User:Louis/Scott Carney's comment section and the Hollywood smear-campaign lawsuits

Scott Carney, a journalist, said in a YouTube clip that he thinks his new video's comments are a coordinated smear campaign against him; consumer advocate Louis Rossmann's count of all 350 comments found 6 bot comments, all book ads, none mentioning Carney. Carney said a man he called Freeman runs the public relations firm of the pop-culture neuroscientist Andrew Huberman; a New York Times article on Hollywood smear-campaign lawsuits, published October 6, 2026 & updated October 7, names no one called Freeman & says Bryan Freedman "was also Mr. Huberman’s lawyer" & that Huberman did not respond to a request for comment.

At least five women have filed lawsuits describing smear campaigns carried out through anonymous websites or fabricated social media posts, the Times reports; Freedman, the publicist Melissa Nathan & the digital strategist Jed Wallace have dismissed the allegations as defamation & harassment. A website about the model Paige Jimenez posted her home address & called her a ketamine dealer wanted for questioning in the death of the actor Matthew Perry, an allegation her lawsuit calls completely fabricated, & it became the top Google result for her name, the Times reports.

Carney's YouTube Short

Scott Carney describes himself as an investigative journalist & anthropologist. On October 8, 2026, he released "Auditing Andrew Huberman's 'Protocols'" on YouTube, with a description calling it "This first in a series where we peer review Andrew Huberman's new book." The book, Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body by Andrew D. Huberman, was published by Simon & Schuster on September 15, 2026. The New York Times describes Huberman as a pop-culture neuroscientist.

Part two, "The 'Huberman Kick' and other Weird Sleep Protocols", followed on October 15, 2026. An earlier post on Carney's website, "Andrew Huberman is Lying to You", is dated November 26, 2024.

Carney posted "Huberman Hired a PR Firm to Smear Me!" to YouTube Shorts on October 15, 2026. YouTube describes Shorts as short-form videos up to 3 minutes long, which can be recorded in the YouTube app or uploaded as vertical videos.

In the Short, Carney said he believes he is the target of a coordinated smear campaign, & that the comment section of his new video, the second in his series on Huberman's book, is full of smears against him. He said commenters call him jealous & say he wants to be Huberman's girlfriend. Other comments criticize his work, he said, some looking legitimate & some less so. He said the comments started flooding in before the video even launched.

Carney then cited a Times article about the lawsuit between the actress Blake Lively & the actor Justin Baldoni, which he said he thought was from October 7. He said the article named a firm run by a man he called Freeman, who he said is being sued by many people he has smeared, & that this is Huberman's public relations firm; he added that Huberman is mentioned in the article. He said he thought viewers could see a smear campaign in action by going to his most recent video, & thanked Huberman, by his first name, for recognizing his work. The Times article says: "Mr. Huberman did not respond to a request for comment."

Comments under Carney's videos

Rossmann fetched the comments under part two of Carney's series on October 18, 2026 at 11:05 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) & counted 350: 27 by Carney & 323 from 232 other accounts. He rated 6 of them as bot comments, 8 as uncertain & 336 as human or likely human. In this sense a bot is a computer program that creates fake social media accounts & communicates with other users. The 6 comments he rated as bots were all advertisements for books, about hormones, gut problems & healing, & none mentions Carney or Huberman.

Early comments on part two

A YouTube Premiere lets a creator & viewers "watch and experience a new video together in real time". For a Premiere, YouTube creates a watch page that "is public before the Premiere begins", & anyone can come to that page to set a reminder, leave a comment or chat. After the Premiere, the video stays on the channel as a regular upload.

Part two was a Premiere: its watch page reads "Premiered Oct 15, 2026", & the Premiere began at 16:00:09 UTC that day. Part one was also a Premiere, which began at 16:00:07 UTC on October 8, 2026.

By Rossmann's count, 5 comments on part two were posted before 11:05 UTC on October 15, about 5 hours or more before the Premiere began; at the fetch they carried YouTube's "3 days ago" label. In his count, Carney posted 1 of them, 1 account supporting him posted 2 & 1 account hostile to him posted 2. By Rossmann's count, part one drew 1 comment from someone other than Carney more than a day before its Premiere began.

