this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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What is with all the anti-meat industry posts popping up recently? It's starting to feel like an astroturf campaign...
Astroturfing implies that a corporation or government agency with large amounts of funding are paying individuals or bots to spread misinformation for their employer's financial or strategic benefit.
You might not know this, but there isn't a "Big Vegan" industry with deep pockets to financially support astroturfing. Agrobusinesses that grow vegetation make more money off the meat industry than they would if they centered their produce around vegetarian or vegan diets. Businesses that do cater to vegans barely manage to scrape by and have no margins to support social media manipulation; they barely even have budget for conventional marketing.
What you're actually witnessing is legitimate grassroots efforts to inform people about the harm that the meat industry causes. You see "astroturfing" doesn't mean "a lot of people are saying things I don't like". It actually means "grassroots campaign but fake", hence the name "astroturf", which is a fake kind of grass.
Astroturfing is not exclusive to corporations or government agencies. As you said, it means a fake grassroots campaign. That is it. Normal people can do the same too.
I'm not weighing on on whether THIS is astroturfing, just saying that is blatantly wrong to say it's exclusive to corporations or government agencies when human beings will also willingly put themselves into idiotic groups that do idiotic things.
To gain what, exactly?
Is it really that hard for you to accept that some principled people may be genuinely against something that you tolerate?
You're seeing more of it recently because veganism is actually on the rise, both because awareness about speciesism is rising and because of climate concerns. Plus you're on the fediverse, where the concentration of principled radical leftists is higher than other platforms.
And is this one of those idiotic things? Are you implying trying to reduce animal cruelty in the world is idiotic?
All I said was that astroturfing is not exclusive to governments or corporations.
Again, all I said was that astroturfing is not exclusive to governments or corporations. The only person implying anything here is you. I even went out of my way to say that I was not weighing on the current situation and was only elaborating on the "definition" that was put forward otherwise.
If you could stop shoving stances and opinions down my throat that would be great.