Report: Harris Campaign Manipulates Reddit with Sophisticated Astroturfing Plan


The Harris-Walz campaign is reportedly manipulating the social media platform Reddit and breaking the rules in order to control the narrative on the site and make Vice President Kamala Harris appear more popular than she actually is, according to a new investigation by the Federalist.

While Reddit is a notoriously leftist platform infamous for its censorship of a large community of Trump supporters, Harris’s campaign is deploying its staffers to manipulate the site’s algorithm even further via a massive “astroturfing” operation, which is in direct violation of platform’s Terms of Service, according to a report by the Federalist.

The term “astroturfing” refers to a fake grassroots campaign, which involves campaign staffers or volunteers posing as ordinary people to create the illusion that there is more support being expressed in favor of a particular candidate or issue than there actually is.

“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,” the Federalist noted.

When this strategy is used on Amazon, it can manipulate people to buy certain products, thinking they are more popular than they are. When the same strategy is deployed for elections, it can reward a falsely advertised candidate with more votes.

The Harris-Walz campaign reportedly keeps a spreadsheet to track of its astroturfing efforts, which involves staffers spamming the “Politics” subreddit (reddit forums on a particular topic) — and other subreddits — with pro-Harris propaganda, and then having volunteers who pretend to be random users who just so happened to stumble upon the content post favorable comments.

The Federalist accessed the campaign’s Discord server and found that every weekday morning paid Democrat staffer Gabrielle Lynn communicates a “Daily Messaging Guidance” for Reddit, which usually consists of articles and data that the Harris-Walz campaign wants to boost, and “key messaging” that campaign volunteers need to stick to.

This information is assembled by official Harris-Walz staffers and is added to a Google Spreadsheet titled “Reddit Organizing.” From there, volunteers called “Lead Posters” — who are Reddit savvy — choose what they think will best resonate with users on the platform.

After posting to Reddit, the campaign’s Lead Posters then go back to the spreadsheet and update it with links to their posts, so that campaign volunteers can then spam the posts with likes and comments, making them appear more active, which then triggers the site’s algorithm to make the content more visible to users.

Harris-Walz campaign volunteers are reportedly working with a database of more than 100 subreddits that they target with campaign propaganda.

“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,” the Federalist reported.

Given that this activity violates Reddit’s Terms of Service, Harris-Walz campaign volunteers often discuss how to avoid getting banned while they spam the platform and carry out their astroturfing agenda, according to internal Discord chats obtained by the Federalist.

With regards to how effective this shady strategy has been, the Federalist noted that the Harris-Walz campaign’s own data reveals that over the course of 15 days, its volunteers were able to make 2,551 posts to Reddit, which have so far garnered more than 5.7 million upvotes and 418,000 comments.

Staffers and volunteers posing as regular individuals and spamming Reddit with propaganda and false favorability is clearly an effort by the Harris-Walz campaign to manipulate votes in the 2024 presidential election.

Read the full report at the Federalist here.

Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com


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    Chinese Agent Who Tried To Bribe IRS Against Shen Yun Sentenced To 20 Months in Prison

    Chinese Agent Who Tried To Bribe IRS Against Shen Yun Sentenced To 20 Months in Prison

    Authored by Eva Fu and Cara Ding via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A Chinese agent who tried to bribe the IRS and manipulate the agency into advancing Beijing’s transnational repression of a U.S. nonprofit has received a 20-month prison sentence.

    U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in White Plains on Jov. 19, 2024. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

    U.S. citizen John Chen, 72, was a principal actor in a $50,000 bribery scheme under the direction of a Chinese intelligence official to revoke the nonprofit status of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts.

    Shen Yun has long been on the Chinese regime’s target list. Founded in 2006, the company tours around the world to display the ancient Chinese culture that prevailed before the communist takeover of China, while highlighting the human rights abuses under the regime’s rule. It has often drawn attention to the ongoing persecution of the meditation group Falun Gong.