Carney's website, which links his weekly Substack newsletter, Magnetic North, says "Premium subscribers get early access to my videos a few days before their public launch". Part two's YouTube description says "Get Early Access on Substack", & Carney's Substack post of part two invites readers to become premium subscribers "for access to all of my work before it goes onto YouTube". That post is dated October 13, 2026, & his Substack post of part one is dated October 6, 2026.

Personal attacks and bot comments

Rossmann counted 36 comments from 22 accounts on part two as personal attacks on Carney, 11.1% of the comments by others. Of those, by his classification, 10 comments from 8 accounts accused him of jealousy, a grudge or bitterness, 1 comment from 1 account mocked him as romantically obsessed, & 30 comments from 19 accounts attacked his work. Some comments fall in more than one category, so the three counts add up to more than 36.

In the same fetch, Rossmann counted 601 comments on part one, 544 of them from 412 accounts other than Carney's, & rated none of them a bot. Rossmann counted 55 comments from 45 accounts on part one as personal attacks, 10.1% of the comments by others.

Rossmann's fetch came 235.1 hours after part one's Premiere began & 67.1 hours after part two's, so his analysis compares the same 24 hours on each video, from about 5 hours before the Premiere began to about 19 hours after it. In that window, Rossmann counted 223 comments by others on part two, 22 of them personal attacks from 14 accounts (9.9%), against 10 of 230 from 9 accounts (4.3%) on part one.

Rossmann's comment counts for parts one and two

Count	Part one	Part two
Hours from the Premiere's start to the fetch	235.1	67.1
Comments	601	350
Comments by accounts other than Carney's	544 from 412 accounts	323 from 232 accounts
Rated as bot comments	None	6
Personal attacks, whole comment section	55 from 45 accounts, 10.1% of the comments by others	36 from 22 accounts, 11.1% of the comments by others
Personal attacks, from about 5 hours before the Premiere began to about 19 hours after it	10 of 230 comments by others, from 9 accounts (4.3%)	22 of 223 comments by others, from 14 accounts (9.9%)

Rossmann found that 2 of the 22 hostile accounts used what his analysis calls a default handle: a name, a hyphen & a short string of letters & numbers. A handle is a channel identifier starting with "@" that YouTube shows in places like comments, & YouTube may assign one automatically in certain instances, such as when someone creates a channel by posting a comment on mobile. YouTube says there may be cases where a handle is "randomly assigned" if the chosen channel name cannot be converted to the handle. The most similar pair of hostile comments from different accounts scored 0.419 on his wording-similarity measure, none reached 0.6, & no first names were recycled among the hostile accounts. Rossmann's counts cover only the comments YouTube still showed at the fetch; on each video, the number of comments he retrieved matched the count YouTube displayed.

Taylor data-center video

Rossmann pinned this comment under his video about a Taylor, Texas, city park becoming a data center:

There are 3 bots replying to every comment. They have a name followed by a dash and then a random string of letters & numbers, and talk in traditional chatgpt speak.

Rossmann's own count of that comment section rated 149 comments from 12 accounts as bots or likely bots, & 11 of the 12 accounts had a handle made of a name, a hyphen & a short string of letters & numbers. In his count, 4 of those 12 handles began with jeffrey- & 1 with jeff-. Rossmann also found 13 comments from 8 accounts that listed the same four meeting dates (August 2, August 8, April 11 & June 10) in the same order, 4 of those comments in identical wording. Rossmann's data does not identify who ran those accounts.

Reporting on Freedman and Fernald

Bryan Freedman

A Times investigation by Debra Kamin, headlined "How to Destroy a Reputation in Hollywood, as Told in 5 Women’s Lawsuits", was published on October 6, 2026 & updated on October 7. Lively's lawsuit is one of those it describes. The lawyer the Times names among the "three people at the center of the allegations" is Bryan Freedman, whom it describes as "a household name in celebrity circles". The Times also profiles Melissa Nathan, "an expert in crisis communications", & Jed Wallace, who runs a company based outside Austin, Texas, that describes itself as a crisis public relations firm. The Public Relations Society of America defines crisis communication as protecting & defending an individual, company or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation.

