Astroturfing and Fake Grassroots Campaigns

What Is Astroturfing

Astroturfing is a campaign that hides who pays for it so its message looks like it comes from ordinary people. The name comes from AstroTurf, the artificial grass that looks real from a distance. The public sees a grassroots movement. A corporation, a political operation, or a foreign government is paying for it.

Here is what it looks like in a room. In 2017 and 2018, New Orleans City Council hearings on a new Entergy power plant drew a crowd of supporters. The Lens later reported that some of them, including professional actors, had been paid $60 to $200 to attend and play the part. The council’s own investigation found that top Entergy executives were involved in planning the scheme, which Entergy blamed on its subcontractor, the Hawthorn Group. The council had already approved the plant in March. In late 2018 it fined Entergy $5 million.

Astroturfing is not the same as lobbying or organizing. What separates them is whether the public can see who is behind the message.

A front group is the usual vehicle: an organization that presents itself as independent while another entity funds or controls it. The name tells you little. “Citizens for” and “Americans for” groups can be real or fake. What matters is what the group will not tell you.

Four Questions That Expose a Front Group

Political scientist Maurice Cunningham, adapting a test from education scholar Daniel Katz, asks four questions of any group that claims to speak for ordinary people. None of them proves astroturfing alone. Together they tell you whether to trust a group’s claim to be grassroots, and where to look next.

The FCC case fails the fourth question outright. Lead generators hired by the broadband industry lured people to websites with prizes and sweepstakes, then simply fabricated their responses, according to the New York Attorney General.

Checking who runs a group works best with lateral reading: leave the group’s own site and see what independent sources say about who is behind it.

Signs of Astroturfing Online

The same questions apply to accounts and pages, with a few signs specific to social media:

• Accounts with political opinions and no personal history. Real people post about their lives as well as politics.
• Identical phrasing across many accounts. Coordinated campaigns work from templates. Fifty people using the same unusual sentence is not a coincidence.
• A sudden spike behind an obscure cause. Real movements build. Paid campaigns launch.
• Slick pages with no named author or funder. No byline, no organization, no disclosure.

Follow the Funding

Before you share an advocacy group’s message, look up who pays for it. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer has the tax filings that list a nonprofit’s officers and revenue. The FEC and OpenSecrets track political spending. A group that files nothing, or routes its money through dark money nonprofits that do not name donors, has answered the second question for you.

How Corporations Fund Front Groups

The best-documented campaigns share a structure. A company with an unpopular position funds a group with a public-friendly name, the group hires professional organizers, and the campaign runs until someone traces the money.

Tobacco and Citizens for a Sound Economy

Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) was co-founded in 1984 by David Koch of Koch Industries and Richard Fink. Between 1991 and 2002, tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, gave CSE at least $5.3M, according to a 2013 study in the journal Tobacco Control. CSE fought tobacco taxes and smoking restrictions with events presented as citizen protest.

1. Industry donors Philip Morris and other tobacco companies At least $5.3M, 1991-2002 ↓ funded
2. Front group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) Koch-backed anti-tax organizing group ↓ split in 2004 into
3. Successor organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity Same operatives and donor networks ↓ helped organize
4. Political movement Tea Party movement Researchers traced part of its organizing roots to these groups

Source: Fallin, Grana and Glantz, Tobacco Control (2013)

The researchers, whose senior author was Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, traced part of the Tea Party’s organizing infrastructure back to these tobacco-funded campaigns. The groups and donor networks outlived the tobacco fight and moved on to new causes.

Fossil Fuel Trade Groups

In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute convened oil producers to write a “Global Climate Science Communications Plan” that, a leaked memo shows, aimed to overplay uncertainties in climate science. A leaked 2014 presentation showed the Western States Petroleum Association running more than a dozen front groups made to look like consumer movements. The Union of Concerned Scientists also documents that fossil fuel companies secretly funded the research of Wei-Hock Soon, a prominent climate contrarian.

Trade associations that historically opposed climate policy outspent clean energy industry groups 27 to 1 from 2008 to 2018. Oil and gas groups alone spent $1.3 billion. That spending was disclosed, but it shows the scale of money behind the front groups.

Political spending, 2008-2018: climate-policy opponents vs. clean energy trade groups ($ millions)

Category	Value
Trade groups opposed to climate policy	$2000M
Clean energy trade groups	$74.5M

Source: The Conversation (February 13, 2023), 89 trade associations across nine sectors.

Drug Companies and Patient Groups

The American Pain Foundation called itself the nation’s largest organization for pain patients. In 2010, it received 90% of its $5 million in funding from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides played down the risks of opioid painkillers. It dissolved in May 2012, as the Senate Finance Committee opened an investigation into painkiller makers and the groups that championed them.

The last figure covers everything those companies lobbied on, not opioids alone. Groups pushing for prescribing limits spent $4 million over the same decade.

