared.

Astroturfing is thus not democratic, it is not creating debate and it is certainly not allowing for a greater expression of opinion.

Ultimately, our group hopes to use our web feature as an opportunity to explore the issue of astroturfing in greater depth. The project is in its early stages, and thus considerations pertinent to audience and angle still need to be assessed.

In exploring astroturfing, one of the difficulties I anticipate will be the challenge of proving astroturfing. As journalist Adam Turner argues, it’s difficult to accuse or highlight the practice of astroturfing when the proof is concealed by fake profiles.

Consider this example. On August 10^th, 2012, Peter Martin of the SMH published an article online about bank ATM fees. The article obviously struck a chord with readers, and it garnered 247 comments before website administrators closed the article for further commenting. As I read the comments, I was amazed at how quickly ING supporters had come together to collectively promote their bank. These were the first three comments posted;

Scrolling down, the suspect case of astroturfing continues.  And if the audience still had not been convinced of ING’s value and superiority, the advertisement to the right of the comments made the key message clear.

As a reader trying to identify practices of astroturfing, the timing and and tone of the comments about ING immediatley drew suspicions. But as our web feature and ideas develop, more thought needs to be given about how we are going to infact be able to identify and prove incidents of astroturfing. Is the evidence prestend above enough to account for an accusation of astroturfing? Does our Web Feauture want to exemplify incidents of astroturfing, or just raise awarness on the malpractice?

More thought and research will hopefully give our feature and my own line of thinking a bit more direction.

 

Whose turf?

I place an enormous amount of faith in consumer-ranked websites like Tripadvisor and Urbanspoon in my everyday life. I wouldn't dream of booking a holiday without checking out it's rating on Tripadvisor, and I rarely go to a restaurant without seeing what everyone else has said about it on Urbanspoon. And my reliance on user reviews isn't unique. Riga found that most people seek out, trust and buy based on consumer reviews. 

Occasionally it's obvious that a restaurant owner has written a glowing review to get their presence on the website started. However, systematic and consistent fake consumer reviews have more sinister consequences. How do we know what is genuine, and what is hidden marketing? 

Astroturfing refers to fake 'grass roots' campaigning, and can turn up anywhere including in consumer reviews, industry, government and political activity. 

How can we spot astroturfing? This Urbanspoon page for Rodizio Grill in Minnesota, USA has some obvious examples of Astroturfing - a number of reviews written in quick succession, without any negative feedback, and written by users whose only review is this one. 

Astroturfing on Urbanspoon reviews of Rodizo Grill

In this case, the bottom two reviews obviously prompted the several reviews above them from the proprietor. The contrast between the reviews is too much of a co-incidence. 

Adam Turner thinks that astroturfing is becoming more prevalent and more subtle in Australia: 

This new form of astroturfing is far more subtle and harder to spot. Sometimes these corporate trolls actually stand out because they're biased but still less opinionated than the other trolls and rabid fanboys. Other times they go off on tangents which seem reasonable but deliberately sidestep the point of the original article in order to make their own point.
In short these corporate trolls are trying to come across as "everyday Australians" rather than opinionated jerks. It's a smart strategy and I suspect it's working.

These 'enemies of free speech' as Turner calls them, are increasingly blending in to other user commentary. Monbiet has found that companies are getting smarter, in order to avoid these give-aways. This includes software that creates all 'all the online furniture a real person would possess: a name, email accounts, web pages and social media. In other words, it automatically generates what look like authentic profiles, making it hard to tell the difference between a virtual robot and a real commentator'. In addition to this, accounts can be 'pre-aged' to create a history of comments and interactions, a key mark of authenticity. 

For this webfeature, we want to engage the GP in a hunt for astroturfing, in an aim to make it obvious and alert consumers to it's presence and power. The #astroturfing hashtag on Twitter is already being used for users to spot astroturfing. Using Twitter to spread the word will hopefully encourage other users to spot astroturfing and highlight businesses which are using this practice. 

Our target audience is quite broad, but would especially focus on web-savvy users and those who may rely on online reviews - a very Gen Y trait according to Dorsey. This group has grown up in a world saturated in advertising and are media literate and highly aware of people trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Gen Y would see astrotrufing as a kind of dishonesty that would lose an offending company their business. At the same time, they're savvy enough to spot it and, hopefully for the sake of our project, to share examples it. 

Other story angles include the perspective of the astroturfing company (though this will be difficult to find). Is it worth the risk for them? If their actual service isn't as good as their fake reviews, is it worth it at all? And an ethical perspective: is this something we need to 'protect' users from, or are user-review sites fairgame?  Furthermore we want to investigate how host sites respond to this (we know that Tripadvisor takes a hard line including dropping rankings for offending sites)

As this project develops I look forward to finding more examples and developing a response to some of these questions. I believe this is a truly engaging topic for my generation and think it will make a dynamic web feature.