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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.
Which country is paying you to say that?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I believe the term is astroturfing, i.e., when someone is paid to write commentary in support of some other entity.
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
http://saveie6.com/
I often wonder what percentage of responses on slashdot climate stories are made by paid trolls.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
This has been going on a long time in China, though there the troll workplaces are decentralized and the pay's a lot lower.
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
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.
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.
Yeah, this happens on Slash too, so apparently the Chinese astroturfing squad seems to lurk here as well. For example, in regards to cheating exams:
You have this guy mentioning that cheating test scores is also a big problem in China, followed by some more detailed posts as to why.
Then you have a response by an AC who basically says "oh it's just Westerners trying to make China look bad. We don't do that anymore! Look, I'm in the US now so I'm believable. Despite posting AC and having stereotypical Chinese grammatical mistakes common to non-landed Chinese astroturfers, modded +1
I point out that the previous response is an obvious astroturfer (aforementioned grammatical errors etc), and am modded down twice rather readily. But seriously, read the astroturfer's post out with a bad accent and it will sound like a Chinese villain from an old movie. The linguistic keys make it pretty clear the guy isn't somebody who's been living in the west for any length of time.
For the record, I have plenty of Chinese friends etc whom I've worked on language skills with. Missing pronouns is usually a fairly basic thing that gets fixed earlier on, as is the use of infinite verbs ("keep to spread" instead of "spreading"). So unless the poster had been living in Chinatown for the last few years, one would expect those language'isms to have cleared up by now.
Also, "flied lice", though attributed to a Chinese restaurateur in Lethal Weapon and added for humour, would be more of a Japanese/Korean language issue as they lack distinct "L" and "R" sounds in their language (or rather, "L" and "R" exist as single character/sound). Chinese don't really seem to have issues with consonant swaps in English.