PHOENIX — In a secretive campaign that sounds like a low-tech version of the Russian bots and trolls that interfered with the 2016 presidential election, an Arizona nonprofit is reportedly paying teenagers to pump out scripted disinformation and other conservative talking points on social media.

What You Need To Know

  • The group Turning Point Action is reportedly paying teens to generate social media posts that include disinformation and other conservative talking points

  • The posts come at the direction of the operation's leaders and rely on language from a shared online document

  • In response, Twitter and Facebook have suspended or deleted dozens of accounts

  • Turning Point insists its efforts a "sincere political activism"

According to The Washington Post, Turning Point Action – an affiliate of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA – has hired teens, some of them minors, to generate thousands of messages on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in recent months.

On the surface, the young people appear to simply be expressing their political views, but they’re actually being directed by Turning Point Action and not disclosing their affiliation with the group or its marketing partner, Rally Forge, which is overseeing the day-to-day activity, the Post reported.

Those recruited for the campaign use language taken from a shared online document for the posts while making modifications to avoid detection from the social media companies, said people with whom the newspaper spoke.

After the Post began asking questions about the operation, Twitter suspended at least 20 accounts Tuesday for “platform manipulation and spam,” while Facebook removed a number of accounts in what it said was an ongoing investigation. 

The messages – some false and others simply partisan – were mainly replies to posts by Democratic politicians and news organizations. The messages, for example, sought to cast doubt on the integrity of mail-in voting, played down the threat of the coronavirus, accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of inflating the country's COVID-19 death toll, and claimed that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “is being controlled by behind the scenes individuals who want to take America down the dangerous path towards socialism.”

“It sounds like the Russians, but instead coming from Americans,” Jacob Ratkiewicz, a software engineer at Google whose doctoral work at Indiana University at Bloomington focused on the political abuse of social media, told the Post. 

Turning Point Action is led by 26-year-old Charlie Kirk, who delivered the opening speech at this year’s Republican National Convention. He did not speak to the Post, but the group’s field director, Austin Smith, called comparisons of the operation to a troll farm a “gross mischaracterization.”

“This is sincere political activism conducted by real people who passionately hold the beliefs they describe online, not an anonymous troll farm in Russia,” Smith said in a statement to the Post.

Smith said Turning Point focused on social media this year because the coronavirus pandemic prevented the group from participating in nationwide in-person events.

“TPA managed to reimagine these roles and working with our marketing partners, transitioned some to a virtual and online activist model,” he said.