WEBVTT

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Astroturfing, which sounds like a new
teen trend of fucking artificial grass


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while eating Cascade pods.

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That's right. The teens have moved on from 
Tide. It's all about Cascade now.

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Astroturfing is the practice of corporations or
political groups disguising themselves

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as spontaneous, authentic, popular
movements. It's basically fake grassroots.

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That's why they call it, "Astroturfing."
It's a very funny, very clever name.

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Now, you're probably familiar with
Astroturfing as a concept from seeing ads by

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groups with a generic populist-sounding
names like Americans Against Food Taxes

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delivering weirdly specific messages 
like these.

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[Mother] Washington is talking about a

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new tax on juice drinks and soda. They say
it's only pennies.

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Well, those pennies add up when you're
trying to feed a family.

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Washington, if you're listening, what
doesn't seem like much to you, can be a lot to us.

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[Male Voice] Tell Congress, no taxes on juice drinks and sodas.

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Now, it won't surprise you to
learn that Americans Against Food Taxes
was not started by regular Americans

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pooling their resources together to take
out a large ad buy on national TV about

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their number one problem priority, a
proposed soda tax. No, it was a front

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group for the food and beverage industry
which makes a lot more sense.

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Soda companies have a lot of money.
At least enough to convince LeBron James

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to pretend he drinks Sprite. Sprite: diabetes
you can taste.


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And, while you might
think well, yeah, but that's obvious.

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I'd never fall for astroturf bullshit like that,
don't be quite so sure

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because with dark money surging in the wake of decisions like Citizens United.

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Astroturf techniques are now becoming more
sophisticated, effective and dangerous

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and they are not going away, so tonight,
we thought it might be useful to take a


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look at some of those techniques to help
us better spot them in the future.

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Let's just start with the names
themselves because sometimes groups are

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created with deliberately misleading names.

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For instance, the group Save our
Tips which purportedly speaks for

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waitstaff is an anti-minimum wage
increase group funded by restaurant owners.

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The National Wetlands Coalition
worked on behalf of oil companies and

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real estate developers and the American
Council on Science and Health has been

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funded by among other things,
fracking interests, soda companies,

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E-cigarette companies and chemical
manufacturers, so it's pure straight-up
opposite world.

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It's like if this show is called Funny Time 
Happy Hour with Chuckle-Hunk John Oliver,

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It's just demonstrably false. We can't
back that shit up. And, look it's not

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always easy to spot exactly what the
group's motive is especially with 
an ad like this.

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{Male voice] Don't eat here! I'm mad! What's with your people tossing money at

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the Humane Society of the United States?
These HSUS losers aren't even affiliated

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with your local pet shelter. For more
information go to humanewatch.org.

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That is a very strange ad because first of
all, if you're going to have a talking dog,

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why would you make him such a gruff
asshole? Hey, I'm Tony and I'm mad

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the Humane Society's a bunch of losers
and if you disagree you can suck my dog dick!

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[Audience Laughing]

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And second.. second, who would take out an
attack ad on the Humane Society? A rival


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even Humane-er Society? Puppy mills?
Self-loathing dogs? It's impossible to

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say for sure. All I can tell you is that
ad is the work of Rick Berman,

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a PR expert who's known in the industry
as Dr. Evil. He is known for his defenses

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of controversial products from
secondhand smoke, to trans fats, to payday 
loans.

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He's also created nonprofit groups
that have fought regulation of all of 
those things.

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In fact, it's one of those groups the Center for 
Consumer Freedom,

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which was credited on that Humane Society 
attack ad, so if is the Center for Consumer Freedom

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a front group for Berman's corporate clients?
Is it at all relevant that Rick Berman has

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shown up at events for the Pork industry,
an industry which has been targeted by

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the Humane Society in the past for the
use of gestation crates, or as Rick

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Berman insists on calling them "maternity
pens," I can't say. I legally can't say.

