Is anyone surprised?: "Reopen America" is an astroturf campaign

Simon Chandler writes on Forbes:

Gun advocacy and conservative groups are responsible for astroturfing the reopen America campaign that has swept the US in recent days, according to research from cybersecurity experts.

Since April 15, protests against coronavirus lockdown measures have been sweeping across various American states. Informally unified under the Reopen America slogan, they seek an end to measures intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Theyve arguably been flared up by tweets President Donald Trump posted on April 17.

But according to new research from cybersecurity researchers, many of these protests are neither spontaneous nor organic. Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs and researchers at DomainTools have separately analysed web addresses including the word "reopen." And interestingly, theyve found that many of these can be linked to domains associated with gun advocacy groups, lobbyists, and other conservative organizations.

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[H/t Alberto Gaitn]

Image: Lorie Shaul, CC BY-SA 2.0 Read the rest