"Monster Liberty": That's how the otherwise excellent closed-captioning service in the auditorium at Pennridge High School interpreted "Moms for Liberty," while one of several dozen citizens who had waited in line to lambast the group spoke at the podium. A chuckle rose up among the parents in the crowded school board meeting, held on a late August evening after the first day of classes for the Pennridge School District in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania. "Fair enough," one mother whispered to another.
It's a rough definition, but astroturfing is usually rooted in goals separate from or even counter to the stated movement. E.g. in your example outside support for a labor movement wouldn't necessarily be astroturfing if it's genuinely supporting labor. A fake labor movement sprouted by the companies themselves to take the wind out of the sails of real labor movements would.
I think that is a red flag, absolutely. That's a good indicator of an astroturfing campaign.
Right. A big donation to the AFL-CIO doesn't turn it into an astroturfing organization.