23 August

The name ‘astroturfing’ is clever, what it means is people creating the impression of a ‘grassroots’ movement, a ‘community’ movement, that is actually a planned strategy from a small group to generate support or obstruction in that community. For example every solar and wind farm that is put forward for planning approval attracts hundreds of supposed ‘community objections’, which are predominantly from people who don’t live anywhere near the community. Astroturfers know they don’t need to take over the whole community or even use fake ‘bot’ accounts. They just need to plant a seed in the community, and then the human passion for imitation will do the rest. People see colourful objections, share them and then it goes viral. This example of the coal industry funding a supposed community movement against renewable energy was reported just this year. The current hysteria against AI data centres is the same, it’s astroturfing.