The Times reports that Freedman "was also Mr. Huberman’s lawyer", & that Anya Fernald, who had a long-term relationship with Huberman, introduced the two men before the couple split. In an April 22, 2026 report, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) wrote that Freedman "has in the past represented both Fernald and Huberman", that he negotiated a 2022 settlement for Fernald against Belcampo, & that "the men subsequently became close".

Anya Fernald

Fernald, a sustainable food expert & former Iron Chef judge, founded a high-end organic meat company, Belcampo. In 2021, it was revealed that Belcampo had been passing off factory-farmed meat as sustainable & organic; Fernald, no longer chief executive during the scandal, contends she was made a scapegoat, & with Freedman's help she received a multimillion-dollar settlement.

In March 2024, months after she & Huberman broke up, Fernald spoke under a pseudonym to New York magazine about their relationship. Within days, she was outed online as the source. An anonymous website & a fake X profile appeared online, making what the Times calls unfounded allegations about her role at Belcampo & in the fallout, & painting her as a fraudster who had driven the company into the ground; THR reported that anonymously authored web activity about her, including a Reddit discussion thread, appeared around the time the magazine released its coverage.

Fernald then received a call from a lawyer for Alexa Nikolas, a former child actress who starred in Nickelodeon's Zoey 101 in her early teens. The lawyer had reviewed a digital forensics report detailed in Nikolas's lawsuit. Sites about Nikolas had backlinks to YouTube videos about the Belcampo scandal, the Times reports. A backlink is a link that lets a user of one website reach a page on another website.

Nikolas's suit also alleges "common authorship" on Wikipedia pages smearing both women. THR quoted the suit as pointing to digital forensics findings of common authorship between accounts interested in promoting Wallace & his business, accounts smearing Nikolas, & accounts smearing the woman who allegedly was behind the magazine's article. None of the individuals named in Nikolas's filing would comment to THR. THR, describing Nikolas as one of a group of people linked in separate litigation as purported targets of online discreditation campaigns, wrote that the alleged perpetrators in each instance are one or more of Freedman, Wallace & Nathan, & that Freedman has previously denied to THR that he & the others are responsible, calling the assertions "speculation presented as fact".

Fernald said she still isn't completely clear about who created the sites targeting her; she is not among the women who have filed a lawsuit.

Smear campaigns described in the lawsuits

At least five women have filed lawsuits describing malicious public relations campaigns intended to destroy their reputations, The New York Times reported. The lawsuits differ, but they all claim the smear campaigns were carried out through anonymous websites, fabricated social media posts or promotion of unflattering articles & posts on the internet. According to the Times, text messages & legal depositions filed as part of the lawsuits "support the allegations that all three individuals were working together", & the lawsuits, along with text & email messages obtained in discovery, suggest that Freedman, Nathan & Wallace began working together as early as 2023. A text message from Nathan, recreated by the Times, read:

Can I start a Signal thread with you, me and Jed Just in case you need him to connect you to Bryan becasue they're very close

In several cases, Freedman, Nathan & Wallace have countersued to clear their names. Freedman wrote in an emailed response to the Times that "Allegations are not facts and these allegations are neither truthful nor accurate" & that "Just like the Blake Lively matter, anyone asserting this nonsense will end up with nothing." Nathan & Wallace did not respond.

Paige Jimenez

Paige Jimenez, 28, got her start as a teenage model & became a culinary influencer after appearing on MasterChef at 18. She was targeted by a campaign in October 2024 & filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in October 2026. Her lawsuit, filed against Freedman, Wallace, Nathan & their companies, accuses all three of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

A man who called her from a number she did not recognize identified himself as Bryan Freedman, her lawsuit states, & told her he had been hired by her boyfriend's wealthy parents; Jimenez recalled him telling her that her romantic relationship was over. The complaint places the call in 2024, Courthouse News Service, a legal news outlet, reported.

A few hours later, the lawsuit states, the man who identified himself as Freedman sent her a text message with a link to a website entitled "Paige Jimenez, the Real Ketamine Queen", & the Times reviewed the text message. The site posted her full home address & described her as a ketamine dealer who was wanted for questioning in the death of the actor Matthew Perry, a completely fabricated allegation according to her lawsuit, as well as crimes in several cities. "She will be behind bars very soon", it said. Jimenez writes in the complaint that the site's disclosure of her real address was "making her fear for her safety".