    Chen pleaded guilty in July after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors. He has spent the 16 months since his arrest in May 2023 in detention, and he will spend another four months in federal custody.

    He will also forfeit $50,000 and face three years of supervised release after serving the full prison term.

    For several months in 2023, Chen had been trying to move a fraudulent whistleblower complaint to help the Chinese Communist Party “topple” Falun Gong, according to court documents. Prosecutors said the whistleblower complaint was “facially deficient” and invoked propaganda rhetoric typical of Chinese authorities.

    During those conversations, Chen emphasized that Chinese leadership was “very generous” in financial support for the plan, according to the court filing.

    “After this-this-this thing is done,” the court document quoted Chen as saying, “reward for work will surely be given at that time.”

    Chen and another co-conspirator, Lin Feng, who served 16 months of detention, paid $5,000 cash bribes to an undercover agent posing as an IRS agent. They promised an additional $50,000 for opening an investigation along with 60 percent of any awards from the complaint if it went through.

    It was “a significant bribe,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard said at the sentencing hearing. He noted that the undercover officer didn’t specify an amount.

    John Chen (L) poses for a photo at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule in Beijing in 2019. Department of Justice

    “The defendant chose the amount,” he said.

    Both Chen and Lin had traveled to Orange County in upstate New York, where Shen Yun is based, to surveil Falun Gong practitioners there, according to a court filing.

    Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the sentencing was a reminder that “the U.S. justice system will hold accountable those who attempt to engage in malicious transnational repression on American soil.”

    “John Chen aligned himself with the PRC government and its goals to harass and intimidate the Falun Gong, a long-standing target of PRC repression. In doing so, Chen boldly attempted to bribe an individual he believed to be an IRS agent to corrupt the administration of the U.S. tax code and pervert the IRS whistleblower program,” he said in a statement on Nov. 19. “This Office will not tolerate efforts like this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States.”

    U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams addresses the media in New York City on Nov. 2, 2023. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

    Both Chen’s son and his lawyer declined to comment after walking out of the courtroom.

    While Chen’s son, three China-based siblings, two ex-wives, and fiancée have all written letters asking for leniency and describing him as a man who loves the United States, the prosecutors disagreed.

    In a Nov. 5 memo, they argued that a 30-month prison sentence—the longest under the sentencing guideline—would be appropriate because of the seriousness of the case and the need to deter criminal conduct, “particularly in cases of a foreign power’s repression of a disfavored group within the borders of the United States.”

    “The defendant has no mitigating motives or external factors justifying his offense,” the prosecutors wrote, noting that Chen was “not motivated by poverty” and that there was no evidence of Chinese officials’ pressure.

    The curtain call for Shen Yun Performing Arts at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City on Jan 11, 2015. Larry Dai/Epoch Times

    Prosecutors noted that Chen had repeatedly referred to Chinese officials as his “friends” and that during the bribery scheme, he “called them ‘blood brothers,’ and described how ‘we’—Chen and his PRC Government friends—‘started this fight’ against the founder of the Falun Gong ‘twenty, thirty years ago.’”

    The memo displayed photos obtained from Chen’s electronic devices and online accounts showing him at a major military parade in Beijing celebrating the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule in 2019. Another photo showed Chen shaking hands with communist leader Xi Jinping.

    “Chen was extraordinarily proud of his history with the PRC Government and, in particular, his meeting with Xi,” the memo states, citing a recorded call in which he bragged that he had “climbed, climbed, climbed to this position,” and that “Uncle Xi” met him “three times in 10 years.”

    Chen had also featured those three meetings, along with a photo, in a 2020 digital rĂŠsumĂŠ, according to the memo.

    Chen was aligned with the Chinese authorities in suppressing Falun Gong and “acted as a full-fledged and enthusiastic participant in the crimes,” the prosecutors said.

    “It was his fight,” Lockard said at the sentencing hearing, adding that Chen had tried to use the freedoms he enjoyed in the United States to undermine the country.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/21/2024 – 23:25

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