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On 26 July 2016, a number of Bernie Sanders' delegates left the Democratic National Convention as part of a planned walkout, and not long afterwards an advertisement was posted to Philadelphia's Craigslist purporting to seek hundreds of paid actors to fill empty seats at a national convention. Given that only one big national convention was occurring at that time and that Philadelphia hosted the DNC, there was little mystery as to who or what the posting referenced. It read: A number of social media users took the posting at face value, and it circulated rapidly as a commentary on the rocky events of the DNC. But there were a number of reasons the advertisement was very likely fake, the largest being its obvious overtones of political theater. The ad was littered with what appeared to be references to events leading up to the convention, and appears to have surfaced after coverage of both the walkout and photographs of empty seats. Another was the mode of transmission: Craigslist. Many protesting Sanders supporters cited Wikileaks' DNCLeaks (a vast dump of 20,000 DNC e-mails on the eve of the convention) as a reason for their grievances, and those leaks included a proposal to plant fake Craigslist ads smearing Donald Trump. In a chain of e-mails, DNC staffer Christina Freundlich sought approval on a plan to create a microsite and stated a digital team that created a fake craigslist jobs post for women who want to apply to jobs one of Trump’s organizations: In another e-mail DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda criticized fellow staffers over a staged protest with poor turnout, citing the following tweet: Miranda ended the chain of e-mails with a directive to employ interns for such events if unspecified allies failed to deliver bodies in time for photo ops: The DNC actors advertisement appeared to be either a humorous or satirical attempt to weaponize those controversial tactics against the party itself.
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