Jimenez said the website, which had suddenly become the top Google result for her name, pushed her into a depression. She was forced to seek inpatient psychiatric treatment, & she & her boyfriend eventually broke up for good. "I don’t know who to trust anymore", Jimenez said.

Her complaint, as quoted by Courthouse News, alleges connections between the site aimed at her & other smear sites still online, including "what appear to be online commenters linking in posts and articles" to the site aimed at her. A spokesperson for Nathan's public relations & crisis management firm, The Agency Group (TAG), said in a written statement reported by Courthouse News:

The Agency Group has never had any contact with Paige Jimenez or provided services to anyone relating to her.

Freedman did not respond to an email requesting comment on the lawsuit, & neither did a spokesperson for Wallace's public relations firm, Street Relations.

Websites, profiles and links

To examine the allegations, the Times interviewed more than 60 people, reviewed court documents & chat transcripts, & analyzed hundreds of anonymous websites & fabricated social media profiles. It reported that the campaigns were launched within months of each other & were designed to be untraceable, but "The same language echoed across multiple websites", & invisible links drove traffic back & forth among them.

Nikolas's defamation suit in Los Angeles accuses Freedman, Nathan & Wallace of spreading a retaliatory digital campaign about her filled with "damaging lies". In late November 2022, according to the Times, a website describing Nikolas as a "sinister and criminal force" was published. The Times reports that the website was then amplified by at least 16 social media profiles & more than 70 Wikipedia posts with similar language. The Times calls this "a strategy that all the women who have sued say manipulates internet search results". Freedman, Nathan & Wallace have dismissed the allegations as defamation & harassment, the Times reports.

Nathan's texts to Rebel Wilson

Amanda Ghost, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, was one of the producers of The Deb, the directorial debut of the actress Rebel Wilson. Ghost sued, accusing Wilson of defaming her because Wilson had wanted both screenwriting & songwriting credits on the film, which Ghost had claimed belong to other artists. Wilson hired Freedman & Nathan, a lawsuit claims, & the Times reports that Nathan's firm worked with Wallace to help create a smear site against Ghost. Courthouse News reported that Ghost has also filed a cross-complaint against Wilson, which accuses Wilson of hiring Nathan to spearhead a smear campaign against Ghost, among other things by setting up a website, amandaghostsucks.com.

According to the Times, text messages & emails it first reported, which are also included in Ghost's lawsuit, show Nathan, who was a publicist for Wilson, walking her through how a disparaging website would unfold & how much it would cost. The Times reports that another text message shows Nathan telling one of her employees, "Rebel wants a [sic] one of those sites." In August 2024, a website surfaced calling Ghost "the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell" & a "con artist, a thief and a pimp". In a text exchange the Times recreated, Nathan wrote to Wilson:

Ok so:110USD for untraceable site - satellite, ghost server, ghost hosting, full build, maintaining, and full algorithmic push across all platforms...for 3 months...so much more can be done but the advice given was that's all you need for right now.

Wilson asked, "Wait - do you mean only $110 in total?" Nathan then wrote, "110kSorry ! huge difference". The Times also reports that text messages show Freedman coordinated with Nathan, & that in Wilson's case Freedman included the website targeting Ghost as evidence in a legal complaint.

According to the Times, Allyson Thompson, a lawyer for Wilson, did not deny in an emailed statement that Wilson had sent the texts in question or asked Nathan to create the website, but insisted that Wilson, rather than Ghost, was the victim. The statement reads:

Ms. Wilson did not personally and intentionally retain Melissa Nathan of the TAG Group to destroy Ms. Ghost’s reputation

It continues: "Those allegations are false." Freedman wrote to the Times that the allegations are "neither truthful nor accurate"; Nathan & Wallace did not respond.

