How Professional Russian Trolls Operate

New submitter SecState writes: Hundreds of full-time, well-paid trolls operate thousands of fake accounts to fill social media sites and comments threads with pro-Kremlin propaganda. A St. Petersburg blogger spent two months working 12-hour shifts in a "troll factory," targeting forums of Russian municipal websites. In an interview, he describes how he worked in teams with two other trolls to create false "debates" about Russian and international politics, with pro-Putin views always scoring the winning point. Of course, with the U.S. government invoking "state secrets" to dismiss a defamation case against the supposedly independent advocacy group United Against a Nuclear Iran, Americans also need to be asking how far is too far when it comes to masked government propaganda.

Comments

Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only those damn Russians are doing this, all other countries are saint.

Re:Sure

[mi]

It's only those damn Russians are doing this, all other countries are saint.

Excluded middle much? Other countries may be doing this — or planning to catch-up — but Russia has been doing this on massive scale for many years — all the while, in a classic fit of projection, accusing others of it.

Another difference is, the US, for example, may consider such propaganda a war-fighting tool to be used outside, but Putin's regime — according to TFA — is happy to use it to prop the government domestically.

Then, I suppose, for knuckle-dragging simpletons happy to equate Joe McCarthy with Lavrenty Beria, none of the above makes any difference...

Re:Sure

[catchblue22]

I often wonder what percentage of responses on slashdot climate stories are made by paid trolls.

Re:Sure

[jythie]

On the other hand, the US has always had a rather loose interpretation of 'war fighting outside' which allowed for usage on disruptive elements of American society too. How much it is done is a big question though.

Re:Sure

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm not sure what Fox News is except the biggest, most well known right wing troll on planet Earth. Russia just doesn't quite get how to do it properly.

Re:Sure

[prefec2]

Of course we are saints. We are the good guys. When we deceive the enemy with lies that this is only a tactic to prevent evil. When the Russians do it, it is to undermine freedom and democracy. Welcome back in the eighties, well maybe it is already the sixties. Those old top honchos in the US, UK and the rest of the west have secured another round with Russia with their special inferiority complex based politics. Both sides have hoped to get back to that. For a short time, they thought Islam might be a suitable evil, but that does not work very well when one half of the Muslims tries to kill the other half over things we do not really understand. True, I do not understand why we had that 30 years war in Europe over religion and power.

Re:Sure

[mi]

Hover's infiltration of civil right's organizations

That was a covert operation, which is a direct opposite of propaganda.

Hoover was running FBI — federal police — not military. Countering foreign agents and spies is openly and officially within the scope of such establishments in all countries and infiltration is a perfectly legitimate tactics.

"Interesting" my butt.

under the argument that they were aligned with communists.

Many were USSR-controlled (knowingly or not), in all likelihood. Some certainly were.

Re:Sure

[aralin]

In Russia it is a small government based operation involving couple hundred people. In US it is a wide scale, industrial operation, otherwise referred to as mainstream media and involves hundreds of thousands of people. In Russia the product is comments under articles, in US the product are the articles themselves. I don't think that we, in the US, are exactly qualified to complain about what the Russians are doing.

Just as one example, look at articles from 2008 to 2013 about Russia in the US mainstream media. It reads like hit job. There is not a single article published without a mention of some perceived problem in Russia, be it with Putin himself, so called human rights violations, free speech violations or corruption. Not a single article that would not spend at least several paragraphs on bad mouthing Russia.

And even if you say, those are justified, compare it to articles from 2008 to 2013 on Saudi Arabia, which has much worse record in every single regard. You will see the stark difference.

Parent Post Semantic Content: Null

[FreeUser]

It's only those damn Russians are doing this, all other countries are saint.

Yeah, because that makes it all OK then.

Your comment is designed to distract from the issue at hand, shut down intelligent conversation on the topic, and imply the wrongdoer is just fine because, by implication, "everybody else does it, too" (no evidence to said implication provided, certainly not proven, and probably not true), all without contributing a single creative or new thought to the discussion at all.