Astroturf Campaigns Since 2021

The old model still works. Newer campaigns add foreign money, AI, and influencers who may not know who is paying them.

A Russian-Funded Video Company

In September 2024, federal prosecutors charged two employees of RT, Russia’s state broadcaster, with secretly funding a Tennessee online video company. The indictment says RT sent nearly $10 million through foreign shell companies, and that the company’s founders told two American commentators the money came from a private investor named “Eduard Grigoriann.” Prosecutors say no such person existed. The company posted nearly 2,000 videos with more than 16 million YouTube views and never told viewers who was paying.

1. Hidden sponsor RT, Russia's state broadcaster Nearly $10M, late 2023 to 2024 ↓ wired through
2. Pass-through Foreign shell companies About 30 international wire transfers ↓ paid
3. Front A Tennessee video company Identified in news reports as Tenet Media ↓ contracted
4. Unaware talent, per prosecutors Two U.S. commentators One contract paid $400,000 a month

Source: U.S. v. Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, S.D.N.Y. indictment (September 2024). Charges are allegations.

News outlets identified the company as Tenet Media, and YouTube removed its channel after the indictment. The commentators said they were victims. The indictment itself describes them as deceived, which is the point: an astroturf campaign can recruit real voices who never learn who is paying.

Anti-Wind Groups and Right Whales

In 2023 and 2024, groups including the American Coalition for Ocean Protection blamed offshore wind work for the deaths of endangered right whales. A Brown University Climate Development Lab report found that the coalition was founded by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware think tank with a long record of opposing renewable energy, and that more than $72M+ moved through the connected anti-wind networks from 2017 to 2021, as WBUR commentator Frederick Hewett summarized. A related group, the Save the Right Whales Coalition, grew out of Michael Shellenberger’s Environmental Progress. New Jersey’s environmental agency found in August 2023 that it had “no reason to conclude that whale mortality is attributable to offshore wind-related activities,” and a Cornell marine biologist quoted by the Associated Press that December saw no cause to blame the deaths on wind work. In 2025, a law firm working for wind opponents threatened Brown’s funding over the research.

AI Industry Super PACs

Some newer spending is disclosed but still hides the issue. In 2025, backers including Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman pledged $100M+ to Leading the Future, a super PAC that backs candidates in both parties who support a national framework for AI regulation, NBC News reported. On the other side of the fight over AI rules, Public First has received at least $20 million from Anthropic. By early 2026, NBC News found, the AI industry’s election ads were about everything except AI. The donors are on file with the FEC. The industry’s stake is not in the ad.

How Astroturfing Shows Up in Your Feed

Faking a crowd once meant hiring actors. Now it takes software.

AI-Written Public Comments

In June 2025, the South Coast Air Quality Management District board in Southern California voted 7-5 to reject clean-heat rules aimed at gas appliances, after receiving more than 20,000 comments against them. Matt Klink, a partner at the lobbying firm California Strategies, had hired the platform CiviClick to generate comments, and later said in a sponsored magazine article that it “made the ultimate difference,” Canary Media reported. When district staff contacted 172 people whose names appeared on comments, five answered. Three said they had no knowledge of the letters sent in their names.

The district had estimated the rules would save about 2,500 lives by 2053. In March 2026, 22 California officials asked Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate. No formal investigation had been launched as of that month, Canary Media reported.

Fake Trends

Researchers at EPFL in Switzerland found more than 19,000 fake Twitter trends pushed by more than 108,000 accounts, many of them compromised. The accounts posted a keyword until it trended, then deleted the posts. Trends manufactured this way made up at least 20% of the top 10 global trends the researchers studied. Researchers who mapped astroturf campaigns in several countries found they leave the same coordination traces, which is how detection tools catch them.

AI Lowers the Cost

Stanford researchers found that AI-written political messages persuade at least as well as human-written ones. In two December 2025 studies in Nature and Science, Cornell-led researchers found that a chatbot arguing for Kamala Harris moved likely Trump voters 3.9 points on a 100-point scale, about four times the effect of traditional political ads tested in 2016 and 2020. In Canada and Poland, chatbots moved opposition voters about 10 points. A campaign that once needed hundreds of paid writers can now run on a small team, and each fake “constituent” costs less.

What Astroturfing Has Changed

Astroturf campaigns have preceded real policy decisions. It is rarely possible to prove the fake support caused the outcome, but in each case below it was part of the record decision-makers saw.

The damage outlasts any one campaign. Each exposure teaches people that a crowd might be fake, which makes it harder for real movements to be believed.

The Legal Gap

No federal law bans political astroturfing. The FTC’s 2024 rule allows civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation for fake reviews, but it covers products, not political campaigns. The FEC regulates paid political ads and has little reach over front groups that never mention a candidate. Covert foreign funding can be charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as in the RT case, and states can pursue fraud, as New York did over the FCC comments.