Katie Case's deposition and emails

Katie Case, the former vice president at TAG, Melissa Nathan's public relations group, said in a text message to a colleague & in a deposition under oath in Los Angeles Superior Court that she wrote text for several "takedown sites" while at TAG & that those sites were built by Wallace. She also said she wrote the text for a website that disparaged women who had accused three brothers, Tal, Alon & Oren Alexander, of sexually assaulting them. Lawyers for the Alexander brothers declined to comment; their press representative, Juda Engelmayer, said in an email that "the Alexanders do not control or operate anonymous third-party websites". Jim Case, Katie Case's father & her lawyer, said in a statement that she did not know that what she was being asked to write may have been false; when she asked to do work she felt at odds with, he added, "she left TAG."

According to the Times, an email from Case to Nathan in October 2024 had the subject line "Items I’m working on at the moment" & listed "site drafting" for projects including the actress & model Jessica Serfaty, Amanda Ghost & the Alexander brothers. The same documents, the Times reports, include a text chain in which Nathan directs Case to invoice $20,000 for additional work from Wallace & gives her an account name & address. "Who knew drafting a few things would be this lucrative", Case responds. "Stick with me, kid", Nathan replies.

Ghost's suit also includes an email from Case to Nathan, copied to Wallace, with the subject "Draft for your review". According to the Times, it contained the same paragraphs of disparaging language that would be posted on the websites. The Times sent requests for comment to Nathan & Wallace; neither responded.

Jed Wallace's recordings about Jessica Serfaty

Serfaty, who has appeared on America’s Next Top Model, was engaged to Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, heir to the $47 billion Luxottica fortune, when she went on Instagram Live in July 2024 & claimed he had hit her & made her head bleed. She recanted the allegation a few days later after several face-to-face meetings with Del Vecchio & his lawyer, but only did so because she was pressured, she told the Times; she maintains that her fiancé did in fact hit her. Shortly after her accusation, websites & social media profiles describing her as an "actual prostitute" who "resorts to lies to endanger the people that love her" appeared on the internet.

Two lawyers working with the publicist Stephanie Jones filed a lawsuit on Jones's behalf against Case. The Times obtained several profanity-laced audio recordings related to that case, which it reports Wallace sent in the summer of 2024 to Del Vecchio & TAG employees. In them, according to the Times, Wallace references Nathan's work as he explains how he will increase the popularity of fake websites targeting Serfaty. In one recording, referring to the allegations posted about her, Wallace said:

Hundreds and hundreds of links go up every single day to get this to track and to tell the algorithm this has credibility

In another, he said that besides creating a fake storyline, the process was about making sure people viewed her as a "hooker, liar and a prostitute". In a third, he said that "people are already starting to pound on her as being a lunatic" on Reddit, "which is exactly what we wanted". Del Vecchio & his representatives did not respond to the Times' requests for comment, & the Times reports that "Ms. Nathan and Mr. Wallace did not respond."

Court cases and rulings

Two of the suits have produced rulings denying special motions to strike, Freedman's in Nikolas's case & Rebel Wilson's in Amanda Ghost's. Courthouse News described Wilson's motion as "an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the complaint", & the Times reports that in August a judge "rejected Mr. Freedman's bid to dismiss" Nikolas's case.

Under section 425.16 of California's Code of Civil Procedure, a cause of action against a person arising from an act in furtherance of that person's right of petition or free speech "in connection with a public issue" is subject to a special motion to strike, unless the court determines that the plaintiff "has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim". In the same section, the Legislature declares that there has been "a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise" of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech & petition. Except as the statute provides otherwise, a defendant who prevails on the motion "shall be entitled to recover that defendant's attorney's fees and costs".

