A pro-Trump youth organization enlisted teenagers to flood social media with posts attacking former Vice President Joe Biden, The Washington Post reports. Turning Point Action, an affiliate of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, has reportedly paid teenagers in Arizona, some of them minors, to make thousands of identical posts on their own accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter asserting things like “Don’t trust Dr. Fauci,” mail-in ballots “will lead to fraud this election,” and “It’s hard to know what to believe” about the official coronavirus death count. Some posts were reportedly outright false, others misleading. The tactics mimic those of the Russian Internet Research Agency, dubbed a “troll farm,” that pumped misinformation into the American social media ecosystem during the 2016 election, experts told the Post. Twitter suspended 20 of the Turning Point Action accounts, and Facebook has removed an unspecified number in what it told the Post was an ongoing investigation. Turning Point USA’s co-founder, Charlie Kirk, made the opening address at the Republican National Convention. He told the Post that calling his operation a troll farm was “a gross mischaracterization.” A Turning Point USA field director called the teenagers’ paid efforts “sincere political activism.”
