Astroturfing

The practice of manufacturing fake grassroots consensus—via self-upvoting or coordinated inauthentic engagement—so manipulated signals appear organic and popular.

grounded in: trend NOTABLE: 'Self-upvoting Show HN: A viral demo that upvotes itself' (Hacker News front page, 2026-07-13)

Connected concepts

Sybil attacks, Adversarial anti-AI content, Bot mitigation & scraping defense, Proof of personhood