Strawman tactic campaign ads.
404 Media podcast - An Elon Musk-Funded PAC Is Running a Democrat Impersonation Campaign - Oct 30, 2024
404 Media is reporting that the Elon Musk super pac has set up more strawman ads pretending to be Democrats or Harris, targeting Republicans saying mandatory gun buyback, giving medicare to undocumented immigrants, and banning cigarettes. The telecoms are not required to have a database of election ads, so when it comes to text ads, it’s all found out by people sending in examples to reporters. So it’s difficult to know for sure what people are seeing in texts, and what kind of misinformation they’re getting.
I've seen this strawmanning tactic used on social media for years. People set up a social media account, make it like a caricature of a person who supports a particular issue or political stance, and they may promote genuine ideas, but then they start slipping in really outlandish things. An example I've seen on the pandemic issue is sock puppet troll accounts that promote masks, and then also post about locking people in their homes, preventing people from working in essential jobs, shutting down businesses, or forcing people to wear masks in the shower. Things that are obviously just things right-wingers claim are wanted, as a strawman to discredit any public health measures as supposedly "extreme".
Sadly this is a disinformation operation that fools some people.