Nice job, (Russian?) troll.

here its just media.

[nimbius]

Conversations in online forums havent really taken the bulk of social-political discourse in america, because we're all still convinced the news media is capable of objectively reporting wars and foreign politics. the administration, any administration really, has made perfectly clear that those outliers that do not fall lock step with the new york times, fox, nbc, and other household staples will be punished. Expect wiretaps, spying, litigation to uncover your sources, accidental shelling of your foreign offices, and outright disinformation and lies from both houses of congress. Expect Joe Libermann to pen a strongly worded letter to your hosting provider, as in the case of wikileaks, that insists you should be shut down. Credit processing will cease, bank accounts will be frozen, and dubious arrest warrents will be issued once you begin to report on the actualities of american foreign policy and interventionalism. during both the iraq war as well as the Afhan war, we censored news coverage of planes returning with dead soldiers. We didnt do it because of television censor standards, we did it because coverage of that nature led to mass protest of the viet-nam war. peaceful demonstration is fine, but whenever we grow tired of it we install agent provocateurs and quickly crush the manufactured dissent.

narratives contrary to the song of exceptionalism aren't tolerated. In fergusson as in occupy we routinely arrested journalists that didnt belch the days talking points for 20 minutes, and immediately knock off to the hotel bar for steak and booze.

Re:here its just media.

[KermodeBear]

we're all still convinced the news media is capable of objectively reporting wars and foreign politics.

I disagree here.

I believe that a majority of people thing the major news media outlets are full of shills for one side or the other. I also believe that most of people in America, quite frankly, don't give a crap.

As long as they have food for the day, can download porn, and watch the latest celebrity scoop, they don't care.

Never underestimate the power of apathy.

Astroturfing

[crunchy_one]

I believe the term is astroturfing, i.e., when someone is paid to write commentary in support of some other entity.

As opposed to American Trolls?

[tekrat]

On various news sites, I see what are obviously paid Republican Trolls, Paid Pro-Koch Brothers Trolls, they come in day after day under various identities but having the same writing style, and post comment after comment (sometimes the same comment multiple times on multiple sites).

So exactly what's the difference...

Re:As opposed to American Trolls?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't think there are democratic trolls/astroturfers, you're kidding yourself. It depends on the issue, but both sides have corporations paying for Dark-PR.

See it on CNN

[Billly Gates]

Go to any major news site and click on an Ukraine story?

90% of the posters are about those American backed Nazi's out to destroy the freedom fighters who had enough of American backed oppression. It is stated so many times it is true that Ukraine is a puppet of the Nato and the US.

Really? How can anyone believe this. It is obvious Russian trolls. Also Crimea is a place with tons of political censorship and political prisoners now. All the comments say it is propaganda and paradise now under Putin. Uh yeah

Those are not trolls, those are sockpuppets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are not trolls, those are sockpuppets; there's a difference.

Re:How propaganda decides wars

[k6mfw]

I think for Korean War it was 1950s and less than 10 years since WWII, there was no counterculture/question authority types during that decade. Also wartime coverage was limited but skyrocketed during Vietnam War. Though video was 16mm film, it quickly be developed and broadcasted on TV (there was less TV sets in homes in early 50s than in 1960s). Also during Vietnam War, media had much free access to battle zones. If there's room in the Huey, a reporter or camera guy can hop on board. Military only denied them on special ops missions. Of course all that had major impact on opinion. Civilians can see what battles are really like (chaos, nobody knows WTF is going on,etc.) and not like choreographed battles in the movies. After Vietnam, military forces realized they need tight control of media. We witnessed that during Falklands campaign which news was sporadic with much unsaid, first Gulf War where CNN kept showing the same footage of a cruise missile impacting a rooftop door but not much on the biggest tank battle since WWII.