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EDIT 5:

I am keeping everything I wrote below, and I still stand by the fact that I think this activity appeared fishy. That being said, I don't think people should jump to the conclusion that the fishiness = some kind of corporate conspiracy. There is another plausible explanation for what we are seeing. Something like this:

Once upon a time, OP posted on a public FB page that they would be hosting an AMA. The FB page already had 400+ followers, and the post was made on March 7, shortly before the AMA went live.

At that time, a small bunch of well-meaning but perhaps misguided members of the FB group -- some of whom were colleagues of OP -- saw the AMA announcement and began posting slowball, talking-point questions in the comments to help OP give strong answers. This would explain why they all signed up on the same day: because the FB announcement didn't exist before that point. These were just non-redditor FB users who wanted to help their cause. The reason they started commenting so much was indeed to try and promote activity on the thread and, yes, push their own narrative. Perhaps they did not think of this as manipulation or that it would hurt anyone, and did not see the need to disclose their connection with OP.

We redditors of course noticed the pattern in account creation dates, the flood of closely aligned comments, and the undisclosed connections between the accounts, and (I think reasonably) interpreted this as underhanded behavior, because frankly it fits the MO. But it's entirely possible that this was just a bunch of well-meaning advocates who just failed to be transparent enough in their enthusiastic attempts to promote a good cause.

We should be careful not to extrapolate or jump to conclusions -- just because the accounts are connected and pushing a narrative, it does not automatically mean that narrative is malicious or that these are bad actors. It could be explained by simple over-enthusiasm, well-meaning but disingenuous tactics, and naivete regarding how reddit works.

I'm stepping away from this for now. Please consider all angles for the sake of what is potentially a very good cause.

(Original post starts here)

So check it out. At the time of this writing, there are 322 comments in this thread.

u/Kareemadvocate account created 3/7/2021, 17 comments in this thread, 1 in this deleted thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/DonnyMoss account created 3/4/2021, 11 comments in this thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/FrankieGrrl account created 3/7/2021, 11 comments in this thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/markbenero account created 3/7/2021, 3 comments in this thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/scripsher account created 3/2/2021, 1 comments in this thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/Gryphon1977 account created 3/7/2021, 3 comments in this thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/NeverendingLearning account created 3/7/2021, 2 comments in this thread, no other comments anywhere ever

u/Mtainman account created 3/7/2021, appears to be deleted now, but this screenshot shows 1 comment here and nothing else anywhere ever

u/Hot_Internet9635 account created 3/7/2021, appears to be deleted now, but this screenshot shows 1 comment here and nothing else anywhere ever

None of you -- with the exception of u/Kareemadvocate -- have ever commented anywhere except this thread. The top 3 of you are all over it, responsible for >12% of the total comments, and ALL of them pushing the main narrative hard. 7 out of the 9 of your accounts were created yesterday.

At no point have any of you acknowledged any kind of coordination or reason for working together, at times getting defensive about it when prompted, but otherwise just claiming that you just came here out of interest in the topic.

Questions for any/all of you:

• Are your accounts somehow connected or are they not?
  • If not, what are your thoughts about the coincidences listed above?
• Aside from your concern for the animals, are there any other reasons you're interested in pushing this narrative?

Aside: none of this discredits the idea that animals may be being mistreated or suggests that we shouldn't align against that problem. But I would like these questions answered.

Credit to u/M0n5tr0 for identifying the suspicious accounts and taking screenshots.

For anyone pondering what reason astroturfing groups might have to target an organization like HSUS, u/bittens offers an interesting speculation on the topic.

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EDIT 1: a word

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EDIT 2: 1 hour ago I posted this comment, noting how strange it was that all 7 of the super active accounts listed here went radio silent for ~8hr after being tagged in this comment. 15 minutes after pointing that out, I noticed that u/Frankiegrrl is active again! What a coincidence!

Someone on here suggested a subreddit for this topic. Being new here thanks to hearing about it on FB, im not sure what that means but sounds like a great idea to me!

Thanks for conveniently referencing the fact that you discovered this AMA through FB u/Frankiegrrl. I'm curious: are you in any way coordinating with the other users listed above or the OP?

Also it looks like u/Mtainman and u/Hot_Internet9635 are both back from the dead! glad your accounts are active again. Would you be so kind as to answer the same questions?

