Someone associated with the Make America Great Again movement staged a massive — and “clearly fraudulent” — bot campaign in support of a measure that would restrict gun ownership by transgender people, according to a new report.
The Advocate reported that a flood of comments in support of a rule that transgender people list their assigned sex on their firearm paperwork were submitted during a public comment session as it came to a close in late July. Over the course of three days, public comment traffic spiked from roughly 1,000 commenters per day to over 1,800, in patterns that one anonymous data reviewer described as “clearly fraudulent.”
An investigation by Assigned Media revealed that “nearly all of those comments show signs of being machine-generated.” Experts who reviewed the case noted there were similarities in the comments that are “statistically impossible” to reproduce.
The report also suggested the campaign was conducted by a supporter of President Donald Trump, and caveated that pinpointing the individual may be impossible.
“Back in 2017, during Trump’s first term, millions of fake public comments — some using the identities of dead people — were submitted both for and against repealing net neutrality laws. The repeal went through regardless,” according to the report.
The campaign also outraged some gun rights activists as an “attempt to scare trans people away from exercising their rights under the Second Amendment,” according to the report.
“I don’t know who is doing it, although I obviously have ideas, but none of them can be substantiated,” Erin Palette, national coordinator of the LGBT+ gun group Pink Pistols, told the outlet. “Regardless, the fix is quite obviously in, although they must not have faith in their side winning if they have to resort to a figurative packing of the ballot box.”
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