Lawsuits describing smear campaigns

Case	Court and case number	Filed	Parties	Status
Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC	United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 24-cv-10049, with the related Wayfarer Action, No. 25-cv-449		Blake Lively; the "Wayfarer Parties", which the court lists as Wayfarer Studios LLC, Justin Baldoni, Jamey Heath, Steve Sarowitz, It Ends With Us Movie LLC, Melissa Nathan, The Agency Group PR LLC and Jennifer Abel	Settled in May 2026; fees & costs awarded to Lively under an opinion dated August 26, 2026
Nikolas v. Freedman	Los Angeles Superior Court, Beverly Hills Courthouse, No. 26SMCV00684	February 5, 2026	Alexa Nikolas (plaintiff); Bryan Freedman & Melissa Nathan (defendants)	Freedman's special motion to strike denied August 12, 2026; his motion for reconsideration denied September 22, 2026; notice of appeal filed by Freedman September 28, 2026
Ghost v. Wilson	Los Angeles Superior Court, Stanley Mosk Courthouse, No. 24STCV17314	July 12, 2024	Amanda Ghost, Gregor Cameron & Vince Holden (plaintiffs); Rebel Wilson (defendant); Ghost's cross-complaint against Wilson lists Wilson, Melissa Nathan & The Agency Group PR LLC	Wilson's special motion to strike the plaintiffs' first amended complaint denied November 21, 2024; a jury trial, with a ten-day time estimate, scheduled for January 19, 2027
Paige Jimenez's suit	Los Angeles Superior Court	October 2026	Paige Jimenez against Freedman, Wallace, Nathan & their companies, according to The New York Times	Complaint filed

Freedman's filing in Nikolas's defamation suit appears on the docket as a "Special Motion to Strike under CCP Section 425.16 (Anti-SLAPP motion)". In the ruling, as quoted by the entertainment-news site TheWrap from court documents it obtained, Judge Michael E. Whitaker found that Nikolas is "a limited public interest figure" & that the alleged statements arise in connection with her role in that public interest dialog, but that she "has established a probability of prevailing on the merits". The court denied Freedman's "special motion to strike and request for attorneys' fees in its entirety". Whitaker wrote of "a tangled web of connections" between the sites at issue & "numerous others", and added, as quoted by TheWrap:

Thus, the Court finds that Plaintiff alleges Defendants were engaged in a conspiracy to smear various individuals, including Plaintiff, each having an adversarial connection to one of Freedman's clients, which not only alleges a motive, but also suggests that Freedman was involved in directing or otherwise effectuating all of those alleged smear campaigns.

Per the filing, Freedman argued "that many of the allegedly defamatory statements are actually non-actionable opinions"; he did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment. The statute makes an order granting or denying a special motion to strike appealable, and Freedman's notice of appeal lists Nikolas as respondent. Wallace is not among the parties the docket lists.

In Ghost's case, the plaintiffs have moved to compel compliance with deposition subpoenas to Freedman.

According to the Times, Lively's lawsuit described a social media campaign coordinated by three businesspeople: a Los Angeles lawyer, a New York publicist and a Texas digital strategist. The Times writes:

The lawyer, Bryan Freedman; the publicist, Melissa Nathan; and the digital strategist, Jed Wallace, have dismissed the allegations as defamation and harassment, and in several cases have countersued to clear their names.

The Times reports that Freedman, Baldoni's lawyer, "is not named as a defendant" in her suit against Baldoni. Baldoni denied the claims & filed a countersuit, which was dismissed. The other women who sued all told the Times that Lively's legal efforts helped them realize their campaigns were connected.

Lively & Baldoni settled their remaining claims against each other "without either side receiving financial compensation", two weeks before they were to go to trial in New York. The remaining three claims, for retaliation, aiding and abetting retaliation, and breach of contract, were not against Baldoni personally; his production company Wayfarer, an LLC for the movie & a public relations company retained by his team were the defendants in them, CNN reported.

As a defendant in Case No. 25-cv-449, Lively moved for attorneys' fees & costs under California Civil Code § 47.1 and sought $8,035,040.88. Judge Lewis J. Liman granted the motion in part and denied it in part, and the court's judgment awarded her $363,245.40 in attorney's fees and $44,206.35 in costs, a total of $407,451.75. Freedman said in a statement that the ruling "is a significant victory for my clients".

Huberman is not among the parties the Nikolas & Ghost dockets list, among the Wayfarer Parties listed in the Lively fee opinion, or among the defendants the Times reports in Jimenez's suit. The Nikolas ruling decided Freedman's motion, the Ghost ruling Wilson's motion and the Lively fee ruling Lively's request for fees.