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I want to. I badly want to, but I've been
explicitly told I can't. You can probably

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guess but I can't say it out loud. What I
can say is that Berman rejects any

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accusation that he runs front groups for
corporate clients saying, "There is no

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front because there is total
transparency" which is a little odd

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considering we don't know who's behind
many of his campaigns and that message

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of transparency does seem to
significantly change whenever he's

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behind closed doors because here is
audio of Berman pitching his services to

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a group of oil executives.

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[Berman's voice] "People always
ask me one question all the time.

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You said, how do I know is that I won't be found out as a

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supporter of what you're doing? 


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We run all of this stuff through nonprofit
organization

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that are insulated from having to
disclose donors, there's total anonymity."

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See, transparency. But, look...
look he is right.


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There is total anonymity and just as a
general rule, if the most common question

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you get asked is how do I know no one
will find out I'm doing business with you?

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That's not a great sign. If the same
privacy guarantee that Hardee's gives

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all of its customers,

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"Don't worry none of your friends family
or coworkers will ever find out that you've 
been doing this.

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Now, go and enjoy your monster
thickburger before the horse meat gets cold."

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But, astroturfing is more, way more than
just funneling money through nonprofit


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front groups. Groups can also recruit
questionable experts to lend their

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arguments credibility. There are multiple
examples of this, but my favorite

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concerns a group called Citizens for
Fire Safety. A few years back, health

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officials in California wanted to remove
a requirement that furniture contained

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chemical flame retardants as they had
been linked to cancer, but Citizens for

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Fire Safety produced a Burn Surgeon, Dr.
David Heimbach who argued for keeping

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all of those flame-retardant requirements by telling them a pretty memorable story.

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7- week old baby was in a
crib, laying on a fire-retardant mattress

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on a non-fire retardant pillow. Mom put a
candle in the crib, candle fell over, the

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baby sustained a 50-percent burn. The
entire upper half of her body was burned.

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Now, this is a tiny little person, no
bigger than my Italian Greyhound at home.

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She ultimately died after about three
weeks of pain and misery in the hospital.

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Now, that sounds horrifying. But, there are
some weird things about what he just said.

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First, I don't know why he felt the
need to compare the size of a baby to
his Italian Greyhound,

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everyone knows what size a baby is.


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Nobody's never seen a baby. So wait, it's
like a person but smaller. Tell me more!

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Doesn't use stilts? How does it board a
bus?

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What I'm picturing is something
about the size of five hamsters taped
together.

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Or, very small lawnmower. Am I
around the right ballpark here?

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But second, if part of you there was wondering

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Hold on. Who puts a candle in their baby's crib?

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You're not alone. Journalists with the
Chicago Tribune wondered the exact same

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thing and they soon discovered that two
years earlier, Heimbach had testified

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before a different California panel
telling a weirdly similar story.

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I will tell you about a child I took care of in
April. Mom had a candle sitting

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beside the bed, left the room for seven
minutes. For reasons we don't know, the

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child that candle turned over, the child
sustained an 80 percent burn.

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Okay so, now this is starting to sound a little
suspicious. How many people are putting

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lit candles in and around their baby's
cribs? Oh, I just put little Ethan to bed.

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I put plenty of lit candles in his crib
as a nightlight and I balance several

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sharp knives and open cans of paint thinner
right on the crib wall so he has something to 
look at.

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Look.. look, Heimbach wasn't done because just a year later, he was testifying before

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the state legislature in Alaska and guess 
what?! 


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[Heimbach's voice] A six-week-old baby that
I took care

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of earlier this year, mother went away, there
was a candle on the bureau, somehow the

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dog knocked the candle onto the crib and
the little girl sustained this

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seventy-five percent very devastating burn.

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Wait, so now there's a dog involved all of a
sudden? What kind of dog would do such a
thing?

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Wait a second, I know exactly what kind of dog.

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A gruff, needlessly Italian dog like Tony.