Two bills would narrow the gap. The Honest Ads Act would require disclosure of who buys online political ads. It was introduced in the Senate on February 16, 2023, as S. 486 and never got past committee. The DISCLOSE Act would make groups that spend more than $10,000 on elections name their large donors. Its newest version, S. 3991, was introduced on March 4, 2026, and sits in the Senate Rules Committee.

The Debate Over Donor Disclosure

The fix most reformers want, forcing groups to name their donors, runs into a real First Amendment argument.

In Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (2021), the Supreme Court struck down California’s rule that charities give the state attorney general a list of their major donors. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 majority, relied on NAACP v. Alabama, the 1958 case that protected civil rights members from exposure in the Jim Crow South, and held that compelled disclosure “creates an unnecessary risk of chilling” free association. He noted that the groups urging the Court to strike the rule down “span the ideological spectrum”.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan, dissented. She wrote that the Court now applied the same protection it gave NAACP members facing “reprisals and violence” to “donors only too happy to publicize their names across the websites and walls of the organizations they support.”

Disclosure laws for elections still stand, and the debate is about how far they can reach. Supporters say voters cannot judge a message without knowing who paid for it. Opponents say donor lists expose people to harassment for their views, a risk groups on the left and right have both argued in court.

Not Every Organized Movement Is Astroturfing

Astroturfing requires concealment. A group being organized, well funded, or effective does not make it fake.

• Professional advocacy is not astroturfing. The Sierra Club, the NRA, and the ACLU say who they are and what they want. You may disagree with them, but they are not hiding.
• Wealthy donors do not make a movement fake. The question is whether the group discloses them and whether they control the message.
• Lobbying is legal and disclosed. Registered lobbyists file quarterly reports. Astroturfing is lobbying disguised as public support.
• Fakes run in every direction. In the FCC case, more fake comments supported net neutrality than opposed it. The RT scheme paid commentators on the right. The test applies to groups you agree with, too.

A contested case: Moms for Liberty. The group, founded in 2021, says it has about 130,000 unpaid members, and a spokeswoman told the AP it had 7,301 small donors in 2022. The same year, most of its $2.1 million in revenue came from two donations of $1 million and $500,000 from donors its tax filing does not name, the AP reported. Its Florida-based foundation took $100,000 from a nonprofit run by Publix heiress Julie Fancelli, and the group received a $25,000 Heritage Foundation prize. By the four questions, it has real members and undisclosed major funding. Critics such as Cunningham call it astroturf. Its members and leaders call it a parents’ movement. Both describe part of the record. For more, see our parental rights explainer.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is astroturfing illegal?

There is no federal law against political astroturfing itself. Parts of it can be illegal: fabricating comments in real people’s names led New York to collect more than $4.4 million from three companies, and covertly funding U.S. media for a foreign government is charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

What is astroturfing in marketing?

In marketing, astroturfing means fake reviews, reviews by insiders or paid reviewers presented as independent, and fake signs of social media popularity. Since October 21, 2024, the FTC’s Consumer Review Rule bans those practices and lets the agency seek civil penalties for them.

What is the difference between astroturfing and propaganda?

Propaganda is information spread deliberately to influence public opinion. Britannica separates overt propaganda, whose backers are known, from covert propaganda, whose sources are secret or disguised. Astroturfing is a covert kind: it hides the source by faking a crowd. The propaganda explainer goes deeper.

Where did the word astroturfing come from?

It plays on AstroTurf, a brand of artificial grass. A real grassroots movement arises on its own. An astroturf campaign only looks that way, because a hidden group started it and controls it.

How do I tell if a grassroots movement is real?

Ask how fast it grew, who funds it, who runs it, and whether its members know what it is about. Then check its tax filings on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer and its political spending with the FEC.

What You Can Do

1. Ask the four questions before you share. How fast did the group grow, who funds it, who runs it, and do its members know what it is about? One unanswered question is a reason to look further before amplifying it.

2. Look up the money. Search the group on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer for its tax filings, and on the FEC or OpenSecrets for political spending. SourceWatch keeps a list of documented front groups.

3. Check whether a comment was filed in your name. Federal rulemaking comments are public on Regulations.gov. If you find one you did not write, tell the agency and your state attorney general. In the FCC case, people whose names were used complained to the New York Attorney General, whose office later documented the fakes.

4. Support the reporters who expose it. Nearly every case on this page was uncovered by journalists or researchers, including The Lens, ProPublica, and Brown University’s Climate Development Lab.

5. Ask Congress to require disclosure of who pays for online political ads. The Honest Ads Act was introduced in 2023 and never got a vote. Use the letter and call script below to ask your members of Congress to bring it back and co-sponsor it.