Cost and scale of fake engagement

Merriam-Webster defines astroturfing as "organized activity" that is "intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement" but is "in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization". In a May 6, 2021 press release, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James said it had found that in 2017 the nation's largest broadband companies funded "a secret campaign to generate millions of comments" to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The comments went to the FCC's 2017 proceeding to repeal net neutrality rules; the release says net neutrality "prohibits broadband providers from blocking, slowing down, or charging companies to prioritize certain content". Disguising "an orchestrated, paid campaign as a grassroots effort" in this way "is often referred to as astroturfing", the release says.

Figure	What it counts	Who measured it	Published
More than 53%	Share of all web traffic in 2025 that was automated, up from 51% the year before; human activity had "declined to just 47%"	Imperva, whose website lists "Advanced Bot Protection" among its products	April 2026
Nearly 18 million	Fake comments, in all, among the more than 22 million the FCC received in its 2017 net neutrality proceeding	New York Attorney General's office	May 2021
More than 8.5 million	Fake comments "that impersonated real people". The broadband industry engaged commercial lead generators, firms that used prizes such as gift cards & sweepstakes entries to lure consumers to their websites; nearly every lead generator hired to enroll consumers in the campaign "simply fabricated consumers' responses"	New York Attorney General's office	May 2021
9.3 million	Fake comments supporting net neutrality "that used fictitious identities", most of them submitted by "a 19-year old college student using automated software"	New York Attorney General's office	May 2021
More than 1,700	Comments "made by AI bots" in r/changemyview, a debate forum on Reddit, where researchers "who say they are from the University of Zurich" secretly deployed the bots	Reported by the news site 404 Media	April 2025
Over 40	Networks "that violated our usage policies", disrupted & reported by OpenAI since February 2024, including abuses such as scams, malicious cyber activity & covert influence operations	OpenAI, in its own threat report	October 2025
More than 200	Covert influence operations Meta has "taken down and reported on" since 2017, from "nation states, commercial firms or unattributed groups"	Meta, in its own enforcement report	December 2022
€279	Price of 114,061 inauthentic engagements bought in 2021: 1,385 comments, 13,859 likes, 93,009 views & 5,808 shares on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok & VKontakte	NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE)	April 2022
More than 96%	Share of those 114,061 purchased engagements that "remained online and active after four weeks"	NATO StratCom COE	April 2022
€10	On Instagram in 2021, enough to buy almost 100,000 fake views, or 25,000 fake likes, or 1,000 fake comments, or 15,000 fake followers	NATO StratCom COE	April 2022
$0.26 in the US; $0.10 in the UK	Average price of SMS (text message) verification for an online platform in the year-long study period running to July 2025; markets openly sell such verifications for fake profiles	Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index data, reported by the University of Cambridge	December 2025
1.3 euros; 2 euros	Examples of what the study's results call "the cheapest rates": "For example, 1000 'likes' on Instagram cost 1.3 euros", while "2 euros can get 1000 views on YouTube"	Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid & IMDEA Networks	February 2023

The NATO StratCom COE report concluded, "It is still easy to buy fake engagements on social media platforms." Its authors wrote, "Our interventions are designed to have low impact and be harmless for ethical reasons."

YouTube's fake engagement policy says the site "doesn't allow anything that artificially increases the number of views, likes, comments, or other metrics", whether through automatic systems or by serving videos to unsuspecting viewers.

Signs of a coordinated campaign

Meta describes coordinated inauthentic behavior as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal in which fake accounts are "central to the operation". Its policy page describes inauthentic behavior as complex forms of deception "performed by a network of inauthentic assets controlled by the same individual or individuals", with the goal of deceiving Meta or its community or evading enforcement. In December 2022, Meta wrote that its enforcements against coordinated inauthentic behavior "focus on behavior rather than the content posted by these networks".

The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) wrote in a 2017 guide to spotting bots that the probability that accounts belong to a single network "can be confirmed by looking at their posts": accounts that all post the same content, or type of content, at the same time are "probably programmed to do so".

Google's spam policies for web search define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings. Other websites the Times verified had backlinks to both Fernald & four more people interviewed for its story who said they were targeted by campaigns.

DFRLab wrote that "A further indicator of probable botness is the handle" an account uses, & that many bots have handles that are "simply alphanumeric scrambles generated by an algorithm".

DFRLab's guide warns that "no single factor can be relied upon to identify bot-like behavior" & that the combination of factors is important.