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By God! By God! As if... as if sensing that
lawmakers there were questioning his motives.

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The very next sentence Heimbach said completely unprompted was this.


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[Heimbach's voice] I am not in the pocket of anybody that makes a specific flame retardant.

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Now, to be fair, he's actually right about that.

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He was not in the pocket of someone that
made a specific flame retardant.

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He was however, in the pocket of Citizens for
Fire Safety who paid him $240,000 for his
help and who it turned out only had

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three members which were the three
largest makers of flame retardants in

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the world, so I call it liar, liar pants
chemically incapable of catching on fire.

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Oh, and one more thing. When a reporter
called the medical examiner's office,

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they had no record of any burn victim
matching Heimbach's description whatsoever,

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so one of them did the next
logical thing.

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I thought the best thing to do was just to call
him at home.

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I said those kids you talked about, did they all die in your hospital?

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He said it wasn't factual it, was anecdotal.
And I said, but that's not what you testified.

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and he said, Well, I wasn't under oath.


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Okay, okay. Well first of all, you're generally

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expected to tell the truth, even when
you're not under oath and second of all,

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anecdotes aren't the same as lies. I saw
Keri Russell walking out of a bakery.

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That's an anecdote. It's not a good
anecdote, but it is an anecdote. I saw

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Keri Russell riding a dragon out of a
bakery. That is a lie. Although, admittedly

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would be a way better story. And, look the
real problem there is Heimbach's lies worked;

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that flame-retardant bill in
California initially failed thanks in

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part to his testimony. And.. and the final
and perhaps most controversial tool in

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astroturfing relates to something that
our current president actually loves to
complain about.

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I'll tell you what. You take a look outside.

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These are paid protesters, folks. The
protesters are paid a lot of money by
the DNC. It turned out that the

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protesters we used to have
were bought for $1,500 a piece.

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We have a protester. By the way, were
you paid $1,500 to be a thug?


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Now, I can't work it quite out there.

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Is Trump angry there or is he excited he's just
stumbled onto a job opportunity that

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Don, Jr and Eric would actually be
qualified for? But while Trump's specific

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accusations were nonsense.
Paid demonstrators do exist which Trump

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should frankly know himself because his
campaign reportedly had actors who were

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paid $50 to cheer for him at his
campaign announcement.

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But.. but paid demonstrators are one of the
most infuriating tools of Astroturfing.

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Just... just look at what happened last year in
New Orleans.

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A company called, Entergy needed city
council approval for a controversial power

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plant which it got not long after a public meeting where by sheer chance,

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a bunch of huge power plant fans in
orange shirts turned up.

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Now, it later emerged that a PR firm working for Entergy hired

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a company called, Crowds on Demand which
recruited actors to support the plant.

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They did this with a Facebook ad
which offered and, I quote, $60 to $200

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dollarydoos to help with a gig for three hours,
which in itself, right there, is a red flag.

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Dollarydoos? Sounds like slang for
money that you'd find in a Mark Twain

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novel called, "Even for the 1800s, there
are way too many "N" words in this."

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Crowd on Demand even provided talking
points such as: Folks, this is 2017.

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"We had a boil water advisory here last
month and I'm tired of feeling like I live in a

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third world country." and it seems like some
of the people there took those notes and 
ran with them.

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I'm tired of feeling like we're living in a third world country. This is the United States of America.

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It's 2017 going on 2018 and we have to worry
about these frequent water boil

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advisories and so on, and so forth. I have
to be concerned that a grandmother, or a

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son, or a pet could possibly drink or
take in some brain-eating amoeba.

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Yeah, I'll give him credit for that last
bit. The brain-eating amoeba bit was all 
his own.

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He was just riffing hard at that
point. Now.. now, that man insists that he

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believed everything he said and that he
wasn't paid by Crowds on Demand.

