Professional Internet Troll Sues Her Former Employer

baegucb sends a followup to the news from March that professional internet trolls were operating by the hundreds at factories in Russia. A woman hired to be one of these trolls, Lyudmila Savchuk, spoke to the media about her job, which led to her being fired. She's now suing her former employer and providing further details about how they operate. "The 'troll factory' operates based on very weird schemes, but all those firms are connected to each other, even though they are separate legal entities," she said. "I knew it was something bad, but of course I never suspected that it was this horrible and this large-scale." She describes how they flooded comment sections with pro-Putin responses, pushed out over 100 blog posts each shift, and doctored images to suit their employers' needs. Savchuk is now gathering activists to oppose this form of internet propaganda.

Comments

Not really a troll...

[jandrese]

This looks a lot more like plain old propaganda. It's not really internet trolling in the traditional sense.

Is "internet troll' some sort of clickbait term? We heard it last year for people who were physically stalking women and it didn't make any sense then either.

Re:Not really a troll...

[JazzLad]

Roger that, I do that sometimes myself. I hate all forms of censorship (save self-censorship, I can choose what I want to see :)) & when Dice pretends they don't do it and then we find blatant examples where they do ... it's sad.

I'll get modded down, I'm sure, but I think it needed to be said.

Propaganda trolls propagandize propaganda article

[Geoffrey.landis]

It's amusing that in the comments on this article about pro-Russia propaganda-trolls, most of the comments are by the very pro-Russia propaganda trolls that the article exposes, belittling the article and blaming the west

Russian trolls are very active

[Anonymous Coward]

Already modded so have to be anon.

If you look at any article talking about Russia's invasion of Ukraine you will see the comments infested with Russian trolls based out of St. Petersburg. They use every excuse they are told to use trying to explain away the hundreds of dead Russian soldiers (killed in training accidents over a 2 month period according to them), the amount of brand new equipment the Russian-backed rebels have and continue to get, even if the Ukrainian army never had such equipment (they raided weapons depots and now manufacture tanks, artillery and ammunition on their own despite having almost no manufacturing capabilities), the captured Russian soldiers (they weren't really soldiers. They left the army right before they were captured and were only "vacationing" in Ukraine or "volunteering" to fight which is why they brought along their tanks, artillery and BUK missile systems).

It's quite funny, at time, reading their completely fabricated and unbelievable stories of how everyone but Putin is to blame for Russia's problems. Even when Putin came out and stated categorically he ordered Russian troops to take over Crimea the trolls denied Putin's own words. Apparently not only is everything coming from the West a lie, but so are the words of their dear leader. In their minds, everything is a lie.

I read something the other day which helps to explain the Russian mind set. The Grapes of Wrath was shown as a movie to the Russians many decades ago (30s?). It was supposed to be an exercise in how bad capitalism was. The problem was, at the end of the movie it was shown that even the poorest American could afford to buy their own car so the Russian authorities banned the showing of the movie. They needed to keep up the lie about the evils of the West so like Putin has done by banning the mention of how many Russian soldiers have died during the invasion of Ukraine, including preventing the mothers and fathers from speaking about their dead sons, Russia needs to keep its people believing in lies because if they knew the truth they would realize how backwards their country is and why they will never be taken seriously by anyone.

Re:So the concept of Putlerbot sockpuppet is true!

[blind biker]

Not really, no. Russian government shills are only used inside the country, to calm down dissent.

How in the hell do you know this? Is it more likely that hundreds/thousands of Russian citizens are utterly delusional to the point of insanity, all the while being perfectly Internet savvy, or that there are propaganda firms working for Putin to control the Western public opinion regarding things such as Ukraine? I find the latter much more likely.

The only exception might be Serbia, but my guess is, you don't speak Serbian either.

Tu si se zajebo. Sasvim solidno "citam" srpski i ostale bivse Yugo jezike, osim makedonskog.