Researcher Alleges Harris Campaign Manipulated Social Media

Democrats are reportedly coordinating activity on Reddit and abusing X Community Notes

According to an American researcher, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s campaign teams have allegedly organized “astroturf” operations on Reddit and worked together to manipulate X’s Community Notes feature. “Astroturfing” refers to creating content that seems genuine but is actually fabricated, using a metaphor of artificial turf in sports venues instead of real, grassroots support.

Sean Davis, the founder of the Federalist, claimed on Wednesday that the Harris-Walz campaign “fraudulently games Community Notes with sock puppet accounts and astroturf tactics. And we have the screenshots and spreadsheets and campaign comms to prove it.” He was citing a report by a researcher known as “Reddit Lies,” which included screenshots from the Harris-Walz server on the messaging platform Discord, suggesting that Democrats conspired to flood social media with their content while suppressing criticism.

One example cited is Timothy Durigan, a Democratic National Committee employee, instructing campaign volunteers to vote down a Community Note that flagged a post by the @KamalaHQ account as inaccurate.

Elon Musk launched the Community Notes project after acquiring Twitter (renamed X) in 2022, aiming to identify inaccurate or misleading posts without censorship. “Reddit Lies” claims that multiple official Harris-Walz accounts have “regularly provided dishonest presentations” of their rivals, former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, to the point where even CNN criticized them. However, “virtually none” of their “false and misleading tweets” have Community Notes, likely due to a coordinated campaign to vote them down, according to the researcher.

The Harris-Walz Discord includes a “Twitter (X) Community Notes Training” module that teaches users how to boost their score and encourages them to downrank notes that criticize inaccurate claims by Democrats, according to screenshots published by the Federalist.

While the campaign may have succeeded in preventing Community Notes from appearing on their misleading posts, they haven’t fully manipulated the system as intended, “Reddit Lies” said, citing a post where one of the organizers expressed disappointment with X’s safeguards.

The campaign also appears to be utilizing a tool called Reach to spread their messages across various platforms, potentially violating bans against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” intended to curb “Russian bots” that Democrats claim have interfered in US elections.