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Although, you should know that another
person there who does admit to being paid

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said he received instructions that read: A few
things to keep in mind. One, tell nobody

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you're being paid. Two, tell nobody you're
being paid. Three, media will be present

00:13:08.970 --> 00:13:13.140
do not talk to them. Four, tell nobody
you're being paid and Five, if somebody

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approaches you, don't tell them you're
being paid, which are and this is true,

00:13:16.410 --> 00:13:20.760
word-for-word the vows in a traditional
Scientology wedding. Now, they're

00:13:20.760 --> 00:13:25.380
beautiful vows and you should go.
Now, if you are wondering who is behind

00:13:25.380 --> 00:13:31.110
Crowds on Demand, let me introduce you to
their CEO Adam Swart. The answer to the

00:13:31.110 --> 00:13:37.370
question, what if a lukewarm bottle of
Smirnoff Ice was a person? Now.. now, he's..

00:13:37.370 --> 00:13:42.000
he's pretty unrepentant about what his
firm does.

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[Interviewer's Voice] Have you ever provided protesters for an event?

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[Swart] Of course.

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Demonstrators?

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[Swart] Of course.

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Do you see anything wrong with that?

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[Swart] Personally, nope.

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Do you ever feel like you're tricking
people though into getting behind

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something that they may have not gotten
behind if they didn't see all this activity there?

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[Swart] We don't trick people, we engage them.

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Yeah, yeah but you engage them by tricking them, don't you?

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Both.. both of those things can be true at the
same time, it's like someone saying I'm

00:14:08.490 --> 00:14:10.650
not masturbating in the middle of this Pinkberry.

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I'm just engaging the police department.
You're actually doing both and one

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doesn't make the other okay. Now, of
course, Swart's whole ruse is predicated

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on people holding their nerve and not
giving the game away in real time.

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But, amazingly, that has happened.

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[Female's reporters voice] In the small town of Camarillo,

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[Male citizen's voice] I think the city needs a shake up. 


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Citizens aren't shy about expressing
their opinions but one chilly Wednesday night in December,

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[City Councilman's Voice] Prince Jordan Tyson?

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City officials say this man stood out.

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[Man's voice]This case is clearly common
sense.

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[Reporter's voice] Because for three minutes,
he told the City Council what he later admits
was a lie.

00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:51.320
[Tyson]I'm just a concerned citizen
coming up here and speaking to you. 


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[Reporter's voice] But, he's not. he's a 
self-described struggling actor 
from Beverly Hills

00:14:55.270 --> 00:14:57.930
who goes by the name of Prince Jordan
Tyson.

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Okay no, I don't believe it. I do not believe 
it does anything about this face.

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This face say struggling actor from Beverly Hills to you?


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I'm sorry this story just doesn't check out.

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But, incredibly, it's true. Because while they
know "Notorious PJT" initially claimed to be

00:15:13.990 --> 00:15:18.850
from the area. He soon had a crisis of
confidence culminating in this.

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[Reporter's voice] Forty minutes later,
Tyson came back to the podium.

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[City Councilman's Voice] Prince is back.

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[Reporter's voice] For one of the strangest
moments the City Council has ever seen.

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[Tyson] I don't agree with the reason I'm here
and I was paid to be here.

00:15:29.750 --> 00:15:31.130
[City Councilman's Voice] How much were you paid?

00:15:31.130 --> 00:15:32.290
[Tyson] A hundred bucks.

00:15:32.290 --> 00:15:34.160
[City Councilman's Voice] How much?

00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:35.160
[Tyson] A hundred dollars.

00:15:35.160 --> 00:15:41.180
You're fucking idiot, Prince! You just broke
Crowd on Demand's rules 1, 2, 4 and 5.

