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> Don’t get it, can one group of people not represent the same interest in two different states? No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-or

by geofft 7y ago

> Don’t get it, can one group of people not represent the same interest in two different states? No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots. If I have lunch with a bunch of coworkers and convince them that Ruby would be way better than Python and we should switch, and then three different teams in three different offices start advocating for it, and I wrote the team's wiki page on why they should switch, there may well be genuine interest in switching - but there is not grassroots interest. They can absolutely say "We were convinced by 'geofft and we agree with this page 'geofft wrote." They cannot legitimately say "We came to this conclusion on our own."

berryjerry 7y ago
I have to disagree with this for several reasons. First, defining grass roots as independent events is not the typically used definition. It simply means trying to get support at the local level to most people. For instance the Bernie Sanders campaign was considered "grass roots," but those people were usually all convinced by a national voice, Bernie Sanders, potentially use advertisement dollars collected by different states. Secondly, there are many situations where any organizer tries to make changes in different states and thus creates multiple websites. Thirdly, in literally 10 minutes I could buy the domains and create both of those websites with about $50 and in less time if I knew an activist who had a template for it. Perhaps a friend who just created a website for another state? This doesn't take a massive organization or entity to push an agenda. Lastly, it seems extremely likely to me that this agenda, affecting the entire country, is very likely to be sought by any of the over 20 million people who recently claimed unemployment benefits, or the many millions more who also lost their job and simply have not filed for unemployment yet, or the business owners who are getting their livelihoods destroyed. I'm not seeing the great leap here where astroturfing would even be necessary given the current situation and feeling of the populace for a couple of cheap websites.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Right. Astroturfing is characterized by the deception and obfuscation, not by whether it’s coordinated or not. This is clearly astroturfing because the organizers are trying to hide the fact that it is coordinated and presumably led by a small number of interests.
  - frockington1 7y ago
    The small interests being the families who no longer have a source of income because the government deemed their job non-essential. I know software engineers are still able to work but a lot of people are out of work and may be permanently as lockdowns increase
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      Come on. I know it's not allowed here to suggest that someone didn't read the article, but Krebs (and the Reddit "researcher") presents pretty compelling evidence that this is not, in fact, a bunch of rando people spontaneously deciding to protest all at once. If Facebook provided the same kind of transparency you can dig up from the DNS registration system, you'd likely find a similar pattern around who's behind all the "organization" that suddenly popped up seemingly out of nowhere.
      - frockington1 7y ago
        It would make sense for a nation-wide phenomenon to be coordinated among people with the same problem. Also makes sense for it to pop up around the same it became apparent the virus was not nearly as deadly as initially reported.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
> No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots. If the funding, support, and organization comes from the people directly effected - yes - that’s still grassroots. Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here?
- cycomanic 7y ago
  Are you debating honestly? Because the article describes how these websites are linked to very few or a single entity. You can not be multiple local entities if you were created by a single central entity, that's a contradiction. Sure there could be the case that there a multiple local groups who the band together and form a federation or other central organisation. But we are talking about a timescale of a few days, bringing many independent groups together within that time is completely unrealistic.
- geofft 7y ago
  > Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here? Yes. It's in the article.

by geofft 7y ago

berryjerry 7y ago

I have to disagree with this for several reasons. First, defining grass roots as independent events is not the typically used definition. It simply means trying to get support at the local level to most people. For instance the Bernie Sanders campaign was considered "grass roots," but those people were usually all convinced by a national voice, Bernie Sanders, potentially use advertisement dollars collected by different states. Secondly, there are many situations where any organizer tries to make changes in different states and thus creates multiple websites. Thirdly, in literally 10 minutes I could buy the domains and create both of those websites with about $50 and in less time if I knew an activist who had a template for it. Perhaps a friend who just created a website for another state? This doesn't take a massive organization or entity to push an agenda. Lastly, it seems extremely likely to me that this agenda, affecting the entire country, is very likely to be sought by any of the over 20 million people who recently claimed unemployment benefits, or the many millions more who also lost their job and simply have not filed for unemployment yet, or the business owners who are getting their livelihoods destroyed. I'm not seeing the great leap here where astroturfing would even be necessary given the current situation and feeling of the populace for a couple of cheap websites.

ryandrake 7y ago
Right. Astroturfing is characterized by the deception and obfuscation, not by whether it’s coordinated or not. This is clearly astroturfing because the organizers are trying to hide the fact that it is coordinated and presumably led by a small number of interests.
- frockington1 7y ago
  The small interests being the families who no longer have a source of income because the government deemed their job non-essential. I know software engineers are still able to work but a lot of people are out of work and may be permanently as lockdowns increase
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Come on. I know it's not allowed here to suggest that someone didn't read the article, but Krebs (and the Reddit "researcher") presents pretty compelling evidence that this is not, in fact, a bunch of rando people spontaneously deciding to protest all at once. If Facebook provided the same kind of transparency you can dig up from the DNS registration system, you'd likely find a similar pattern around who's behind all the "organization" that suddenly popped up seemingly out of nowhere.
    - frockington1 7y ago
      It would make sense for a nation-wide phenomenon to be coordinated among people with the same problem. Also makes sense for it to pop up around the same it became apparent the virus was not nearly as deadly as initially reported.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

> No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots. If the funding, support, and organization comes from the people directly effected - yes - that’s still grassroots. Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here?

cycomanic 7y ago
Are you debating honestly? Because the article describes how these websites are linked to very few or a single entity. You can not be multiple local entities if you were created by a single central entity, that's a contradiction. Sure there could be the case that there a multiple local groups who the band together and form a federation or other central organisation. But we are talking about a timescale of a few days, bringing many independent groups together within that time is completely unrealistic.
geofft 7y ago
> Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here? Yes. It's in the article.