As Monday July 20 came to a close, public comments about a Trump administration attempt to restrict trans gun ownership were overwhelmingly negative.

Citizens lambasted the proposal, which would require trans people to list their assigned sex on mandatory purchase paperwork even if that would conflict with their ID. Submissions called it “blatantly unconstitutional”, “government overreach”, and a clear attempt to further disempower a vulnerable minority.

Then, practically overnight, the tone changed. On July 21, supportive comments began rolling in on an industrial scale — first dozens at a time, then hundreds. By the end of July 23, more than half of all comments were in favor of the new rule.

Nearly all of those comments show signs of being machine-generated, according to an investigation by Assigned Media — part of what appears to be a coordinated bot campaign that accounts for fully 96 percent of all submissions in favor of the rule.