00:15:41.180 --> 00:15:43.480
Now you won't get those hundred dollarydoos

00:15:43.480 --> 00:15:45.100
which could have gone toward changing your name to

00:15:45.100 --> 00:15:48.730
literally anything else, or getting a
haircut that doesn't make you look like

00:15:48.730 --> 00:15:56.470
an al dente Owen Wilson. When you add
all of this together, faith groups hiring

00:15:56.470 --> 00:16:00.940
fake experts and fake crowds which
managed to affect real world change, it

00:16:00.940 --> 00:16:05.200
gets pretty dispiriting and it can do
real damage that goes way beyond the

00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:08.980
narrow issues that each group is trying
to influence. The very existence of

00:16:08.980 --> 00:16:12.700
companies like Crowds on Demand mean
that something authentic can now be tainted.

00:16:12.700 --> 00:16:19.580
In fact, conspiracy boards now
regularly and wrongly cite Crowds on
Demand as providing everything from paid

00:16:19.580 --> 00:16:27.380
protesters for Charlottesville, to crisis
actors for the Las Vegas shooting and
that is hugely dangerous because the

00:16:27.400 --> 00:16:31.510
consequences of this cannot be that
everyone assumes that anyone who doesn't

00:16:31.510 --> 00:16:35.500
agree with them is astroturf. You know
what? While skepticism is healthy,

00:16:35.500 --> 00:16:40.300
cynicism, real cynicism is toxic and
because this problem isn't going it away,

00:16:40.300 --> 00:16:44.709
it is now even more incumbent
on us to use our judgment diligently.

00:16:44.709 --> 00:16:49.779
If the Ray Liotta of dogs is telling us
the Humane Society is terrible,

00:16:49.779 --> 00:16:54.819
it's probably worth us all asking, why?
Why? Who might have trained him? and

00:16:54.819 --> 00:16:59.529
What do they stand to gain? And,
unfortunately, until we find out a way to force

00:16:59.529 --> 00:17:04.179
Astroturf groups to be more transparent
and accountable, that's about all we can
do right now.

00:17:04.179 --> 00:17:09.130
Astroturf is a serious threat to our public discourse and it is

00:17:09.130 --> 00:17:12.220
critical that we are all much more aware
of its dangers

00:17:12.220 --> 00:17:15.939
and since astroturfers have left all
their tools lying around, at the very least,

00:17:15.939 --> 00:17:21.039
we might as well use them to fight
candle fire with candle fire and deliver

00:17:21.039 --> 00:17:23.670
a heartfelt message.

00:17:23.670 --> 00:17:26.890
[Narrator's voice] We're all Americans. Real people definitely not actors. We're just a

00:17:26.890 --> 00:17:30.680
coalition of concerned doctors,
mothers, teachers, and kidnappers

00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:34.080
and we think you deserve the truth about Astroturfers.

00:17:34.080 --> 00:17:37.059
Here are the facts.
Astroturfers are responsible for every

00:17:37.059 --> 00:17:41.830
shark attack in American history. Wonder
all the bees have gone? Astroturfers shot

00:17:41.830 --> 00:17:45.580
them in the face and according to the
Bipartisan Institute of Factual 
Science Studies,

00:17:45.580 --> 00:17:49.299
every single Astroturfer has
killed at least one puppy with their

00:17:49.299 --> 00:17:54.610
bare hands, or maybe not. We're not under
oath. The point is that Astroturfers

00:17:54.610 --> 00:17:59.830
set this baby on fire. That's not a dog,
that's a real baby, no bigger than an

00:17:59.830 --> 00:18:03.190
Italian Greyhound. Her name's Eleanor and she likes four things.

00:18:03.190 --> 00:18:08.870
Her binky, ba-ba, corporate and
political transparency, and not being on fire.

00:18:08.870 --> 00:18:12.240
And right now, Eleanor is 0 for 4 and if you're not careful,

00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:19.330
one day an Astroturfer is going to come to 
your house and light your baby on fire.

00:18:19.330 --> 00:18:21.954
Stop Astroturfing.

00:18:21.954 --> 00:18:24.164
[Another Narrator's voice] Paid for by
Citizens for Fresher Orange Juice.

00:18:24.164 --> 00:18:30.494
[Audience laughing]