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EDIT 3: Still no direct reply from any of the accounts I have tagged, despite 2 of them being active again. u/Kareemadvocate has now started posting comments claiming that he/she is also "one of the 22 original whistleblowers." This new development doesn't seem consistent with OP's claim that none of the accounts are connected to them.

u/Kareemadvocate why are you asking the OPs all sorts of questions in this thread as though you are a stranger if you are already connected to them as a fellow whistleblower who "has been with them from the beginning"? Why not disclose that information upfront? Why do the OP's claim that your account is not connected to them? Is u/FrankieGrrl also one of the whistleblowers?

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EDIT 4: u/HSUSWhistleblower Hi Crystal and Lindsay. In an earlier post, you claimed that none of the above accounts are connected. However after a quick google search, I found this facebook page where the top post is "Donny Moss is with Lindsay Vanderhoogt and Crystal Alba," which suggests that u/DonnyMoss is indeed connected to you. This comes shortly after u/Kareemadvocate began claiming to be one of the 22 whistleblowers, which would also constitute a connection.

So I'm asking again: are these accounts connected to your knowledge, or aren't they?

I would genuinely like to talk about this. My goal is not to counteract your efforts or refute your claim of animal abuse. But you have to admit there is seemingly coordinated activity from these brand new accounts going on, and it makes complete sense people would want to know why. This is a very common pattern for how misinformation gets pushed on reddit, and the community (myself included) has grown sensitive to it. I'd like to have a conversation about what is going on with those accounts. Will you please reply?

We absolutely promoted this AMA on our public social media and encouraged people to participate, even if they were new to Reddit. So I’m not at all surprised there are new accounts commenting.

So do you think it is a coincidence that none of those accounts, after having been tagged and called out by me in that post 7hr ago, have commented even once anywhere again since then? Seems like with all their activity in this thread, at least one of them would have some kind of response.

There was an awful lot of commenting from them earlier (like I said, >12% of the thread’s comments by just 3 of them). Yet now, after getting tagged on a post that has risen quickly, they are oddly silent. Is that also a coincidence?

EDIT 1: by way of response, I have received this gem from another brand new account though.

EDIT 2: the comment I referenced above was deleted, but I describe what I remember about it here.

Commenting for visibility. 7 of those accounts were created on the same day.

ah shoot, I should have grabbed a screenshot!

User name was something like "AdultsShouldRun" or something (that's not exact, but close). The comment started off with "Oh fuck, here come the Reddit detectives" (you know, totally normal stuff for a first comment ever on the site) and proceeded to call me a "sad little person." It offered zero explanation for anything -- it was just nastiness. It was downvoted in the 40s or 50s when I last looked.

As horrible as astroturfing on reddit has gotten, and as much as this resembled astroturfing in the beginning, my personal opinion has swayed toward this all just being a series of unfortunate mistakes.

For starters, my experience has been that astroturf accounts never actually engage with and reason with people on reddit. They usually just deflect, throw outrage, and then go silent forever. I thought that would happen here, but it didn't -- two of the accounts replied to me directly and gave me their perspectives. All of them expressed their unfamiliarity with reddit by way of explanation for what was happening.

Then, after finding the facebook page and snooping around on there some more, it became obvious to me that several of these are likely real people. We already have Crystal and Lindsay's full names plastered on all the AMA documents, but then I also found Donny Moss on there as well, and all 3 of their facebook profiles have long histories, hundreds of photos, friends, and details consistent with their stories. This would be difficult to fake, and it wouldn't even make any sense to fake them when their reddit profiles are just going to show up as new anyway.

Finally, the FB announcement for this AMA happened at 5pm EST on 3/6, so it's not altogether surprising that a handful of people from that page saw the announcement and signed up for new accounts on 3/7. u/KareemAdvocate also acknowledged that they were indeed throwing softball questions at first in a (perhaps naïve) attempt to help promote the cause.

So my take is that this train wreck of an AMA was just unfortunate, not malicious. And honestly, that's all I was looking for -- an explanation. I was never on some mission to prove that this was a conspiracy. I just hate astroturfing and didn't want to see it weaponized against animals or animal rights groups. That does not appear to be what happened here.